[Mb-civic] Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked

[Michael Butler]

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    'Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked': An Interview with Tony
Campolo 
    Interview by Laura Sheahen
    BeliefNet.com

     Friday 12 November 2004
 Speaking out on gays, women and more, a progressive evangelical says 'We
ought to get out of the judging business.'

    Evangelical leader, sociology professor, and Baptist minister Tony
Campolo made headlines in the 1990s when he agreed to be a spiritual
counselor to President Bill Clinton. A self-described Bible-believing
Christian, he has drawn fire from his fellow evangelicals for his stance on
contemporary issues like homosexuality. He talked with Beliefnet recently
about his new book, Speaking My Mind.

      It's a common perception that evangelical Christians are conservative
on issues like gay marriage, Islam, and women¹s roles. Is this the case?

    Well, there's a difference between evangelical and being a part of the
Religious Right. A significant proportion of the evangelical community is
part of the Religious Right. My purpose in writing the book was to
communicate loud and clear that I felt that evangelical Christianity had
been hijacked.

     When did it become anti-feminist? When did evangelical Christianity
become anti-gay? When did it become supportive of capital punishment?
Pro-war? When did it become so negative towards other religious groups?

     There are a group of evangelicals who would say, "Wait a minute. We¹re
evangelicals but we want to respect Islam. We don¹t want to call its prophet
evil. We don¹t want to call the religion evil. We believe that we have got
to learn to live in the same world with our Islamic brothers and sisters and
we want to be friends. We do not want to be in some kind of a holy war."

     We also raise some very serious questions about the support of policies
that have been detrimental to the poor. When I read the voter guide of a
group like the Christian Coalition, I find that they are allied with the
National Rifle Association and are very anxious to protect the rights of
people to buy even assault weapons. But they don¹t seem to be very
supportive of concerns for the poor, concerns for trade relations, for
canceling Third World debts.

     In short, there¹s a whole group of issues that are being ignored by the
Religious Right and that warrant the attention of Bible-believing
Christians. Another one would be the environment.

     I don¹t think that John Kerry is the Messiah or the Democratic Party is
the answer, but I don¹t like the evangelical community blessing the
Republican Party as some kind of God-ordained instrument for solving the
world¹s problems. The Republican Party needs to be called into
accountability even as the Democratic Party needs to be called into
accountability. So it¹s that double-edged sword that I¹m trying to wield.

     Are the majority of evangelicals in America leaning conservative
because they see their leaders on TV that way? Or is there a contingent out
there that we don¹t hear about in the press that is more progressive on the
issues you just talked about?

    The latest statistics that I have seen on evangelicals indicate that
something like 83 percent of them are going to vote for George Bush and are
Republicans. And there¹s nothing wrong with that. It¹s just that Christians
need to be considering other issues beside abortion and homosexuality.

     These are important issues, but isn¹t poverty an issue? When you pass a
bill of tax reform that not only gives the upper five percent most of the
benefits, leaving very little behind for the rest of us, you have to ask
some very serious questions. When that results in 300,000 slots for
children's afterschool tutoring in poor neighborhoods being cut from the
budget. When one and a half billion dollars is cut from the "No Child Left
Behind" program.

     In short, I think that evangelicals are so concerned with the unborn‹as
we should be‹that we have failed to pay enough attention to the born‹to
those children who do live and who are being left behind by a system that
has gone in favor of corporate interests and big money.

     So as an evangelical, I find myself very torn, because I am a pro-life
person. I understand evangelicals who say there comes a time when one issue
is so overpowering that we have to vote for the candidate that espouses a
pro-life position, even if we disagree with him on a lot of other issues.

     My response to that is OK, the Republican party and George Bush know
that they have the evangelical community in its pocket‹[but] they can¹t win
the election without us. Given this position, shouldn¹t we be using our
incredible position of influence to get the president and his party to
address a whole host of other issues which we think are being neglected?

     Like what you just said - poverty, or our foreign policy?

    Exactly. And we would also point out that the evangelical community has
become so pro-Israel that it is forgotten that God loves Palestinians every
bit as much. And that a significant proportion of the Palestinian community
is Christian. We¹re turning our back on our own Christian brothers and
sisters in an effort to maintain a pro-Zionist mindset that I don¹t think
most Jewish people support. For instance, most Jewish people really support
a two-state solution to the Palestinian crisis. Interestingly enough, George
Bush supports a two-state solution.

     He¹s the first president to actually say that the Palestinians should
have a state of their own with their own government. However, he¹s received
tremendous opposition from evangelicals on that very point.

     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?
Are they adhering to the kinds of teachings that Christ made clear?

     In the book, I take issue, for instance, with the increasing tendency
in the evangelical community to bar women from key leadership roles in the
church. Over the last few years, the Southern Baptist Convention has taken
away the right of women to be ordained to ministry. There were women that
were ordained to ministry‹their ordinations have been negated and women are
told that this is not a place for them. They are not to be pastors.

     They point to certain passages in the Book of Timothy to make their
case, but tend to ignore that there are other passages in the Bible that
would raise very serious questions about that position and which, in fact,
would legitimate women being in leadership positions in the church. In
Galatians, it says that in Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor
free, male nor female, all are one in Christ Jesus. In the Book of Acts, the
Bible is very clear that when the Holy Spirit comes upon the Church that
both men and women begin to prophesy, that preaching now belongs to both men
and women. Phillip had four daughters, all of whom prophesied, which we know
means preaching in biblical language. I¹d like to point out that in the 16th
chapter of Romans, the seventh verse, we have reference to Junia. Junia was
a woman and she held the high office of apostle in the early Church. What is
frightening to me is that in the New International Translation of the
Scriptures, the word Junia was deliberately changed to Junius to make it
male.

     I¹m saying, let¹s be faithful to the Bible. You can make your point,
but there are those of us equally committed to Scripture who make a very
strong case that women should be in key leaderships in the Church. We don¹t
want to communicate the idea that to believe the Bible is to necessarily be
opposed to women in key roles of leadership in the life of early
Christendom.

     What position do you wish American evangelicals would take on
homosexuality? 

    As an evangelical who takes the Bible very seriously, I come to the
first chapter of Romans and feel there is sufficient evidence there to say
that same-gender eroticism is not a Christian lifestyle. That¹s my position.

     So you mean homosexual activity?

    That¹s right. What I think the evangelical community has to face up to,
however, is what almost every social scientist knows, and I¹m one of them,
and that is that people do not choose to be gay. I don¹t know what causes
homosexuality, I have no idea. Neither does anybody else. There isn¹t enough
evidence to support those who would say it¹s an inborn theory. There isn¹t
enough evidence to support those who say it¹s because of socialization.

     I¹m upset because the general theme in the evangelical community,
propagated from one end of this country to the other--especially on
religious radio--is that people become gay because the male does not have a
strong father image with which to identify. That puts the burden of people
becoming homosexual on parents.

     Most parents who have homosexual children are upset because of the
suffering their children have to go through living in a homophobic world.
What they don¹t need is for the Church to come along and to lay a guilt trip
on top of them and say ³And your children are homosexual because of you. If
you would have been the right kind of parent, this would have never
happened.² That kind of thinking is common in the evangelical Church and the
book attacks on solid sociological, psychological, biological grounds.

     But even if evangelicals came to believe that it was not a choice, how
should they approach the topic?

    Well, beyond that, they seem to offer an absolute solution to the
problem. They are saying, ³We can change every gay. We can change every
lesbian.² I have heard enough of the brothers and sisters give testimonies
of having changed their sexual orientation to doubt themŠI believe them. But
that¹s rare: people who stand up and say, ³I was gay but Jesus came into my
life and now I¹m not homosexual anymore.²

     But the overwhelming proportion of the gay community that love Jesus,
that go to church, that are deeply committed in spiritual things, try to
change and can¹t change. And the Church acts as though they are just
stubborn and unwilling, when in reality they can¹t change. To propose that
every gay with proper counseling and proper prayer can change their
orientation is to create a mentality where parents are angry with their
children, saying, "You are a gay person because you don¹t want to change and
you¹re hurting your mother and your father and your family and you¹re
embarrassing us all."

     These young people cannot change. What they are begging for, and what
we as Church people have a responsibility to give them, is loving
affirmation as they are. That does not mean that we support same-gender
eroticism.

     What do you wish evangelicals might accept in terms of salvation for
non-Christians? 

    We ought to get out of the judging business. We should leave it up to
God to determine who belongs in one arena or another when it comes to
eternity. What we are obligated to do is to tell people about Jesus and
that¹s what I do. I try to do it every day of my life.

     I don¹t know of any other way of salvation, excerpt through Jesus
Christ. Now, if you were going to ask me, "Are only Christians going to get
to heaven?" I can¹t answer that question, because I can only speak from the
Christian perspective, from my own convictions and from my own experience. I
do not claim to be able to read the mind of God and when evangelicals make
these statements, I have some very serious concerns.

     For instance, they say unless a person accepts Jesus as his personal
savior or her personal savior, that person is doomed forever to live apart
from God. Well, what about the many, many children every year who die in
infancy or the many children who die almost in childbirth and what about
people who are suffering from intellectual disabilities? Is there not some
grace from God towards such people? Are evangelical brothers and sisters of
mine really suggesting that these people will burn in hell forever?

     And I would have to say what about all the people in the Old Testament
days? They didn¹t have a chance to accept Jesus.

     I don¹t know how far the grace of God does expand and I¹m sure that
what the 25th chapter of Matthew says is correct--that there will be a lot
of surprises on Judgment Day as to who receives eternal life and who
doesn¹t. But in the book I try to make the case that we have to stop our
exclusivistic, judgmental mentality. Let us preach Christ, let us be
faithful to proclaiming the Gospel, but let¹s leave judgment in the hands of
God.

     But in the book you also mention the decline of mainline churches. Some
people would say that this lack of taking a firm stand is wishy-washy, and
that if evangelicalism is infected by relativism, that could be its downfall
as well. 

    I didn¹t say anything that was relativistic. I am just saying that when
we don¹t know what we¹re talking about, we shouldn¹t make absolute
statements. And we don¹t know how God will judge in the end. We do not know
the mind of God.

     As for mainline churches declining, my own particular analysis is that
they're declining because they have been so concerned about social justice
issues that they forgot to put a major emphasis on bringing people into a
close, personal, transforming relationship with God. The Pentecostal
churches, the evangelical churches, attract people who are hungry to know
God, not just as a theology, not just as a moral teacher, not just as a
social justice advocate, but as someone who can invade them, possess them,
transform them from within, strengthen them for their everyday struggles,
enable them to overcome the guilt they feel for things in the past.

     Mainline churches have not sufficiently nurtured that kind of
Christianity. They believe in it, they articulate it, it¹s not where they
put enough emphasis. They are not putting enough emphasis on getting people
into a personal, I use the word mystical, transforming relationship with
Christ.

     I think that Christianity has two emphases. One is a social emphasis to
impart the values of the kingdom of God in society‹to relieve the sufferings
of the poor, to stand up for the oppressed, to be a voice for those who have
no voice. The other emphasis is to bring people into a personal,
transforming relationship with Christ, where they feel the joy and the love
of God in their lives. That they manifest what the fifth chapter of
Galatians calls "the fruit of the Spirit." Fundamentalism has emphasized the
latter, mainline churches have emphasized the former. We cannot neglect the
one for the other.

     In your book, you put forward a sort of ideal creed for 21st-century
evangelicals. What¹s most crucial to understand about the additions you made
to this creed? 

    The Apostle¹s Creed I think is the ultimate measure for Christians. Some
say it goes back as far as 1800 years. It has been the standard statement of
faith that the Church has maintained, and I wanted to say, "An evangelical
is someone who believes in the doctrines of the Apostle¹s Creed." However,
the thing that evangelicals would add to the Apostle¹s Creed is their view
of holy scripture. They contend, and I contend, that the Bible is an
infallible message from God, inspired. The writers were inspired by the Holy
Spirit and [the Bible] is a message that provides an infallible guide for
faith and practice.

     And not only that. It's necessary to know Jesus in an intimate and
personal way. That's what it means to be an evangelical. I don't think it
means evangelicals are necessarily in favor of capital punishment. I'm one
evangelical that is opposed to capital punishment. I do not believe being an
evangelical means women should be debarred from pastoral ministry. I believe
women do have a right to be in ministry. It doesn't mean evangelicals are
supportive of the Republican party in all respects, because here's one
evangelical who says "I think the Republican party has been the party of the
rich, and has forgotten many ethnic groups and many poor people."

     I am an evangelical who holds to those three positions [Creed, Bible,
personal relationship with Jesus] and is a strong environmentalist. I am an
evangelical who raises very specific questions about war in general, but
specifically the war in Iraq. The evangelical community has been far too
supportive of militarism.

     You were criticized when you counseled Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky
scandal. Are you still in touch with Clinton?

    Yes, and very much in the way I was before: trying to be a faithful
follower of Jesus. I think it's the task of Christians to speak truth to
power.

     The president of the United States called upon me to help him and
nurture him into some kind of relationship with God. He obviously had
strayed away from what he knew was right, and he called me one day and said
can you help me?

     I don't know what you're supposed to say to that: "I'm sorry, but
evangelicals only pray with Republicans?"

     I was appalled that evangelical leaders wrote me nasty letters and said
you should have no time for this man after what he's done to this country,
to Monica Lewinsky, to his family. I can't understand that mentality. We're
talking about being the follower of a Jesus who would never turn his back on
any person seeking help.

     If you're an evangelical, you should believe that every person, no
matter how low or high, is capable of being converted, of repentance.

     If John Kerry or George W. Bush were to call you up and ask for your
guidance on issues facing America today, what would you tell each of them in
turn? 

    To Kerry, I think my major issue would be "Do you understand us? Do you
understand evangelicals and why we're so upset about the pro-life issue? Do
you understand why we believe all life is sacred?" I'd encourage him to do
justice and to do righteousness.

     To George Bush, I'd say "The God of scripture is a God who calls us to
protect the environment. I don't think your administration has done that
very well. The God of scripture calls us to be peacemakers. We follow a
Jesus who said those who live by the sword will die by the sword, who called
us to be agents of reconciliation."

     I would point out to George Bush that the Christ that he follows says
"blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy"-which doesn't go
along with capital punishment.

     I would say different things to each candidate, but I would respond
instantaneously to the invitation to speak to each of them. All the way to
the White House, I would be praying, "God, keep me from chickening out. Help
me to not be so overawed by the high office of these people that I fail to
recognize I answer to a higher authority."

  

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