World Church: Campolo Critiques, Challenges at Adventists-in-the-Community Conference

Silver Spring, Maryland, United States …. [Jonathan Gallagher/ANN]

Noted author and speaker Dr. Tony Campolo critiqued and challenged his audience at the October 14 opening of the first International Conference on Adventists in the Community. Basing his comments on Biblical passages, Campolo spoke with conviction on the crucial necessity for Christians to be very much involved in society. At times controversial, at times pastoral, Campolo urged practical action in community.

Using the Biblical theme of the jubilee, a time of restoration, Campolo spoke eloquently on the desperate need to cancel third-world debt.

“It’s time for us to become a jubilee people and cancel this debt,” he said.

“Seventh-day Adventists must become part of the campaign. How can we preach good news to the poor if we continue to oppress with these debts?” He pointed out that 67 cents of every dollar of taxes collected in Ecuador goes to just paying off interest on their international debt, while in Africa collectively the amount is 40 cents on the dollar. You can’t love God without loving the poor,” he continued, adding that “if you reject the poor, you reject Jesus.”

Illustrating the need to help those in prison with a practical story of a Harvard-qualified lawyer working for those on death row, Campolo asked “How can any Christian believe in capital punishment? Jesus said ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’ If you say ‘an eye for an eye,’ Jesus says that’s the old law, and he gives a new commandment–love your enemies, do good to them who hate you, overcome evil with good.” He wondered what would happen “if we lose our capacity to become merciful,” especially as in the case of capital punishment where “there’s one form of justice for one kind of people, and another for another kind of people,” referring to the racial inequity among those executed.

Campolo addressed another politically-sensitive area in his condemnation of support for the tobacco industry. “The Adventist church has done a good job in helping people give up smoking,” he commented, “Over 400,000 Americans die every year from smoking, and two million die from American cigarettes around the world.” He criticized politicians who accepted money from the tobacco industry for their campaigns.

Alluding to the issues of abortion and homosexuality, Campolo noted that even though important, Jesus did not place these on his “top ten hit list.” Rather, “Jesus condemned those who condemned others,” such as the woman taken in adultery. It’s the way we treat others, Campolo stated, in the words of Jesus “inasmuch as you have done this to the least of these my brethren you have done it unto me.”

“I worry about Seventh-day Adventists–you’re all getting rich,”

Campolo observed, saying it wasn’t enough to say you paid tithe. “You don’t sing ‘one-tenth to Jesus I surrender …’ ” He added that “the church is scandalized by the way we spend the money.”

Campolo concluded by asking what people wanted–titles on their tombstones or testimonies from the living. The real challenge for the church, as Campolo noted in the words of G. K. Chesterton, is that “the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

Campolo is professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University in Pennsylvania; founder and president of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education; and the author of 32 books.