'Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked'

[maplesyrup]

'Evangelical Christianity Has Been Hijacked': An Interview with Tony Campolo

    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 women’s 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. We’re evangelicals but we want to respect Islam. We don’t want to call its prophet evil. We don’t 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 don’t seem to be very supportive of concerns for the poor, concerns for trade relations, for canceling Third World debts.

    In short, there’s 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 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. The Republican Party needs to be called into accountability even as the Democratic Party needs to be called into accountability. So it’s that double-edged sword that I’m trying to wield.

Anyone here heard of Tony Campolo? Anyway , he is raising what I consider to be an interesting point.

Quite frankly I have been stunned by what I consider to be the hijacking of evangelical Christians by the right wing politicians.

[Neal.F.]

Tony Campolo is a notorious liberal, who is on the wrong (left) side of just about everything, but I do know this, he does legitimately love Jesus, and shares the Gospel at every possible opporttunity. If you meet him, he'll have his new testament out, and give you the plan of salvation.

Even though he is politically liberal, anti-Christian bigots will hate him anyway.

HE has suggested that Christians take a page out of the Latter Day Saints playbook and require a mandatory two year service in the Mission field.