I was in 7th grade the first time I ever heard of Tony Campolo. Our Sunday school teacher played a cassette of Tony Campolo after repeatedly telling us that he is “so funny!” Well, Tony Campolo may be an entertaining speaker to an adult, but certainly not to a 7th grader.

I got to hear Campolo as an adult this weekend at the National Youth Workers Convention (though I was still only 33 on Friday afternoon!) and he was definitely engaging. The title of his seminar was “Becoming Red-Letter Christians.”

The label, “Red-Letter Christians,” he said, came from a DJ on a radio station who used that expression to refer to people like Campolo and Jim Wallis–people whose life-hermeneutic is based on the words of Jesus, the red letters in many Bibles. Red-letter Christians, Campolo said, interpret the rest of the Bible through the words of Jesus.

In his lecture, he covered a pretty wide range of social issues: poverty, abortion, gay marriage, war, torture, and the Israel/Palestine issue. The two subjects that really stimulated my thinking were abortion and gay marriage. I’ll try to summarize briefly what he said about each of these.

Abortion

Campolo’s argument was that simply making abortion illegal will not in itself eliminate abortion. While he didn’t cite a source for this, he said that there were just as many abortions being performed in the 1950’s as there are today–even though it was illegal back then.

The problem, he said, is primarily economic. He gave us this scenario…

A young girl is pregnant (”And don’t tell me she shouldn’t be pregnant in the first place,” he said. “She’s pregnant!”). She lives in inner-city Philadelphia and her family is among the working poor (those who earn enough money to be just above the poverty-line, effectively excluding them from any state assistance). If she has this baby it will cost at least $2000 at the hospital. This is money that her family doesn’t have. In addition, she’ll most likely have to get childcare for the baby, which will cost her at least $10 per day, or $200 per month. Again, this is money the family doesn’t have.

For a family in this situation, the only way to stay afloat financially is to end the pregnancy.

This, Campolo said, is the problem. We can legislate against abortion all we want, but people living with these conditions will do what they must in order to survive even if it’s illegal. “And we think,” Campolo said, “that putting this girl in jail is the right thing to do!”

Gay Marriage

This is an issue that I’ve been struggling with for some time. I’m conservative in my view of gay marriage. However, the culture is clearly moving toward the legitimization of gay marriage. I don’t think it’s effective for the church to fight against this, because in so doing we damage our credibility with those to whom we are trying to minister. That said, I think that within the next 10-20 years gay marriage will be a reality in our culture.

The question I ask myself is this: “How can we authentically be the church in a society in which gay marriage is a reality?”

Campolo said that he, too, is conservative in his view of marriage. Marriage, he believes, is a sacred gift for a man and a woman. He said that he does not believe that the government should legitimate gay marriage. However, he also said that he does not believe that the government should legitimate heterosexual marriage.

He said that any two people should be able to go to a courthouse and enter into a legal contract with one another and be able to enjoy all the rights and privileges that go along with being bound by a legal contract. This is not marriage. It’s a contract.

If those two people wish to get married, they should then go to a church (or other religious institution, I suppose) where they can be united in marriage.

Campolo added, “Some of you will say, ‘But wait! Won’t they be able to go to a church that will marry them?’ Yes, they probably will.”

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As to abortion, Campolo’s insights helped me to get a better understanding of what’s really going on. If we’re to help mothers bring their unborn children into the world, then we need to deal with the economic issues that are at the root of a big chunk of the problem.

I’m not sure yet if I completely embrace his solution for the gay marriage issue. But I do like his distinction between a legal contract and marriage. The challenge for us as Christians if (and probably when) gay marriage becomes a reality will be to figure out how to maintain our integrity and our convictions without becoming judgmental and exclusionary. How will we be like Jesus, who was neither neither of those?

Finally, I want to share a brief quote from this seminar that I thought was pretty funny. In regard to the mixing of politics and Christianity (in terms of Christians taking office and using their political power to impose their religious beliefs), Campolo said, “Mixing Christianity and politics is like mixing ice cream and manure–it’s not the manure that’s gonna get messed up!”