Tony Campolo Quotes

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.

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.

If marriage really is a sacred institution, then why is the government controlling it, especially in a nation that affirms separation of church and state?

Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus? Would you follow him for the life, joy and fulfilment he gives you right now?

I have serious problems with fundamentalist Christians and their creationist theories. 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. My skepticism is due, in part, to the fact that the Bible says that the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:16-19). I have a hard time figuring how twenty-four hour days could have been measured before that.

Sigmund Freud was the apostle of disbelief. He was the one who made psychoanalysis a part of our culture, and in so doing he kicked out a flying buttress that had been essential for holding up our cathedral of faith.

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.

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 don't know how your theology works, but if Jesus has a choice between stained glass windows and feeding starving kids in Haiti, I have a feeling he'd choose the starving kids in Haiti.

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.

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.

But isn't it time for Christians to admit that we should reject bargains if they are gained by the exploitation of the poorest of the poor in developing countries?

What if Barack Obama established a Presidential Advisory Committee that would meet once every couple of months, bringing together the former presidents for a conference in order to seek their collective wisdom? There is a wealth of experience in former presidents that generally goes untapped.

Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be “old-time gospel preaching.” This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states.

When leading evangelicals say terrible things about Islam, evil things about Islam, terrible things about Muhammad, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

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?

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.

If four years of university can increase your effectiveness of what you can do for others in the name of Christ, it is the best investment that you can make. But if the education is simply to get a job to make a lot of money, you have to raise the question of why you're doing it.

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

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

What I am trying to say is that Jesus who incarnated God 2,000 years ago is mystically present and waiting to be discovered in EVERY person you and I encounter

One of the problems with evangelicalism is that it has allowed itself to be married to the Republican party... Jesus is not a Republican. Nor is he a Democrat.

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

When in fact we live in a society that makes life hell for gays and lesbians, this community has got to stand up and say, ‘We’re on your side as you struggle for dignity,’ and, ‘Yes, we will defy anybody who says otherwise, even if we have to go to Disneyland to prove it.’

Women have the same privileges and opportunities as men, given the New Testament.

Artists are the best theologians. They feel things that are true before theologians can jargonize them into obscurity.

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

Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your kids.

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.

One of the most startling discoveries of my life was the realization that the Jesus that I love, the Jesus who died for me on Calvary, that Jesus, is waiting, mystically and wonderfully, in every person I meet. I find Jesus everywhere.

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.

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.

Evangelical Christians, who once were a ridiculed irrelevant sectarian movement, have, over just three decades, become a powerful voting bloc that can no longer be ignored.

I'm not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians.

The kingdom of God is a glorious and gigantic party!

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?

We must not be so concerned with the unborn that we fail to pay attention to the born.

If we were to set out to establish a religion in polar opposition to the Beatitudes Jesus taught, it would look strikingly similar to the pop Christianity that has taken over the airwaves of North America.

I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home, but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.

Jesus never says to the poor: ‘come find the church’, but he says to those of us in the church: ‘go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned.

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.

Today, some of the most spiritual people I know claim to be without religion.

I've always been skeptical of those television healers who are bald. If I had that gift, that'd be the first thing I'd fix.

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.

Perhaps because our culture and politics have gone so off course, with values so contrary to those of Jesus, more and more people intuitively recognize that His vision of God's kingdom-a new world of compassion, justice, integrity and peace- is the Good News they've been searching and waiting for.

I contend that it's impossible to read the Sermon on the Mount and not come out against capital punishment.

It is hard to say what the future holds, but this is probable - it won't be just like the past.

I don't know what to make of the Muslim mystics, especially those who have come to be known as the Sufis. What do they experience in their mystic experiences? Could they have encountered the same God we do in our Christian mysticism?