Lasting memories of Tony Campolo in Norfolk

Irrepressible American pastor, sociologist, theologian and social justice campaigner, Tony Campolo, has died at the age of 89. Keith Morris, who interviewed him twice in Norwich, pays tribute.

The first time I interviewed Tony was at the Living Water Festival at the Royal Norfolk Showground back in 2006.
 
He told me one of his best-known stories about why he once threw an impromptu birthday party for a bunch of prostitutes in a Hawaii cafe at 3.30am one morning. He told the story because he believes, like the agnostic cafe owner, that that is the sort of thing Jesus would have done.
 
"That is the kind of church that Jesus came to create," said Tony. "We have got this other kind of church that is half country club. Jesus had parties and feasts with publicans, sinners and harlots. That is what Jesus would have done and that is what he calls his church to do. To bring joy and celebration into the lives of people who have been put down and hurt, who have been shut out and lost. I think that is the real calling of the church.”
 
A professor of sociology at Eastern Christian university near Philadelphia, Tony not only preached his message all over the world, but he put it into practice as well.

As founder and president of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, he led a programme which has a network of some 80 small schools for slave children in Haiti.
 
Back in 2006, he also found time to write books and pastor a church. But all his many activities centred around one single objective. It was his overriding desire to share what Christ meant to him that took him into the classroom, onto the lecture circuit, into writing and onto American TV shows.
 
"I have something I am desperate to say and I will use every means possible to do it,"  Tony told me. "Jesus to me is a person. I feel him spiritually in my life transforming me into someone who cares about people who are in need.
 
"If you want to change the world you can either start a social movement or you can go the Jesus route which transforms individuals into caring people who become intensely concerned with meeting the needs of others. That is what I think the world needs more than anything else."
 
The second time I met Tony was ten years ago when Tony was in Norwich again, speaking to Norwich church pastors and at a CompassionUK event.
 
“You can change a child’s life, educationally, spiritually, vocationally for just £25 a month,” Tony told me. “Child sponsorship schemes like Compassion’s have proven to be the most effective way of helping people in the third world. 79% of the money you give ends up directly in the hands of the child.”
 
I asked Tony what is the biggest issue facing the church today? His answer surprised me:
 
“Consumerism,” he said. “We are being manipulated by the media into desperately wanting stuff that we don’t need. In the process we are working longer hours, even holding down two jobs simply to buy stuff that we don’t need; and people’s lives are getting consumed because they are manipulated by the media into thinking that they will be fulfilled human beings if they just have the resources that will enable them to buy the things that the media is telling them that they have to have.
 
“A lot of people say it is secularism. I am a sociologist, I can tell you for sure that it is consumerism.”
 
I also asked Tony for his view of the then current situation in the Middle East with ISIS?

“Christian people failed at a very crucial point. When the war was about to break out in Iraq they did not stand up and yell ‘no’.
 
“And I don’t think that we are going to get rid of that mess by killing terrorists any more than we are going to get rid of malaria by killing mosquitoes. To get rid of malaria you have to get rid of those swamps that breed mosquitoes. My Bible says that if your enemy hungers then you should feed them, if he is naked you clothe him, if he is sick you take care of him. If we spent a fraction of the money that we are spending on war on setting up schools and clinics and feeding programmes for the desperate people in those Middle East countries, or creating employment for them, we would not be in the mess that we are today.
 
“You only need half a brain to realize that every time that you kill a terrorist, you have created more terrorists. Because their family members are so angry with the USA and the UK that they are going to rise up and join a terrorist movement that they otherwise would not have joined.”

Tony also, more recently, co-founded the Red Letter Christians movement with Shaine Claiborne.

Tony's influence, and his stories, will live long in the memory.
 
Click here to read the full interview from 2014.
 
www.tonycampolo.org

Pictured above is Tony Campolo.

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