Dr. Jim Denison
Tony Campolo, the world-famous evangelist and social justice preacher, died Tuesday at the age of eighty-nine. When I heard the news, I debated whether or not to write on it.
Many of you may be too young to know why Campolo’s ministry matters. Those of us familiar with him know that his story is problematic on several levels. I worried that my comments might violate the biblical warning, “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers” (James 4:11).
Then I decided that there is a larger principle at work here that applies to each of us, whatever we know or think about Rev. Campolo and his legacy.
“Trying to see the world as he saw it”
Tony Campolo was born a second-generation Italian immigrant in 1935. His family attended an American Baptist congregation in West Philadelphia until it shut down as white people fled their African American neighbors for the suburbs. Tony’s father then took his family to a Black Baptist church nearby, where they worshiped.
As a student at Eastern College (now a university), Campolo studied John Wesley, the father of Methodism, in a class on “Christian classics.” He said he was moved by the Wesleyan revival with its “social consciousness, attacking slavery, championing the rights of women, ending child labor laws.” He added: “The Wesleyan vision was warm-hearted evangelism with an incredible social vision. Trying to see the world as he saw it changed me greatly.”
As a young pastor, Campolo experienced racism in his church and community. He left his church to get a doctorate in sociology and took a teaching position at Eastern in 1964, where he encouraged students to volunteer with children in Philadelphia. He also helped start a school in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. To recruit students and raise money for ongoing projects, he began accepting speaking invitations. At one point he was speaking five hundred times a year.
Campolo clearly identified with evangelicals, writing in 2015: “I surrendered my life to Jesus and trusted in him for my salvation, and I have been a staunch evangelical ever since.” He also said, “I believe the Bible to have been written by men inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit.” More Here
