Top 55 Tony Campolo Quotes

A strong case can be made for religious leaders to speak out on political issues.

To prevent discussion of any other explanations of human origins is hardly what I would expect from open-minded educators.

Prior to ROE V. WADE, abortions were common even though they were illegal. I don’t think making them illegal again is going to solve the problem.

Insofar as the church fails to do the will of God, I am called upon to help it discover and to do the will of God; and I am called upon to help the government to do the same.

Protestants so often confuse being Republican with being Christian.

The Jesus of the Scripture transcends all nations and calls all nations into judgment.

While a case can be made for intelligent design, I can’t figure out why some Christians are so thrilled about that possibility. First of all, it doesn’t prove there’s a God. If anything, intelligent design lends support to some form of pantheism that defines God as immanent within nature.

I don’t think that John Kerry is the Messiah or the Democratic Party is the answer, but I don’t like the evangelical community blessing the Republican Party as some kind of God-ordained instrument for solving the world’s problems.

I am relatively sure, from conversations that I had with former president Bill Clinton, that George Bush seldom called upon him for advice.

After-school tutoring programs, care for the elderly, shelters for the homeless, disaster relief work, and a variety of other services would all benefit from government funding.

Evangelicals need to take a good look at what their issues are. Are they really being faithful to Jesus? Are they being faithful to the Bible?

The real problem that I think those of us who are evangelicals and Democrats have to face up to is that the political right controls the religious media.

Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state.

Relegating women to second-class citizenship was abolished when Jesus died on the cross.

In our post-Freudian world, it is no longer a goal to become people of character who live out a God-ordained ideal of selfhood.

It has been said that people never do evil with more enthusiasm than when they do it in the name of God.

There are reasons why Religious Right Evangelicals will continue to dominate religious discourse, not only in their own sector of the Christian community, but also in what transpires in mainline denominations.

In religious circles, depression is often deemed to be a spiritual condition that can be cured with prayer.

In baptism, new Christians become part of a body of fellow believers who are called to spiritually encourage one another and hold one another responsible for consistent Christian living.

That’s what they do in Europe. You go down to the city hall and you become legally connected. You have a civil union there. Then, if you’re religious, you go down to the church, and the church blesses the union. That gets the problem solved.

Those issues are biblical issues: to care for the sick, to feed the hungry, to stand up for the oppressed. I contend that if the evangelical community became more biblical, everything would change.

Because of the increase in life longevity, America can now assume that at any given time three, and perhaps four, former presidents will still be alive, even when the current president is occupying the White House.

There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.

The reason why I buy into the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party is because there are over 2,000 verses of Scripture that deal with responding to the needs of the poor.

My task as a citizen is to get the government to do more good and less inefficient and wasteful work.

Getting the government to put money into social programs run by religious institutions is a practice that started during the Clinton years, when Bill Clinton advocated the AmeriCorps program.

If America is too arrogant, too prideful to repent, it’s not the kind of country that God wants it to be.

Like most Christians, I believe the Genesis account of creation is a description of six different stages of creation, each of which may have taken eons of time.

When there is conflict between what God requires and the demands of the government, each of us has an important decision to make concerning taxes.

So I really would like to see both parties respond to the poor with greater commitment. But I’ve got to tell you, the Democrats, I feel, are doing a better job in that respect than Republicans are.

In America, evangelical churches have often been bastions of conservatism, providing support for the status quo.

Christianity isn’t the only group that has fundamentalists.

Of the 22 industrialized nations of the world, we’re dead last in per capita giving to poor people.

I’m not denying that depression can be spiritually induced. Guilt from having wronged and hurt others can bring it on. A sense of having failed to live out the will of God can give rise to depression. Certainly the fear of death and what might follow can sap the joy out of life.

A career public speaker is not what I’m called to be. I’m called to be a critic.

Sadly, we do a much better job of making people feel guilty than we do of delivering them from the guilt we create. We need to confess this and change our ways.

My theology is such that the God who loves Israel and will not forsake Israel – which is why I want to see Israel have a secure nation with secure borders – also loves the Palestinians.

Who’s to say that there is any more support for Freud’s psychoanalytic concept of the superego than there is for that old time religion that asserted that there is a God who ordains what is right and wrong, and that His righteousness endures for all generations?

I propose that the government should get out of the business of marrying people and, instead, only give legal status to civil unions.

I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages.

While I can see how the government has, at times, wasted taxpayers’ money, and I can admit that too often its programs are ineffective, I also can see the good that government does.

Lies and distortions can be spread, via the Internet, in an inexpensive way, and the effects are astounding.

So after the Lewinsky scandal, everything changed, and we moved from using the Bible to address the moral issues of our time, which were social, to moral issues of our time that were very personal. I have continued that relationship up until the present.

I read the Bible, I speak through issues, I see what I think is hypocrisy in the church and things that are wrong, and I speak to these things. But I could be wrong.

In the past, the Republican Party has depended on unified support at election time from Evangelical Christians. But times are changing!

Religion, for better or for worse, has been politicized in blatant ways that have seldom been equaled in American elections.

Young Evangelicals, especially, are breaking ranks with older Evangelicals (over 40) and are more and more leaning towards voting Democratic.

When you talk about evangelicals, don’t forget that a significant proportion of the evangelical community is African American. And most African Americans – well over 90 percent, thoroughly evangelical, thoroughly biblical – will probably vote Democratic.

Through the ages, God has used the church to keep alive and pass down the story of what Christ has done for us.

Red Letter Christians believe in the doctrines of the Apostle’s Creed, are convinced that the Scriptures have been inspired by the Holy Spirit, and make having a personal transforming relationship with the resurrected Christ the touchtone of their faith.

Jesus is the only Savior, but not everybody who is saved by Him is aware that He is the one who is doing the saving.

Certain things happened in the early church. Women who had never had any freedom suddenly have the ability to stand up and speak and be treated as equals within the life of the church.

Most of my fundamentalist brothers and sisters – and I am an evangelical, so I can say most of my fundamentalist brothers and sisters – are quite willing to pack women off and send them as missionaries to dangerous places where they might get killed.

I teach at Eastern University, which is highly committed to doing work among the poor and the oppressed peoples of the world. We have a special commitment to the city.

The Gospel is about grace and we all know that grace is about us receiving from God blessings that we don’t deserve.