Top 163 Quotes & Sayings by Tony Campolo
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American priest Tony Campolo.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
If America is too arrogant, too prideful to repent, it's not the kind of country that God wants it to be.
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.
Whenever there is a catastrophe, some religious people inevitably ask, 'Why didn't God do something? Where was God when all those people died?'
Of the 22 industrialized nations of the world, we're dead last in per capita giving to poor people.
In short, I'm not sure that the abortion problem can be solved by legislation. I think it can only be solved through moral persuasion.
I, for one, am quite willing to join the 'forgive, forget and move on' crowd, but it does make me wonder if Evangelicals are going to sound believable when they say that they tend to vote Republican because of their religious commitments to the family.
I contend that Bush would be a lot more moderate if there weren't some fundamentalists breathing down his neck every time he wants to establish the state of Israel, every time he wants to do justice for the Palestinian people.
I propose that the government should get out of the business of marrying people and, instead, only give legal status to civil unions.
Although I believe that scripture is divinely inspired and infallible, I have a hard time going along with the belief that the whole creation process occurred in six twenty-four hour days.
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.
The two hot issues are the gay issue and the abortion issue. These are the two defining issues in the evangelical community these days. I'm sure that these hot buttons will be pushed, time and time again.
I think it goes back to the fact that the evangelical community often does not have a biblical vision of God.
And we've got to ask ourselves some very serious questions as to whether or not certain religious leaders, in terms of raising money - I hate to bring this up - are pushing hot buttons.
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.
To prevent discussion of any other explanations of human origins is hardly what I would expect from open-minded educators.
I contend that, in spite of all that might be said about Watergate, Richard Nixon was good for the poor people of America.
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.
Perhaps we would do well to listen to the likes of Rabbi Harold Kushner, who contends that God is not really as powerful as we have claimed.
Christianity isn't the only group that has fundamentalists.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures does it say that God is omnipotent.
The Gospel is about grace and we all know that grace is about us receiving from God blessings that we don't deserve.
If a guy is intimidated by a woman in leadership, he has real problems with his own concepts of masculinity. That's a harsh statement, but I believe it to be true.
I think the time has come for the United States to do even-handed justice.
But I contend that if we're providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn't we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States?
I don't know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don't want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we're not ready to see it used in ways that offend us.
What is especially important is addressing the question of how religion can be enforced through political means and what can be done to create a political environment that, on the one hand, acknowledges the role of religion in society, while on the other hand does not impose one religion on the populace at the expense of all others.
I think the real place where most evangelicals have trouble with the Democratic Party is on the issue of abortion.
But I think it's up to a local congregation to determine whether or not a marriage should be blessed of God. And it shouldn't be up to the government.
When you listen to Christian radio stations - and there are thousands of them now in the United States - and when you listen to Christian television networks - and there are thousands of Christian television shows across the country - they are all politically right.
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'm a minister, and I serve as a minister in addition to being a university professor.
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.
When leading evangelicals say terrible things about Islam, evil things about Islam, terrible things about Muhammad, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
I think there are other issues that the Democrats could use to rally evangelicals. There are a lot of us, for instance, who believe that the Bible calls us to be environmentally responsible.
Relegating women to second-class citizenship was abolished when Jesus died on the cross.
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.
Often, we ignore the fact that our spiritual condition and psychological state of mind are highly affected by what is happening to us physically. Sometimes depression is simply the result of exhaustion.
I am looking for suggestions on what we can do about extremists within our own society. They cannot be ignored.
I've got some repenting to do.
Most Evangelicals claim to be politically non-partisan, and say they only identify with the Republican Party because the Republicans are committed to 'family values.'
It is hard to say what the future holds, but this is probable - it won't be just like the past.
I contend that it's impossible to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out against capital punishment.
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.
When you were born, you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this - when you die, will you be happy when everybody else is crying?
Women have the same privileges and opportunities as men, given the New Testament.
It's a new day for the Democrats when it comes to matters of faith, and the younger Evangelicals are aware of this and many of them are moving into the Democratic camp.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In religious circles, depression is often deemed to be a spiritual condition that can be cured with prayer.
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.
It has been said that people never do evil with more enthusiasm than when they do it in the name of God.
As we consider the causes of depression, those of us in the church must face the ways we might be responsible for creating it.
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.
I applaud the growing commitment of Evangelicals to the needs of the poor and oppressed in urban America.
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