Can Evangelicals who are liberal politically continue to affirm orthodox Christian teaching about marriage and sex?
Likely the tension will increase as two prominent voices, one a longtime social justice activist, the other a former Christianity Today editor, announced their affirmation of same sex couples.
“I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church,” declared a news release from 80 year old Tony Campolo, a longtime popular speaker, Democratic Party activist and sociology professor at Eastern University in Philadelphia.
Quickly responding to Campolo on Facebook was retired Christianity Today editor David Neff, who cheered: “God bless Tony Campolo. He is acting in good faith and is, I think, on the right track.”
Campolo’s stance was hardly surprising to anyone who’s followed his career, often aligned with Sojourners mobilizer Jim Wallis. Less predictable was the announcement from Neff, although he in recent years became more associated politically with the Evangelical Left.
A rambunctious and emotive stage speaker often prone more to rhetorical hyperbole than precision, Campolo argued for same sex couples based more on personal experience than theology or empirical data. For years he and his wife Peggy have publicly debated each other on homosexuality, as she touted the liberal stance and he ostensibly affirmed the traditional Christian position.
But it’s clear his heart was not in it. Campolo typically emphasized his distress over “homophobia,”as in his widely read 1993 book, Twenty Hot Potatoes Christians Are Afraid to Touch, always recalling the abuse and suicide of a homosexual classmate, while reluctantly admitting that Scripture and Christian tradition disapprove homosexual behavior.
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Comment by Namyriah on June 11, 2015 at 11:40 am
Has-been ex-evangelical ex-Christian looks in the mirror, realizes how old he is, still wants to be adored by college kids, so he adopts their free-wheeling attitude toward sexual sin.
Sad that someone can backslide in their old age.
Comment by Mark Brooks on June 11, 2015 at 2:55 pm
Unfortunately, professing Christians have always been there to confuse the unsaved. Oftentimes though, you will know their true gods before the end, by whom they seek to please. Whom is Campolo seeking to please? Not God, certainly.
Comment by pegetarian on June 12, 2015 at 3:17 pm
Read the Communist party goals for American published in 1963. It is sad to see how many of those goals they can mark as completed. Knowing the devil, in whatever form it manifests, will be key to defeating the devil.