Tony Campolo quotes

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

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

#Happiness #Inner Peace #Matter

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

#Biblical #Issues #Sick

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

#Jesus #Taken #America

I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages.
-- Tony Campolo

#Couple #Rights #Church

Relegating women to second-class citizenship was abolished when Jesus died on the cross.
-- Tony Campolo

#Jesus #Class #Citizenship

Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus? Would you follow him for the life, joy and fulfilment he gives you right now?
-- Tony Campolo

#Jesus #Giving #Joy

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

#Jesus #Church #World

But isn't it time for Christians to admit that we should reject bargains if they are gained by the exploitation of the poorest of the poor in developing countries?
-- Tony Campolo

#Christian #Country #Developing Countries

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

#Jesus #Kids #Glasses

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

#Scripture #Poor #Reaching

Jesus is the only Savior, but not everybody who is saved by Him is aware that He is the one who is doing the saving.
-- Tony Campolo

#Jesus #Saving #Savior

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

#Jesus #Party #Political

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

#Moving #Past #Important

Perhaps because our culture and politics have gone so off course, with values so contrary to those of Jesus, more and more people intuitively recognize that His vision of God's kingdom-a new world of compassion, justice, integrity and peace- is the Good News they've been searching and waiting for.
-- Tony Campolo

#Jesus #Integrity #Godly

That a new humanity will be brought forth from this Christ consciousness in each person.
-- Tony Campolo

#Humanity #Consciousness #Christ

But I contend that if we're providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn't we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States?
-- Tony Campolo

#Children #Men #Iraq

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

#Christian #Jesus #Differences

Lies and distortions can be spread, via the Internet, in an inexpensive way, and the effects are astounding.
-- Tony Campolo

#Lying #Way #Internet

Marriage should be viewed as an institution ordained by God and should be out of the control of the state.
-- Tony Campolo

#Institutions #States #Should

Perhaps we would do well to listen to the likes of Rabbi Harold Kushner, who contends that God is not really as powerful as we have claimed.
-- Tony Campolo

#Powerful #Likes #Rabbi

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

#Jesus #Order #Agents

If America is too arrogant, too prideful to repent, it's not the kind of country that God wants it to be.
-- Tony Campolo

#Country #America #Arrogant

I am looking for suggestions on what we can do about extremists within our own society. They cannot be ignored.
-- Tony Campolo

#Suggestions #Ignored #Extremist

Certain things happened in the early church. Women who had never had any freedom suddenly have the ability to stand up and speak and be treated as equals within the life of the church.
-- Tony Campolo

#Church #Speak #Certain

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

#Jesus #Discovery #Waiting

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

#Struggle #Gay #Your Side

I think it goes back to the fact that the evangelical community often does not have a biblical vision of God.
-- Tony Campolo

#Biblical #Thinking #Community

Because of the increase in life longevity, America can now assume that at any given time three, and perhaps four, former presidents will still be alive, even when the current president is occupying the White House.
-- Tony Campolo

#White #America #House

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

#Christian #Jesus #Names

And we've got to ask ourselves some very serious questions as to whether or not certain religious leaders, in terms of raising money - I hate to bring this up - are pushing hot buttons.
-- Tony Campolo

#Religious #Hate #Leader

But I think it's up to a local congregation to determine whether or not a marriage should be blessed of God. And it shouldn't be up to the government.
-- Tony Campolo

#Blessed #Thinking #Government

In the past, the Republican Party has depended on unified support at election time from Evangelical Christians. But times are changing!
-- Tony Campolo

#Christian #Party #Past

In short, I'm not sure that the abortion problem can be solved by legislation. I think it can only be solved through moral persuasion.
-- Tony Campolo

#Thinking #Abortion #Moral

Clinton's successor in the White House, George W. Bush, was committed to expanding government spending for faith-based initiatives.
-- Tony Campolo

#Government #White #House

To prevent discussion of any other explanations of human origins is hardly what I would expect from open-minded educators.
-- Tony Campolo

#Open Minded #Educator #Explanation

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

#Hands #Faithful #Judgment

I think the real place where most evangelicals have trouble with the Democratic Party is on the issue of abortion.
-- Tony Campolo

#Real #Party #Thinking

I don't doubt that God can bring good out of tragedies, but the Bible is clear that God is not the author of evil!
-- Tony Campolo

#Evil #Doubt #Tragedy