He wound them up with stories about what God is doing in the world, then he hit them hard about the need for conversion to Christ. He called on people to repent of their sin. He had them eating out of his hand. If he had had an altar call, I predicted half of the priests would have given their lives to Christ. That was Tony.

In other venues, he did not hesitate to call people to make commitments to Christ and then called on them to make a commitment to do kingdom work as a sign of their new found faith.

He always kept the balance. Tony loved Jesus and it showed. He conveyed that love to his listeners and called for compassion for the lost, lonely and dispossessed. He demanded, in Wesleyan terms, that new Christians make a tangible response in works of supererogation.

He never confused America with the Kingdom of God and he travelled enough to know that God also loved Haitians and minorities as much as he loved Americans.

Tony was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.

He believed the rich should give to the poor and the churches should pour more into helping the poor in their localities and not focus on the rich who paid the churches' bills.

He could out preach Billy Graham, but never gained his national exposure, recognition or public acceptance. Tony always believed that an evangelist had to go beyond getting people saved and joining a local church; the gospel demanded action, the gospel demanded that a saved person had to show it by doing the works of God. The gospel meant reaching out to the least of these. In the words of the epistle of James, "faith without works is dead."

Tony never embraced God, flag and country Christianity. He repudiated the Religious Right and those who equated the Kingdom of God with right wing politics and he paid a price for that. It cost him dearly among many evangelicals. While he was popular in some circles he was very unpopular in other arenas.

He once described a bus trip he took with Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and other members of the Religious Right, promoting their books and he said he felt like a black man pushed to the back of the bus.

He was always uncomfortable around the rich and at home with the poor and dispossessed. He was probably the closest to being Evangelical's version of Mother Teresa. Tony was a diehard Baptist. He belonged to the ABCUSA, a broadly liberal Baptist denomination in contrast to the Southern Baptist Convention that was solidly evangelical. Tony could claim the SBC's evangelical heritage, but his political views were decidedly to the left of center. He was close friends with another Eastern University professor, Dr. Ron Sider, where Tony taught, whose theology and books like Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger brought the two men together. They have been close friends for several decades. Other left of center evangelicals included Tom Sine and Jim Wallis, the latter is a close friend of president Barack Obama.

But a dark cloud sadly and suddenly over shadowed the fierce evangelist.

The eruption of homosexuality as a culture war issue took the Church and nation by storm.

In time, it became a church, nation and world dividing issue, becoming the biggest propaganda war in American cultural history grabbing the imagination through television shows and big name homosexuals trying to humanize sodomy, even as morgues filled with men dying of AIDS...now well over 300,000. The propaganda war by pansexualists persuaded not only church leaders but a sitting US president to come out, declaring their hand for inclusion while voices of disapproval were met with fierce cries of homophobia and hate filling the air. Name calling and finger pointing became the order of the day at anyone who dared raise their heads over the sexual ramparts and say the behavior did not have God's approval and spiritual death awaited those who rejected the Bible's proscription of sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

But mainline denominations began to roll over, buying into sodomy as they heard the cries of homosexuals and lesbians demanding the church accept them for who they are, eschewing celibacy, change and reparative therapy as unacceptable. Foremost among those denominations who were quick to roll over was The Episcopal Church, a church already experiencing major decline and would now, in time, see the church locked in spiritual warfare resulting in schism over the issue, forcing the worldwide Anglican Communion to declare the mostly Western Church to be sexually apostate.

Peggy Campolo, Tony's wife, rolled over first and said clearly and without any conditions that being LGBT was perfectly normal, perfectly healthy, perfectly acceptable, and perfectly compatible with Christianity. Not only that, LGBT Christians were blessed, important, integral members of the Christian community. Homosexuals had something to offer.

Tony disagreed. He remained "somewhat ambiguous" on the morality of homosexuality and held out that while homosexuals were being discriminated against, he still said the behavior was eschewed by scripture and he could not go all the way with his wife. They debated their points of view publicly, but I always felt that even in these debates Tony was soft and he seemed unconvinced by his own position and stance.

Then, in June of 2015, Tony, who had famously disagreed with his wife about homosexuality, announced he now supported the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the church. "It has taken countless hours of prayer, study, conversation and emotional turmoil to bring me to the place where I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the church," he said.

The die had been cast.

Theology was never Tony's strong suit. He was by education a sociologist and by birth a typical Philly Italian; he bled with those who bled and he felt the pain of any minority who crossed his path. He embraced homosexuals because he felt their pain of ostracism and he believed they needed to be included. He was the purest thing to an emotional Christian with a brain that I ever knew. He was easy to love because he loved you right back. You could never hate him however much you might disagree with him.

But Tony had turned. He confirmed his feelings and theology recently in England, where he spoke on Premier Christian Radio in the UK opining that "Suicide is the second major cause of death among teenagers in America, second only to automobile accidents. Almost three-quarters of those suicides are by Christian young people who cannot reconcile their sexual orientation with what they're hearing from the pulpit. I don't know what the Church is about, but if it's about driving kids to suicide it's not doing the right thing."

Campolo never cited the source of his statistics or explained their significance more fully. Suicide is increasing among teenagers in Western countries. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta noted that suicide is a serious public health problem, and for youth aged between the ages of 10 and 24, suicide is the third leading cause of death. It results in approximately 4600 lives lost each year. But more young people survive suicide attempts than actually die, noted the CDC.

Several factors can put a young person at risk for suicide. However, having these risk factors does not always mean that suicide will occur, says the CDC.

The risk factors are:
History of previous suicide attempts
Family history of suicide
History of depression or other mental illness
Alcohol or drug abuse
Stressful life event or loss
Easy access to lethal methods
Exposure to the suicidal behavior of others
Incarceration

None of them included Christian young people who cannot reconcile their orientation with church teaching. Campolo dogmatically tried to blame the historic teaching of the Church for these suicides!

UK journalist Julian Mann said, "It is sadly possible that in some cases vulnerable young people in churches are being failed by aggressive polemical preaching on sexual morals cut off from Christian ethics' spiritual roots in the saving gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the lack of loving pastoral care. But Tony Campolo's argument, taken to its logical conclusion, surely could be used to blame the Church for taking a clear moral stand on any matter against the inclinations of individuals."

"Although the interviewer did put it to Campolo that conservative Christians would argue that 'in the same way that you or I would have sinful desires, we would resist those', why was he not asked how he would respond if a young Trump supporter were to commit suicide because, reportedly, they felt they were not being affirmed by Clinton-supporting preachers like him?

"He said that young homosexual Christians were committing suicide in droves because they felt unaccepted by parents and their churches. With no evidence or source to prove his statement, he boldly stated that these suicides could have been prevented if they had just been accepted for who they are without fear and judgement from either god or man."

In a moment he had rubbished 2000 years of biblical and church teaching. He had rejected the ontological understanding of human sexuality and said that the sexuality was no longer an order of creation. He had rolled over.

It has become one of the saddest days of my life to see an old and dear friend capitulate before a handful of strident pansexualists. His emotional soul had over ridden Scripture's call for sound teaching on sexuality.

Later, his son Bart and his wife would renounce the faith saying they were no longer Christians and would now identify as humanists, continuing good works in San Diego, but without God. A broken hearted Campolo said he was sad by their rejection of the faith because they were no longer part of "my tribe." The faith once delivered is beyond tribalism, but I have no doubt the pain must have been very deep as it was hoped that Bart would follow in his father's footsteps as Franklin Graham had followed in his father's celebrated footsteps. Now it will never happen.

In different ways father and son had compromised the faith and now all that remains to be seen is what Tony's legacy will be. How will history treat him?

I doubt it will be good. America is deeply polarized and the American evangelical left is in major decline, and fast disappearing.

Tony gave the closing prayer at the recent Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia, but he looked sad and tired. I wondered what he was really thinking as he strode from the platform.

From his lofty height as President Bill Clinton's pastor to preaching in small independent evangelical churches, Tony Campolo has cut a swathe across American evangelicalism playing a leading role as a major figure in left wing evangelicalism in the last half of the Twentieth Century and the beginning of the 21st.

I hope and pray that history will treat him kindly. He kept the evangelical faith alive and spread the message of Christ to all who would listen. I hope he will be forgiven for his misplaced compassion for a group of people whose only message and behavior has caused the destruction of so much and so many. May God have mercy.

END