Tony Campolo was a real one

For many years, a living reminder

 Tony Campolo died yesterday.  When people find out that I went to Eastern Seminary, they often say, “Isn’t that where Tony Campolo taught?  Did you have any classes with him?” Some admired him; some people in my current Wesleyan circles believe that he was too theologically and politically progressive.  I tell them that Campolo was a sociology professor who taught at Eastern University, and that the seminary was a separate program and (in those days) on an entirely different campus—and so no, I never had him for a class, nor did I see him on campus more than a time or two.  This predictably disappoints and relieves my questioner all at once.

Here’s the thing I will always appreciate about Tony though: he always wanted us to remember that the way we do church can have tremendous collateral damage.  There are people, real people made in the image of God, that we reduce to categories and caricatures so that we can feel comfortable diagnosing the world the way that we do.  He reminded us that while churches debate “the problem of poverty,” the poor are real people—people whose circumstances have gifted them a unique insight to the character of God, an insight that many of my wealthy students desperately need but cannot see because they have an emotional need to justify their wealth.  While people debate the concept of racism, Tony reminded us that racism impacts real people: that generational courses have been started by inequality, and an unwillingness to talk about this is essentially ensuring those inequalities remain into the future.

Most famously in recent years (infamously in my theological circles), Tony became fully affirming of same-sex sexual relationships.  Well before this decisive move on this issue, Tony reminded us that gay people are people, and that too often churches’ perspective on these questions do not really understand the human realities at stake.  Tony’s ministry posed challenging questions:

·         In what ways are we really working to understand what a person with same-sex attraction experiences?

·         What is the positive vision of God for this person?

·         How much of our public messaging about this issue is really about sharing this positive vision?

·         How committed are we as a congregation to helping this person realize this vision?  Are we willing to deal with uncomfortable realities and questions for the joy that comes with having this person as part of our fellowship?

·         Or are we simply committing to preserving our purity as a congregation and protecting long-time Christians from feeling resentment because they had to encounter someone who is different and challenging?

I often wonder if his full affirmation of these relationships was not born out of genuine theological conviction, but out of years of evidence that hardly anyone was really going to do this hard and holy work.  I don’t know that, of course, and I hope to ask him one day.

I’m certainly not a carbon copy of Tony Campolo.  I never had a class with Tony.  I don’t have his pugnacious spirit, and I can’t in good conscience affirm all that he has.  The story everyone is sharing in his obituaries—the way he would go to Christian college chapels and say something like “Millions of people around the world don’t have s*** to eat, and you’re more concerned that I said s*** than that reality”—that’s not how I roll, rhetorically speaking.  If I tried that, people would know that was a weak attention grab because I’m not hard like that; but Tony was a real one, and when he said it, we all pondered our misplaced priorities.

But those who know me know that there’s a family resemblance here, and that at my best I aspire to the same things as Tony—to become what Henri Nouwen called a “living reminder” of the things of God, even when that reminder is a challenge.  Tony always reminded us that whatever we’re talking about, “those people” we’re discussing are real people, made in the image of God, dearly loved beyond the thin human bonds that hold us together.  Jesus sees all people and loves them, and when we want to extend Jesus’ ministry to them, we also have to see them, be accountable to them and love them even as we seek to be led into all truth and to guide others there as well.