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By Steve Weatherbe
AMERICAN evangelical and international development
advocate Tony Campolo showed a church full of Victoria Christians
that he still knows, at 70 years of age, how to provoke an audience. He
lived up to his reputation for shooting from the hip.
“Tony’s a universe disturber,”
acknowledged Ron Michalski, pastor of Glad Tidings Church – whose
capacious sanctuary hosted an audience of 750 – 800 people, drawn
from a spectrum of area city congregations to Campolo’s January 29
talk on ‘Global justice: What can we do?’
Campolo cited the City of Victoria’s ongoing (and
so far unsuccessful) legal efforts to prevent homeless people from camping
in downtown city parks, and declared that some of the city’s churches
had missed a golden opportunity to minister.
 | | Tony Campolo |
“The churches could have said, ‘You
don’t have to sleep in the park; you can sleep in our churches.
Someone ought to be doing something besides the Salvation Army,” he
told BC Christian News. “Sure they’ll steal stuff. You have to be prepared
for that. But when you take in the poor, you take in Jesus.”
Campolo drew on his Anabaptist roots to criticize
Christians who attempt to take over governments. Christians should speak to power, not assume power, he contended.
Campolo cited the tempting of Christ by Satan to show that “Jesus
resisted the assumption of power.”
Campolo told BCCN the conduct of some churches during the U.S. election
was a particularly obvious example of what he was condemning.
“Churches told people who to vote for. They threatened
politicians.” He also cited the Crusades and religious wars to argue
that religion had no place in politics.
At the same time, Campolo explained that his own
involvement with the Obama-Biden campaign was an example of how Christians
who practice sacrificial love can ‘speak to power’
authoritatively.
His own ministry to inner city youth around the world,
and that of other Christian pastors, had earned them the ear of Democratic
leaders, he said. As a result, they were able to get placed into the
Democratic Party platform “a commitment to reduce the number of
abortions “ by addressing economic drivers behind abortion.
“Seventy percent of abortions are driven by
economic forces,” he told BCCN, adding that an adequate public health plan would go a long
way towards reducing abortion.
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Moreover, those same Christian leaders who had proved
themselves with sacrificial activity in inner American cities had also
managed to get into the Democratic Party platform a commitment to
promote sex education in schools with an emphasis on abstinence.
Applying his thesis to Third World poverty and justice,
he said churches should direct their support to microeconomic projects.
Governments, on the contrary, prefer to send aid to large organizations
because this is “so much easier to administer and
supervise” – though its impact is minimal.
Wealthy governments also tie their aid to conditions:
the recipient must spend a large proportion of it on goods and services in
the donor country.
With some countries, much of the aid is military; in
the case of the U.S., said Campolo, it is more than half. “It’s
a farce,” he asserted.
Campolo started a graduate program at Eastern
University that trains non-profit organization leaders in microeconomics.
Over the last 15 years, a related organization,
Opportunities International, has created three and a half million
jobs through small scale projects. According to Campolo, at the rate it is
proceeding it could make a dent as big as 10 percent in Third World
poverty.
Campolo’s sponsor for the night was World Vision.
He urged his listeners to take a first step to end world poverty by
supporting a Third World child and family through a $35 monthly payment.
More than 40 in the audience did so.
March 2009
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