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.

Tony Campolo

Categorized in : Religious Southern Radio

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.

Tony Campolo

glasses kids jesus

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.

Tony Campolo

church world jesus

There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed... There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor.

Tony Campolo

reaching scripture poor

Nothing is more dangerous than to live out the will of God in today's contemporary world. It changes your whole monetary lifestyle...Let me put it quite simply: If Jesus had $40,000 and knew about the kids who are suffering and dying in Haiti, what kind of car would he buy?

Tony Campolo

car kids jesus

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.

Tony Campolo

waiting discovery jesus

What we need to affirm is that Jesus is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Whenever we marry Jesus to a political party, we are committing the sin of idolatry. We are making Jesus into the image of our political party.

Tony Campolo

political party jesus

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.

Tony Campolo

spiritual mind facts

The gospel is not about... pie-in-the-sky when they die. ... It is imperative that the up and coming generation recognize that the biblical Jesus was committed to the realization of a new social order in this world.... Becoming a Christian, therefore, is a call to social action.

Tony Campolo

biblical christian jesus

Because I am not yet living up to what Jesus expects me to be in those red letters in the Bible, I always define myself as somebody who is saved by God's grace and is on his way to becoming a Christian. (...) Being saved is trusting in what Christ did for us, but being Christian is dependent on the way we respond to what he did for us.

Tony Campolo

grace christian jesus

A person is as young as their dreams and as old as their cynicism.

Tony Campolo

cynicism young dream

Let us preach Christ, let us be faithful to proclaiming the Gospel, but let's leave judgment in the hands of God.

Tony Campolo

faithful judgment hands

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?

Tony Campolo

inner-peace matter happiness

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.

Tony Campolo

issues biblical sick

Rise up, you suckers, and go out and do the work of Jesus!

Tony Campolo

sucker work jesus

Conservatives are people who worship at the graves of dead radicals. Stop to think about that. The people who started this country, George Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, these were not conservatives; these were the radicals of the time. In fact, conservatives always look back on people who they despised and make them into heroes. If you were to listen to the religious right today, they would make you believe that Martin Luther King was one of their flock. In reality, they hated him and did everything they could to destroy him.

Tony Campolo

religious kings country

The Bible makes clear a basic truth that we self-centered humans find difficult to accept, namely, that the natural universe was not created primarily for us. There is no doubt that God wants us to enjoy it and even use its resources to optimize a good life for ourselves. But the ultimate purpose of creation is worship. Nature and all living things were created to glorify God.

Tony Campolo

good-life self doubt

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

Tony Campolo

receiving grace blessing

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.

Tony Campolo

taken america jesus

Your past is important but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future.

Tony Campolo

important past moving

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

Tony Campolo

lasts giving people