Quotes from Tony Campolo

I don't know of many evangelicals who want to deny gay couples their legal rights. However, most of us don't want to call it marriage, because we think that word has religious connotations, and we're not ready to see it used in ways that offend us.

It is hard to say what the future holds, but this is probable - it won't be just like the past.

President Bush once said that marriage is a sacred institution and should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman. If this is the case - and most Americans would agree with him on this - then I have to ask: Why is the government at all involved in marrying people?

After-school tutoring programs, care for the elderly, shelters for the homeless, disaster relief work, and a variety of other services would all benefit from government funding.

Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states.

I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.

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.

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.

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.

Because I am not yet living up to what Jesus expects me to be in those red letters in the Bible, I always define myself as somebody who is saved by God's grace and is on his way to becoming a Christian. (...) Being saved is trusting in what Christ did for us, but being Christian is dependent on the way we respond to what he did for us.

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

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?