What a rhetorical coup. By saying it that way the speaker reminded us that we are in a story. We are in a wider context. Black lives have been devalued and thus we need course correction. It isn’t about demeaning other lives. 

Similarly, Christians are in a story in which we’ve often ignored the teaching of Jesus. As the towering theologian Karl Barth put it (echoing German reformer Melanchthon), Christians prefer the benefits of Christ to Christ himself (The Humanity of God, 24). The burden of Bible scholar NT Wright’s book How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels is how Christians distill the person of Jesus into a doctrine and ignore the Jesus found in the gospels. 

A movement founded by activist Shane Claiborne and professor Tony Campolo addresses this problem with its provocative title, “Red Letter Christians.” Red Letter Christians (RLC) is an organization that “mobilizes individuals into a movement of believers who live out Jesus’ counter-cultural teachings.” They do this by paying special attention to the words of Jesus, words that in some Bibles, are in red. 

Joel Looper (Ph.D, Aberdeen), a respected acquaintance, invited me to respond to his article entitled The logical —and theological—problem with Red Letter Christians. (His article is just the latest in a number of anti-RLC articles such as this one by the Gospel Coalition and this one in Christianity Today.) Looper’s primary concern is that RLC ignores the rest of the Bible and thus lacks the necessary context to understand the words of Jesus. He writes that when we don’t understand the words of Jesus, we re-make Jesus into our own image.

In response to Looper, I must admit that my analogy with BLM isn’t perfect. “Black Lives Matter,” while provocative, doesn’t logically exclude the possibility that other lives might matter too. “Red Letter Christians,” however, seems to at least marginalize, if not completely exclude, the rest of scripture. From this, two questions emerge. First, is it legitimate to prioritize the words of Jesus over the other words of scripture? Secondly, do Red Letter Christians simply prioritize the words of Jesus, or do they ignore the rest of scripture altogether?

To answer the first question, I answer a hearty “Yes!” It is important to see all of scripture through the lens of Jesus and to prioritize Jesus’ words and witness. I grew up in a context in which all scripture was seen as “flat” or as equally inspired. Theoretically at least, a verse from Leviticus had as much weight as a command from Jesus. This kind of Bible reading has dangerous consequences. I think of the Jabez prayer rage that happened years ago in Christian circles. Jabez prays a short prayer in 1 Chronicles 4:10 that God bless him and enlarge his territory. A book, The Prayer of Jabez, promoted the prayer and sold nine million copies.  

If we continue reading in 1 Chronicles 4, we learn that the Israelites find good pasture land and exterminate its inhabitants so that they can enlarge their territory. Apparently, the prayer has been answered, and reading it in context seems to indicate that the sacrifice of others was God-ordained.

It is easy to imagine Christian colonialists using such a passage to justify the extermination of native peoples. The necessary guard against this is to interpret all of scripture through Jesus and his words “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you” (Matt 7:12). 

READ: New Name, Same Mission

In an article written by Campolo that Looper quotes, Why Christians Don’t Like Jesus, Campolo explains that Christians often want retribution, a God who will bless their wars, a God that only requires 10% of us, a God who ensures our superiority. In the span and sprawl of the Bible narrative, Christians can find verses to justify almost anything. This is why Christians need to interpret everything through the demanding, merciful, and loving words of Jesus. Ironically, Campolo has the same worry as Looper—that we will remake God into our own image. Only, Campolo believes that this happens when we don’t see all of scripture through Christ.  

This begins to answer the second question: do Red Letter Christians simply see Jesus’ words as more important, or do they see them as the only authoritative words in scripture? Looper, careful writer that he is, begins by making the modest claim that RLC “rank the words of Jesus . . . as more important than the rest of scripture . . .” Later, however, Looper suggests that RLC don’t just see Jesus’ words as more important, but that RLC “ignore” and “tacitly reject” the rest of scripture. Is this the case?

It isn’t what Campolo and Claiborne claim to be doing. It is worth quoting at length from the book, Red Letter Revolution, which they co-authored:

Not only do we say that the red letters are superior to the black letters of the Bible, but Jesus said they were! Jesus, over and over again in the Sermon on the Mount, declared that some of the things that Moses taught about such things as divorce, adultery, killing getting even with those who hurt you, and the use of money had to be transcended by a higher morality.

When Jesus said he was giving us new commandments, I [Campolo is writing here] believe they really were new commandments. They certainly went beyond the morality prescribed in the black letters that we read in the Pentateuch. Furthermore, we don’t think you can really understand what the black letters in the Bible are telling you until you first come to know the Jesus revealed in the red letters. This in no way diminishes the importance of those black letters; we believe that the Holy Spirit directed the writers of Scripture so that all of Scripture was inspired by God. (Red Letter Revolution, p. 5). 

Looper devotes much of his article to the danger of disregarding eyewitness testimony and the other writers of scripture. He rightly notes that the eyewitnesses/New Testament writers had the best understanding of the language Jesus was speaking, knew the context, and had access to words from Jesus that we don’t have.

It doesn’t follow, however, that those who especially treasure the words of Jesus disregard the testimony of the eyewitnesses and the New Testament writers. Red Letter Christians should know that they are dependent on the first eyewitnesses for the words of Jesus. In order to best understand the red letters, Red Letter Christians need to pay attention to the context in which the eyewitness place Jesus’ words, the early Christians’ commentary on Jesus’ words, and the acts of Jesus in which the words are embedded. Red Letter Christians should be the biggest fans of the early writers and eyewitnesses.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t the occasional literalist in progressive circles— who, in a new Marcionite enthusiasm—would take the shears to all but Jesus’ words. But that isn’t what Campolo and Claiborne are doing, in my opinion. Pick up any of their books and their respect for all of scripture is evident. And, while I’m not familiar with all of them, I suspect this is true for those in the RLC “leaders’ network.” 

Why does RLC prompt this concern in Looper and others? Certainly, the name is provocative, and for anyone concerned with scriptural authority, it is understandable that it might prompt questions. Beyond that however, Looper writes that he is uneasy the RLC will “downplay, ignore, or even oppose” the evangelical and Catholic church teachings on the issues of abortion and gay marriage. 

There are two important responses to this: a) focusing the words of Jesus doesn’t mean that a person will necessarily “oppose” the evangelical and Catholics stances on these issues, and b) he is right that an RLC person might “downplay” or “ignore” them—and that is a good thing.  

First, it isn’t true that an emphasis on the red letters decisively tilts people toward gay marriage and legalized abortions. In the case of abortion, there is no Bible verse which specifically prohibits abortion. Indeed, some of the most powerful arguments against abortion come from Jesus’ words about his care for children and “little ones.” Beyond that, both Campolo and Claiborne are “womb to tomb” pro-lifers. That is, they are anti-abortion, but they also care about all the other forces that rob life such as poor health care, wars, gun violence, and capital punishment.

As for gay marriage, conservative veterans of the marriage wars will attest that their best argument is not the few Bible passages which seem to condemn gay sex. After all, most commentators agree that in the context of Biblical times, such sex was usually exploitative. Rather, the central conservative argument is that Jesus reaffirms a “creation ethic” of heterosexual marriage when he affirms in Mark 10:6-8b, “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.”

To be fair to Looper, Campolo has become affirming on gay marriage (as am I). Claiborne, while speaking against the ways the church has hurt LGBT+ people, has never come out as affirming, and has received strong criticism from the guardians of progressive dogma for not doing so.

To return to the question, why might it be wise to downplay or even ignore these evangelical and Catholic stances on abortion and gay marriage? As the words of Jesus attest, his primary concern was not to be a morality coach for the wider society. 

Instead, Jesus called the people of God to live out an ethic of love so costly, compelling, and winsome, that people would be drawn into God’s love-conspiracy. By advocating this, I’m not arguing for an easier, softer Jesus. I’m arguing for the Jesus of the New Testament, a Jesus who was tough on the people of God (demanding that they live out God’s sacrificial love) and welcoming to outsiders.

I’m asking that we judge the church by the example of Jesus, and not project on to Jesus the later preoccupations of the church. During Jesus’ time, gay sex and abortion were all well-known practices, and yet Jesus never says an explicit word about them. Jesus did however call out the religious leaders for their hypocrisy and self-righteousness. 

What if the church were known for the humble confession of its misdeeds, and its self-sacrificing love? Wouldn’t that be a better stance than being known for being “anti?” 

What if all of us, both conservative and liberal Christians, paid special attention to Jesus’ words, words which call us to sacrificial love? 

I agree with Looper that context matters. But this insight goes deeper than he seems to acknowledge. We live in a historical context that has pushed the life and teachings of Jesus to the side. We live in the current context of an unfaithful church that uses the black letters of the Bible to neuter and tame Jesus. We must resist this by interpreting everything through Jesus. Jesus’ own teachings are the best access we have God’s will and wisdom. It is the red letters that hold our feet to the fire of God’s costly love. It is the red letters that matter most. That is why I’m glad to be a Red Letter Christian.

Dear Friends of Tony Campolo,

The best news is that we expect Tony to come home on Friday, October 2!

Never have I seen anyone work harder at anything than my dear husband has at his physical therapy. The two therapists who work with him here are terrific. They have become like family to both of us. Because of their encouragement, Tony always wants to do more than he did the day before. The expertise and time these two women have invested in Tony are major factors in how much he has improved in the 12 weeks since his stroke on June 20.

In my last update, I said our goal was to have Tony accepted at a facility where his therapy would be more intensive, with multiple sessions each day. However, after his application had been submitted, I began to question the wisdom of having him transfer to a place where, in addition to having a much more demanding therapy program, Tony would not know anyone and my visits would be limited. When we talked about it, Tony said he really did not want to go anywhere else, but thought he was pleasing me by agreeing to go there. We talked with the head of the therapy department here, and she was very supportive. She thought we were making a good decision. About an hour later, we got a phone call saying Tony had been accepted by the other place!

Both Tony and I believe God showed us the way on that one. It would have been a mistake for Tony to leave this situation where he is doing so well. After he moves back home, he will be able to work with the same therapists on an outpatient basis.

READ: A Prayer Request for Tony and Update from the Campolo Family

In the meantime, it continues to be a delight for us to read the emails, cards and notes you send to Tony. Many begin with something like, “You don’t know me, but…” or “You probably don’t remember me, but 30 years ago…,” followed by a story about how something Tony did or said or wrote made a positive difference in the life of the writer. Tony remarked to me today that he likes to read those stories because they let him know that some of his most important Kingdom-work consists of things he did not even know about until now.

It is also wonderful to hear from people with whom we have lost touch, whose names bring back so many fond memories. Tony is especially interested in what folks write to him about the impact Eastern University, the Campolo Center for Ministry or Red Letter Christians has had on them. These organizations and the people who have dedicated their lives to making them what God wants them to be are never far from Tony’s thinking, and are always in our prayers. Tony would like you to pray for them when you pray for him.

Let me close by saying that, as good as it feels to look back, Tony and I feel even better to be looking forward again, eager to see what God has in mind for us in the days to come.

Peace and love and many thanks,
Peggy

P.S.  For those who missed hearing Tony preach this past summer, The Temple, in Ocean Park, Maine has allowed us to offer the video Tony made for their virtual church service on Sunday, August 2, 2020.  Just click on this link.

Dear Friends,

On the evening of June 20 our father, Tony Campolo, had a stroke that partially paralyzed the left side of his face and body. Since then he has been recovering and working on rehabilitation on the ground floor of the Beaumont Health Center, while his wife Peggy – who is prohibited from entering his room due to COVID19 – patiently sits outside his window for most of each day, talking with him and overseeing his care.

Obviously this is a difficult situation for everyone, but we are grateful that both our parents’ minds, spirits and determination to serve are still strong, and we are genuinely optimistic about their prospects for getting their lives back on track.

In the meantime, rather than calling either one directly, the best way to support and encourage Tony and Peggy is to send cards and emails that let them know you love them, are praying for them, and don’t expect a reply.

Thank you so much for your kindness and concern. Rest assured, we will keep you posted via Tony’s website, www.tonycampolo.org.

You can send a note of encouragement or card to Tony by email at tcampolospeaker@eastern.edu or to Eastern University, 1300 Eagle Road, St. Davids, PA 19087.

Hopefully,

Bart Campolo and Lisa Goodheart

There may be latent reasons for why white Evangelicals are as committed to Donald Trump and the Republican Party but their rhetoric almost always brings up the abortion issue. Without apologies, they often admit that they are “one issue voters”, even after efforts are made to point out other urgent issues that warrant their strong concern and political consideration. They should consider the following. 

Research, according to the Guttmacher Institute, shows that 72% of all women who have had abortions this last few years have felt driven to have them because of economic reasons. Consider a pregnant single woman whose job pays her a minimum wage; has no medical coverage so that paying a hospital bill seems out of reach; who’s afraid of losing her job if she takes off a couple of weeks to have her baby; has no child care for her infant when she goes back to work and doesn’t consider adoption as a viable alternative. It’s easy to understand why she might consider having an abortion. Yet those same politicians who often vote for the pro-life agenda go on to vote against raising the minimum wage; oppose providing universal health care and vote against needed day care programs.

There was a time when pro-life Republicans controlled the White House, both houses of Congress and had pro-life Supreme Court judges but, nevertheless, failed to pass the legislation to ban the abortions as they promised they would. These same politicians who claim to be pro-life have usually had no problem voting against reasonable gun regulations, expanding government spending for killing instruments of war, and failing to do much about the life-threatening pollution of the environment, all of which might be considered pro-life concerns.

I am not minimizing the abortion issue when I argue that there are other issues that Christians also should consider this coming November. For instance, they also should think about whether their votes are going to candidates who will refrain from overtly racist language, and who oppose sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. 

Some of my Christian friends tell me to remember those political advisors of Bill Clinton who said, “It’s the economy, stupid!” They tell me that I should give attention to an economy that is booming and has reduced African-American unemployment to its lowest level ever and has done much the same for Hispanic people. But if that booming economy has come by removing needed regulations on industrial polluters, giving tax breaks for the richest Americans while taking social benefits from the poorest sector of society to pay for those tax breaks, I think that my Christians friends should be asking, “Are such things right?”

While seeking a booming economy is very important, Christians have to ask themselves if they are willing to make seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33) is even more important? While many Evangelicals chant “America First!” there are many followers of Jesus who claim that God’s kingdom comes first and that life is more than gaining the material things of this world, such as “what we shall eat, and what we drink, and where with all we shall be clothed” (Matt. 6:31). 

Red Letter Christians (many Bibles have the words of Jesus highlighted with red letters) believe that the teachings of Jesus, rather than those slogans of politicians, should determine their voting. Spread that message and help our Red Letter Christians movement to spread that message! You can sign on as a Red Letter Christian and you can help the rest of us by giving financially to undergird what we’re doing.

“Through the ages, God has used the church to keep alive and pass down the story of what Christ has done for us.” -Tony Campolo

Happy 85th Birthday to our Co-Founder and friend, Tony Campolo! We invite you to join us in celebrating Tony’s life and legacy today by giving to Red Letter Christians in his honor. All donation amounts are greatly appreciated, while gifts that are $85 and up will receive a handwritten note from Tony!

And if you’d like to personally send birthday wishes and/or thank Tony for his ministry, we invite you to send a message to info@redletterchristians.org with the subject line “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TONY!” We’ll make sure he gets it.

In celebration and gratitude,

RLC Staff

Our ability as followers of Jesus to courageously seek unity in the body of Christ while responding to the political divisions of our day will determine the efficacy of our Christian witness. I’m inviting you to join with other evangelicals and Christians across the political spectrum to affirm that Christians of goodwill can have divergent political perspectives or to call the immoral actions of our president to account. Let me explain.

On August 22, 2019, the Washington Post published this brief letter to the editor as a part of their commentary on “evangelicals for and against Trump.” My letter began, “I am white. I am evangelical. I love Jesus, and I love the Bible. I am fiscally conservative but socially progressive… Black, Latino, Asian and other ethnic groups that help make up the beautiful diversity of the United States and who also believe in Jesus and the Bible (i.e. evangelical Christian tenets) find Mr. Trump to be an abomination of the ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality that the United States is supposed to represent.” I encouraged readers to listen and elevate the voices of leaders of color who uphold “their ideals of evangelicalism while also promoting principles of love, mercy, compassion, and justice.”

Now, at the dawn of a new decade, the question of who gets to define evangelical political perspectives in the United States is more acute than ever. On December 19, 2019, the general editor of Christianity Today Mark Galli wrote an editorial called “Trump Should Be Removed from Office” calling for American Christians to break the silence and reveal “the president’s character” and his “blackened moral record,” because the very witness of our Lord and Savior is at stake. The international media exploded and a few days later, CNN reported that nearly 200 evangelical leaders slammed Christianity Today in response to the editorial. The media seems to believe that the vast majority of evangelicals agree with those 200 leaders in their unadulterated support of the president and his policies. They are wrong.

How should Christians and people of faith respond to the questions surrounding our president’s character? I wholeheartedly agree with Christianity Today that it is possible for Christians to hold beliefs across the political spectrum and maintain Christian integrity. While I at times have much in common with my friends and community who identify as liberal evangelicals, we often have different political perspectives and theological frameworks. It is okay that we may vote differently. However, there are times where the gross moral violations of those in leadership demand Christian unity.

As the New Year begins, we must now speak out in response to the immorality of our president. We can no longer afford to remain silent. After Galli’s CT editorial was published, I found myself deeply distressed. I lead a bipartisan nonprofit based on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., that works with Republicans and Democrats. We have relationships with the State Department and White House and seek to inform and influence U.S. policies related to the Middle East. There are many reasons I should not be engaged in this fight. There are many reasons I could choose to remain silent. I suspect many Christians around the U.S. have excuses similar to mine about why it is permissible for us to not engage. I no longer believe we have a legitimate excuse.

In response to Mark Galli’s piece, several evangelical and Christian leaders joined me in a statement released on Christmas Eve in support of Christianity Today. We had more than 500 signatures within the first 24 hours over Christmas. The majority of the original signers were not the “usual suspects” and, in fact, many of them rarely speak out about political issues.

Compelled to respond to the critiques of Christianity Today, signers included individuals like American theologian Richard Mouw, President Emeritus and Professor of Faith and Public Life at Fuller Theological Seminary; Sam Logan, President Emeritus of Westminster Theological Seminary and Associate International Director of the World Reformed Fellowship; George Marsden, Professor of History Emeritus, University of Notre Dame; Richard Foster who first introduced many evangelicals to spiritual disciplines; Ron Sider and Nikki Toyama-Szeto of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA); and author and former editor of Today’s Christian Woman Dale Hanson Bourke. At the writing of this piece, the statement has more than 1,500 additional signatures. We hope you might add your name to our statement here.

The statement begins, “The United States evangelical and Christian community is at a moral crossroads. Our country has never been more politically divided with white evangelical Christians at the heart of much of the political discord.” One of my goals in writing was to affirm that people of good faith, who adhere to Christian values and the teachings of the Bible, can have divergent political views and perspectives about the role of the government in responding to society’s problems. In this political moment, the reported almost unilateral support of white evangelicals of President Trump harms Christian witness both in the United States and around the world.

Christians cannot turn a blind eye to the morally questionable characteristics we witness in our political leaders, particularly the morality of the president of the United States. Christian theologian Richard Foster said today: “A grossly immoral president encourages an immoral society.” I write about these realities in my new book Beyond Hashtag Activism: Comprehensive Justice in a Complicated Age (out May 2020 with InterVarsity): “White evangelicals voting for Trump and evangelicals of color all claim to follow the same Jesus yet often could not be further apart in their understanding of social realities like racism, immigration, incarceration, gender, and many other issues.” The disunity of the Christian body and the inability of white evangelicals to listen and heed the concerns of our brothers and sisters of color harms our Christian witness and is a failure in our attempts to honor Christ.

My own belief in Jesus has been deeply influenced by the teachings of Tony Campolo. I’ll never forget the ways the Holy Spirit touched my heart in hearing Campolo’s teaching about poor children dying around the world from preventable causes during the 1990 Creation festival when I was 13 years old. I was honored when he later invited me to be a part of the Red Letter Christians (RLC) community that is committed to loving Jesus and living out his “red letter” teachings in response to the needs of the world.

RLC has been courageously playing a critical role in expanding the national conversation about evangelical perspectives and politics. Regardless of whether or not you agree with their specific conclusions, RLC has been responding to the “toxic Christianity” that has been manifested in white evangelical support of President Trump and his policies. Tony Campolo and RLC invite American Christians to join them in their call to “Support CT’s Call for Impeachment and Removal” of President Trump. The RLC statement says, “impeachment hearings make clear that the president has gone too far with his lying and abuse of power.” As of December 30, more than 2,000 individuals added their names to the RLC statement.

Evangelicals in the United States, including whites and leaders of color, remain steadfast in our convictions about the power and saving grace of faith in Jesus Christ. The beautiful diversity of those who choose to follow Jesus and our faith traditions demands that we protect the right to have divergent political perspectives.

Join us in our prayer that “Christians in the United States enter into the 2020 elections with a recommitment to the Good News of the gospel that calls us to righteousness in Christ, faithful Christian witness, and responding to the needs of our neighbor.” And for those who share the conviction with RLC that “Trump’s policies often are contradictions to what Jesus actually taught,” sign on in their call that President Trump be removed from office.

It was ambitious to pull off 27 events in 10 days in half a dozen cities across the UK. But we did it.

In small towns and big cities, 84-year-old Baptist evangelist Tony Campolo and I jumped on planes, trains, and minibuses and joined leaders all over the UK to talk about what it looks like to live as if Jesus meant the stuff he said in the “red letters” of the gospels.

The name Red Letter Christians comes from the old Bibles that have the words of Jesus illuminated in red. For us, Jesus is the lens through which we interpret the Bible — and the lens through which we interpret the world we live in. As you read those red letters, you get the sense that Jesus did not just come to prepare us to die. Jesus came to teach us how to live and how to love and how to transform the world.

We’re not a neo-denomination, because the last thing the world needs is another denomination. There are more than 30,000 denominations of Christianity. And yet, Jesus’ longest recorded prayer is that we would be one as God is one. So we seek that unity that Christ prayed for.

This is why we were in a Nigerian Pentecostal church one night and an Anglican church the next. We were in Baptist and Methodist, Catholic and Mennonite spaces — all uniting around Jesus and justice — which we think have to work together like blades of scissors. So we aren’t para-church; we are pro-church. We aren’t non-denominational as much as we are trans-denominational. As one pastor in my neighborhood put it, “We’ve got to get this thing together, because Jesus is coming back. And is coming for a bride, not for a harem.”

As we traveled the UK, we didn’t just crash in hotels, but we stayed in homes. After all, this movement is really about building up a “web of subversive friends.”

We didn’t just pontificate in conference centers and talk theology in churches. We got into the neighborhoods and streets where the action happens. Red Letter Christians is not a think tank. It’s a revolution.

Nearly every time he opens his mouth in the gospels, Jesus talks about the “Kingdom of God.” The word “Kingdom” was the same word used for “empire.” And the Kingdom of God that Jesus talks about is not just something we go up to when we die, but something we are to bring down while we live “on earth as it is in heaven.” We are to bring God’s dream to earth.

The Kingdom of God is not just an abstract theological idea, but it is something that needs to demonstrated. Our faith is not just taught — it is caught.

Love is contagious. The world will know that we are Christians not by our doctrinal statements or our t-shirts or our bumper stickers, but by our love. Love has to be seen and felt and experienced, and our church communities are meant to be demonstration plots for the Kingdom of God.

We caught a glimpse of it in Newham (East London) in the community that Dave and Sally Mann have built, with roots going back five generations. On a reclaimed field that used to be overgrown with weeds, we saw 500 kids playing football together and community gardens and a resurrected community center that rose from the ashes of a fire.

Just as Jesus lived in real neighborhoods like Bethany and Nazareth and Capernaum, we visited towns all over the UK — Luton, Manchester, Newham, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Liverpool, and others — to hear the stories of what God has done there and what God is doing. We heard the stories of redemption and healing and miracles of each place.

There are lots of theologians who talk about “exegeting the Bible,” a fancy way of saying we need to read the Bible in the context it was written and listen with first century ears. But we also believe in “exegeting” our neighborhoods — to consider what it means to live out the gospel in the time and place in which we find ourselves.

And we know that means talking about the reality of the world we find ourselves in. As one of the great thinkers of Christianity, Karl Barth said: “We’ve got to read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.”

A reporter said to me, “It seems to me that you are simply Christians who are thoughtful and kind… which is exceptional in my experience with Christians.”

VIEW: A Week in Pictures: Launching a New UK Network for Jesus & Justice

We’re not partisan, but we are political in the best sense of the word. Policies are meant to make sure that people flourish and live well together. It is impossible to keep the great commandment “Love thy neighbor” and ignore the policies that affect our neighbors.

So we talk about things that matter. Welcoming immigrants. Caring for the homeless. Living responsibly on the earth. Interrupting the patterns of violence.

One of the ways we launched RLC in the UK was by hosting public “Beating Knives” events to address the epidemic of knife violence. There were 40,000 incidents of knife crimes in the UK last year, nearly the same number of gun deaths we had in the U.S.

Inspired by the prophetic vision of beating “swords into ploughshares,” we hosted several events where we transformed knives into more beautiful, life-giving things. One of them was a Phoenix made from knives that is now traveling the UK sparking discussions about restorative justice, de-escalation training, and workshops on alternatives to violence.

For too long Christians have used our faith as a ticket into heaven and an excuse to ignore the world we live in. We have promised people life after death, when many of them are wondering if there is life before death. They need to see Christians who care about the world we live in as much as the next one.

Just as Jesus put flesh on the gospel, our desire at Red Letter Christians is to make Jesus’ love real and public and prophetically relevant.

What does the gospel of Jesus look like in Luton? It looks like a bunch of people beating 500 knives taken off the streets into a Phoenix, a sign of hope that we can rise from the despair of knife violence.

What does the gospel look like in Newham? It looks like nine acres of abandoned land reclaimed by a community there and now turned into football fields where 500 young people play sports each week, and old folks too. (I learned what walking football is.)

What does the gospel look like in Manchester? It looks like a bunch of clergy and civic leaders gathered in Piccadilly Gardens, one of the most criminalized spaces in the UK, where white supremacists have gathered under the banner of hatred and fear. But we are reclaiming the space for love and community — sharing food, games, stories, and hope donning t-shirts that say, “Love over fear.”

The gospel looks like Christians and Muslims in Birmingham City Centre beating knives at the same anvil and forge, calling for an end to hatred and violence and fear… with a few random alpacas looking on! (A brilliant project of Newbigin House in Birmingham.)

We know that the last thing folks in the UK need is a couple of Americans coming over trying to solve all your problems. After all, we’ve got plenty of our own to work on, as you know. But what we saw in the UK is what we see in the U.S. and around the world: We need an awakening of compassion in our countries and a revival in the church.

The church is losing young people not because we have made the gospel too hard, but because we have made it too easy.

But what we sensed and now know to be true is this: We need a movement of Christians who care about life before death as much as life after death.

That’s what Red Letter Christians is about. We want to see people commit their lives to Jesus and to justice. We want to build up a generation of Christians who don’t just want to escape this world, but who want to transform it. We want to create a web of subversive friends committed to the upside-down Kingdom where the last are first and the first are last.

Sign up now for the Red Letter Christians UK mailing list. We are just getting started, but we know the kind of movement we want to be. Join this revolution of love.

“Are you ready to say ‘I’m going to commit myself to Jesus,’” Campolo asked as many rose to their feet, some closing their eyes and raising their hands in prayer, “I’m going to be committed to the poor? I’m going to stand up for the refugee? I’m going to speak for those who feel oppressed by our society?”

Campolo, a leader of the Red Letter Christians advocacy group, knew his audience would appreciate that call, made Saturday (April 7) at the Red Letter Revival, a two-day gathering organized by progressive evangelical leaders near the campus of evangelical Liberty University.

In Lynchburg they aimed to fellowship, and to reaffirm their values — but also to serve as a thorn in the side of those who promote a conservative brand of their faith that has aligned itself with President Trump. (More than 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for the president.)

They organized to pray against “toxic evangelicalism,” and to offer a spiritual challenge to Liberty President Jerry Falwell Jr., whose steadfast support of Trump has drawn fierce criticism from other people of faith — and, in their view, not nearly enough evangelicals.

A different kind of evangelical political theology

Compared to other evangelical conferences that often boast larger numbers, the revival was small. Roughly 300 to 350 people crowded into the E.C. Glass High School auditorium — where Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke — Friday evening.

But those who sang and prayed over the weekend said they appreciated how the gathering was framed as an alternative to the theology of Falwell. One of the speakers, evangelical author Jonathan Martin, was escorted off Liberty’s campus by police in October while attending a concert days after calling for a peaceful protest of the school. In the months leading up to the revival, Martin referred to Falwell’s leadership style as “authoritarianism,” and the Rev. William Barber II — for many the most important leader of the religious left today — said Falwell is “justifying the GOP’s immorality” in the “same way” slaveholders used the Bible to justify slavery.

Similarly, sermons and slam poems at the revival included lengthy discussions of political topics, such as sexuality, white supremacy, and mass incarceration. There were also multiple condemnations of Christian nationalism, which the Rev. Brenda Brown-Grooms, a pastor from Charlottesville, Va., declared “apostasy.”

Each speaker tied their subject back to faith.

“I came to announce tonight that I am a theological conservative,” said Barber. He chided right-wing religious leaders and their support for policies he says hurt the poor, saying, “they call themselves conservative, but they liberally resist so much of God’s character.”

Others railed against conservative pro-gun arguments.

“Some evangelicals are more committed to the amendments than the commandments,” said the Rev. David Anderson, a Maryland pastor, triggering a chorus of amens.

For many in attendance, the speaker and workshop lineup itself functioned as a de facto critique of white evangelical Protestantism, featuring voices often underrepresented in evangelical circles — women, Native Americans, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and LGBT people.

Lisa Sharon Harper, who was among the faith leaders who protested white supremacists during the violent demonstrations last year in Charlottesville, said the focus on race and marginalized voices wasn’t a coincidence.

“Evangelicals continue to champion (President Trump), and the clearest manifestation of that is Jerry Falwell Jr.’s support for the president,” she said in an interview. “There is no way that we can look at his presidency and not see the manipulation of the political construct of race in order to secure the supremacy of whiteness, and that itself is an assault on the image of God.”

A strategy of “exposing injustice”

Despite the rhetoric against Falwell, author and revival organizer Shane Claiborne said the Red Letter Revival was not designed to “vilify” him, saying “we’re not here to protest, we’re here to pro-testify!”

Campolo also drew a distinction between religious disagreement and personal attacks, noting that Jesus’ disciples often had heated disputes. He pointed to his own televised debates with Jerry Falwell Sr. — Jerry Falwell Jr.’s father — as proof that theological sparring partners can disagree respectfully.

Falwell Jr. has taken a hard line with the group’s leaders, but remained mostly quiet about the weekend’s events. He has not replied to the group’s request for a formal debate, they say, and personally stifled efforts by the Liberty student newspaper to cover the revival, according to a student editor. Falwell did not respond to Religion News Service’s request for comment but provided a statement to the local Lynchburg newspaper, The News & Advance, which was included in a story about the event.

According to Claiborne, Liberty police also sent him a letter last week threatening fines and jail time if he visited the Liberty campus to pray with students or Falwell — which Claiborne says he requested in advance.

Claiborne said these reactions were disappointing, but strengthened Red Letter Christians’ argument.

“What Dr. Martin Luther King talked about is that sometimes we’ve got to expose injustice so that it becomes uncomfortable,” Claiborne said, noting they ultimately hand-delivered prayers for Falwell to his brother’s nearby church. “I think discomfort can be a good thing — our goal is certainly not to antagonize, not to manipulate, not to be inauthentic. But our goal is to expose some of this stuff.”

Highlighting tensions may prove to be an overarching strategy of the group, which holds little sway in more mainstream evangelical circles. Organizers say they may hold a similar gathering later this year in Dallas.

The city is home to the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a controversial pastor and religious adviser to Trump. Jeffress preached a sermon to the president entitled “When God Chooses a Leader” on Inauguration Day, and had his choir sing a song entitled “Make America Great Again” to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Reaching marginalized evangelicals

Many at the revival expressed frustration with modern evangelicalism, sometimes detailing a feeling of alienation.

“They’re placing the priority on the wrong things,” said Chris Miller, who drove 12 hours from Bluffs, Ill., with a friend to attend the event and used to work in an evangelical church.

The revival, by contrast, was widely seen as refreshing among the progressive crowd.

“I think we’re celebrating a new movement, and I’m very happy about it,” said Marianne, a Lynchburg resident who did not share her last name.

Liberty students were also present throughout the event, often sitting together in the crowd. Senior Sam Herrmann introduced Jonathan Martin, who he originally invited onto campus, on Friday evening.

The students voiced their own frustration with Falwell’s administration, which Herrmann said exhibits “toxic Christian nationalism.” Two seniors at the school — Nathanial Totten, an openly gay Liberty student who led a workshop at the revival, and Elliot Green — pointed to a specific moment in 2015 they say distanced them from Falwell: when he stood before the student body and responded to news of a terrorist shooting by reaching for a firearm he claimed to have holstered in his back pocket, suggesting students should carry guns so “we could end those Muslims before they walk in.”

“That was probably the moment that my awareness shifted to ‘this isn’t good, this isn’t okay,’” Totten said in an interview.

A new charge

Participants said it’s still too soon to say whether the revival was a success, or what success even looks like.

“Ask me in a year,” Claiborne said. “It’s not about a moment — it’s about a movement.”

Some of the movement’s contours have yet to be delineated. Preceding this weekend’s event was a social media debate over whether organizers were affirming of LGBT identities and relationships. While the revival ultimately included LGBT speakers, it remains unclear whether disagreements on the topic could split the budding movement. Strategic questions, such as how far to push their activism or how to approach reticent leaders like Falwell, also remain unresolved.

But for the few hundred who came to Lynchburg to assert a different sort of evangelical activism, the Red Letter Revival offered hope.

“Too many evangelicals hold these beliefs in their heart and don’t show up,” said Lisa Sharon Harper, speaking of those who criticize Falwell and his ilk. “(But) I think people are going to show up now.”

This article originally appeared at RNS.

For more than five decades, Tony has served in ministry as a pastor, sociologist, professor, and author. As the founder of Red Letter Christians, Tony is keenly passionate about passing on his legacy to a new generation of leaders.

“Tony’s legacy won’t be found in his name,” says Greg, “It will be found in the thousands of people who have taken up his calling and lived out his challenge – to care for the poor and live as Jesus wanted us to live.”

Watch this powerful, short film below. And share it with all those who live with divine dissatisfaction, wanting to build a better world for all of God’s people.

I want to recommend a book which has some unique insights about race relations. A Theology of Race and Place was born out of Andrew T. Draper’s experiences in the beautiful yet messy work of reconciliation in a local urban church context.

While pastoring a multiethnic church, Draper found that the common ways many evangelicals thought about racial reconciliation were inadequate for the task of articulating what is at stake theologically when people are joined together across ethnic lines. This is especially the case when being joined across the black-white divide in America, animated as it is by a tortured history of subjugation, injustice, and oppression.

Many books have tried to tackle this subject in various ways, but no work has been as compelling as the recent theological work of Willie James Jennings and J. Kameron Carter, sometimes called “the New Black Theology.” Draper works with their theological race theory to propose a vision for a church that is marked not by assimilation or paternalism but by relationships of mutual vulnerability.

As the first book-length treatment of the theologies of Jennings and Carter, Draper’s work makes a much-needed contribution to discourses surrounding race, reconciliation, church, and place. In an era of racial profiling and exclusion of the “other,” Draper presents a critical yet hopeful vision for the joining work of the gospel.

Sincerely,
Tony Campolo

Editor’s Note: In his book, Draper applies theological race theory to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was killed by George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012. While Zimmerman was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter, he was acquitted of all charges in July 2013. This excerpt is used with permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.

…After several days, I noticed that, of the hundreds of people who had responded, every person who had challenged me was white. People of various ethnicities had shared a sense of concern or outrage at the manner in which the trial was progressing. When I publicly noted this observation, I was chastised with the “post-racial” assumption that we now live in a “colorblind” society in which the ethnicity of a view’s proponents means nothing. What matters is whether or not a person’s observations are “right.” Invoked to bolster this view was Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that his children would be judged not by “the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” It seemed to me that this utilization of King appropriated his words out of context and insinuated that while ethnicity meant nothing, the innate character of the nonwhite other was readily discernible.

I was told that to talk about race as playing a substantial role in ethical discourse serves to stoke the flames of racial division and strife, turning back all the “progress” we have made as a society. How was I to interpret these critiques from “good” people about a society that has presumably “gotten over” ethnic division? Were it not for my experience of the racial calculus that operates reflexively within contemporary theological and ecclesial formation, I might have more seriously questioned my assumptions about the death of a black youth and the acquittal of his killer.

While I had long recognized problematic aspects of my own formation in regard to the assumed universality of what were highly culturally constructed theological, aesthetic, and ethical frameworks, it is through the works of Willie James Jennings and J. Kameron Carter that I began to link things I had observed, but not been able to connect or explain in a coherent fashion. What had been troublesome in the way “reconciliation” was imagined within the ecclesiological frameworks I had received was explicated in their texts in a cogent manner that purposed to expose the inception of the racial vision and its subsequent masquerade as universality. Jennings’ and Carter’s related genealogical accounts present whiteness as a sociopolitical order that must be maintained and invested in so as to be given life. As such, whiteness as a comprehensive way of life can function as a challenge to the Way of Life embodied in the One who is the Way. It will become clear throughout this study that what I am referencing as problematic is not the particularity of European experience, but the particularity-as-universality that is whiteness and which competes with the reign of Christ as it invites all flesh into its sociopolitical order.

… While it was a foregone conclusion for my brothers and sisters in the black community that in some way every aspect of this tragedy had been about race, and while I took comfort in the strength I borrowed from them, I was not sure how I would be received the next morning. Zimmerman was acquitted on a Saturday night and Sunday morning I would be standing to preach before the joined black and white community that makes up the congregation which I pastor. I needed to put into words the sadness and outrage which we felt, while clinging to the hope that mutuality is possible within the body of Jesus of Nazareth. What happened was not what I expected. The building in which we worshiped was full and our members, black and white, were there and ready to worship. The African American members of the body experientially led our congregation, including those of a lighter hue, into an affirmation of God’s goodness in the face of injustice. Even after having lived and ministered in my community for years and after having availed myself of many autobiographical, theological, and sociological resources related to the struggle for black liberation upon the soil of the New World, I was existentially unprepared for the familiarity of the black worshipper with exalting the name of the Lord while walking through the valley of despair. While I was able to speak to the deep sense of betrayal we as a community were experiencing, the maintenance of an affirmation of God’s goodness did not rely primarily upon me. We had together formed a bond strong enough that we were able to be vulnerable with each other in the midst of our pain instead of alienating each other because of the perpetration of evil. I will never forget the heroic posture of my black brothers and sisters that morning as those of us who had not been on the receiving end of racial profiling were invited into the shared experience of lament and celebration.