Some
christian leaders look up to Tony Campolo. What's even more scary is
that some christian youth pastors look up to him and consider Campolo
to be a mentor of theirs. I get nervous when I realize this. I know of
one youth pastor in particular who has made this statement, that Tony
Campolo was his mentor. I have heard this youth pastor reference
Campolo on more than one occasion while addressing the youth. How is a parent to know how much of Campolo's teachings are trickling down through their youth pastors to the teenagers as these teens attempt to learn true biblical doctrine through a trusted youth pastor?
If you're a parent or a teenager whose youth pastor mentions his admiration for Tony Campolo please take a look at some of these quotes of his and you let me know if you're comfortable with anyone looking up to Tony Campolo as a mentor or as a christian leader:
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"Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God, which seem at odds with their own spiritual traditions but have much in common with each other."
-Tony Campolo
(Page 149, Speaking My Mind)
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"I am saying that there is no salvation apart from Jesus; that's my evangelical mindset. However, I am not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians"
-Tony Campolo
(National Liberty Journal, 8/99)
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"...what can I say to an Islamic brother who has fed the hungry, and clothed the naked? You say, "But he hasn't a personal relationship with Christ." I would argue with that. And I would say from a Christian perspective, in as much as you did it to the least of these you did it unto Christ. You did have a personal relationship with Christ, you just didn't know it."
-Tony Campolo
EVANGELICALS AND INTERFAITH COOPERATION, An Interview by Shane Claiborne
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"We cannot allow our theologies to separate us" (speaking on the relations between Muslims and Christians)
-Tony Campolo
EVANGELICALS AND INTERFAITH COOPERATION, An Interview by Shane Claiborne
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"What can we learn about that kind of spirituality that can help us find common ground? No theological statements were made, no compromising beliefs, no attempts to come to a common denominator. And yet, a kind of spiritual oneness.
That's the place where we come together, in common need and common suffering, as we reach out to one another in love, leaving judgment in the hands of God, sharing out of our own faith. I mean the last thing we are asking in those times is—is your theology the same as mine?—and vice-versa. All of the sudden in the hour of suffering there is a commonality. And that's where we meet. It's in mystical spirituality and in communal mutuality that's where we come together."
-Tony Campolo
EVANGELICALS AND INTERFAITH COOPERATION, An Interview by Shane Claiborne
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"It seems to me that when we listen to the Muslim mystics as they talk about Jesus and their love for Jesus, I must say, it's a lot closer to New Testament Christianity than a lot of the Christians that I hear. In other words if we are looking for common ground, can we find it in mystical spirituality, even if we cannot theologically agree, Can we pray together in such a way that we connect with a God that transcends our theological differences?"
-Tony Campolo
EVANGELICALS AND INTERFAITH COOPERATION, An Interview by Shane Claiborne
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""Beyond these models of reconciliation, a theology of mysticism provides some hope for common ground between Christianity and Islam. Both religions have within their histories examples of ecstatic union with God ... I do not know what to make of the Muslim mystics, especially those who have come to be known as the Sufis. What do they experience in their mystical experiences? Could they have encountered the same God we do in our Christian mysticism?"
-Tony Campolo
"Speaking My Mind", pages 149-150
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"Jesus is the only Savior, but not everybody who is being saved by Him is aware that He is the one who is doing the saving"
-Tony Campolo
EP News Service, Oct. 4, 1985
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"...during times of reflection I sensed that believing in Jesus and living out His teachings just wasn't enough. There was a yearning for something more, and I found that I was increasingly spiritually gratified as I adopted older ways of praying--ways that have largely been ignored by those of us in the Protestant tradition. Counter-Reformation saints like Ignatius of Loyola have become important sources of help as I have begun to learn from them modes of contemplative prayer. I practice what is known as "centering prayer," in which a sacred word is repeated as a way to be in God's presence."
-Tony Campolo
"Mystical Encounters for Christians"
www.beliefnet.com
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"I've got to push everything out of mind save the name of Jesus. I say His name over and over again, for as long as fifteen minutes, until I find my soul suspended in what the ancient Celtic Christians called a "thin place"--a state where the boundary between heaven and earth, divine and human, dissolves. You could say that I use the name of Jesus as my koan."
-Tony Campolo
"Mystical Encounters for Christians"
www.beliefnet.com
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"Today, some of the most spiritual people I know claim to be without religion."
-Tony Campolo
"Mystical Encounters for Christians"
www.beliefnet.com
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"He saved us in order that He might begin to transform His world into the kind of world that He willed for it to be when He created it. … When Jesus saved us, He saved us to be agents of a great revolution, the end of which will come when the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our God”
-Tony Campolo
"It's Friday but Sundays Coming", page 106
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"Our call is to be God’s agents, to rescue not only the human race but the whole of creation.”
-Tony Campolo
TEAR TIMES, “Why care for creation?” 1992
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"...Isn’t God’s message to sinful humanity that He sees in each of us a divine nature of such worth that He sacrificed His own Son so that our divine potentialities might be realized? ... The hymn writer who taught us to sing “Amazing Grace” was all too ready to call himself a “wretch” ... Forgetting our divinity and over-identifying with our [Freudian] anal humanity... Erich Fromm, one of the most popular psychoanalysts of our time, recognized the diabolical social consequences that can come about when a person loses sight of his/her own divinity ...”
-Tony Campolo
"Partly Right" 1995
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“What I am trying to say is that Jesus who incarnated God 2,000 years ago is mystically present and waiting to be discovered in EVERY person you and I encounter”
-Tony Campolo
"A Reasonable Faith" 1983 page 171
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“I do not mean that others represent Jesus for us. I mean that Jesus actually is present in each other person."
-Tony Campolo
"A Reasonable Faith" 1983 page 192
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“That a new humanity will be brought forth from this Christ consciousness in each person."
-Tony Campolo
"A Reasonable Faith" 1983 page 65
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“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
an address at Prestatyn in the UK, 1988
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“There is a feminine side of God. I always knew this ... It is this feminine side of God I find in Jesus that makes me want to sing duets with Him ... Not only do I love the feminine is Jesus, but the more I know Jesus, the more I realize that Jesus loves the feminine in me. Until I accept the feminine in my humanness, there will be a part of me that cannot receive the Lord's love. ... There is that feminine side of me that must be recovered and strengthened if I am to be like Christ ... And until I feel the feminine in Jesus, there is a part of Him which I cannot identify.”
-Tony Campolo
"Carpe Diem: Seize the Day", 1994, pages 85-88
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"going to heaven is like going to Philadelphia....There are many ways....It doesn't make any difference how we go there. We all end up in the same place."
-Tony Campolo
"Carpe Diem: Seize the Day", 1994, pages 85-88
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"Anyone who resists the notion of women preachers is functioning as a tool of the devil."
-Tony Campolo
opening session of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship's general assembly June 26, 2003
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"When in fact we live in a society that makes life hell for gays and lesbians, this community has got to stand up and say, 'We're on your side as you struggle for dignity,' and, 'Yes, we will defy anybody who says otherwise, even if we have to go to Disneyland to prove it.'"
-Tony Campolo
"Campolo: Opposition to women preachers evidence of demonic influence"
Jun 27, 2003, By Gregory Tomlin,Baptist Press
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"I have already made the point that we need to have to win people to Jesus Christ, but we must also preach the whole Gospel which not only calls people to love Jesus but to bring His justice into the political and economic arena in which we live."
-Tony Campolo
"Campolo: Opposition to women preachers evidence of demonic influence"
Jun 27, 2003, By Gregory Tomlin,Baptist Press
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"On the other hand, we are hard-pressed to find any biblical basis for condemning deep love commitments between homosexual Christians, as long as those commitments are not expressed in sexual intercourse."
-Tony Campolo
"20 Hot Potatoes Christians Are Afraid To Touch", page 117
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"One of the meanest arguments against public schools comes from alarmists who contend that public school students can be forced to study under homosexuals and might even be subjected to homosexual seduction. This contention makes me furious - not because I believe there are no homosexuals in the public school system, but because of the implication that homosexuals are some kind of special threat to children."
-Tony Campolo
"20 Hot Potatoes Christians Are Afraid To Touch", page 84
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"I'm not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians."
-Tony Campolo
Charlie Rose show on January 24, 1997
----WOW! If you need more, I'm sure I can find more but I believe this ought to be plenty to convince any true christian to avoid Tony Campolo at all costs. How can a christian hold up Tony Campolo as a mentor with comments like these, especially someone who is involved in teaching the youth?
