Pastor and social activist Tony Campolo dies

Tony Campolo, a Baptist preacher, youth minister, and counselor to President Bill Clinton, died on Tuesday. He was 89.

What was he known for? Campolo, a liberal evangelical pastor, worked with educational and poverty-fighting ministries in Latin America and U.S. inner cities from the mid-1960s through the 1980s. His public influence grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and Campolo used the profits from his books and speaking engagements to fund an educational ministry.

Campolo believed that U.S. evangelicals overfocused on abortion and sexual morality while doing too little to fight poverty or work on racial reconciliation. He aligned himself with the Democratic Party, launching an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 1976. In 2006, he co-founded Red Letter Christians, a movement that emphasized the words of Jesus as being preeminent within the Bible. The group also was rooted in Campolo’s long-standing disaffection with the political conservatism of his fellow evangelicals.

Campolo began counseling President Clinton during his first term in office, meeting at the White House to study Scripture and discuss its application to the president’s work. Campolo began counseling Clinton on a more personal level after the 1998 revelation of Clinton’s extramarital affair with a White House intern.

“I think my failure was that I did not focus at all on his personal morality,” Campolo later recalled.

His son Bart’s departure from pastoral ministry to atheism in 2011, distressed Campolo, as did his son’s later work as a humanist university chaplain. But he continued to dialogue with his son, a journey documented in a 2017 book and the 2018 film Leaving My Father's Faith. In 2015, Campolo drew rebukes from fellow evangelicals when he changed his long-held position on same-sex marriage and called for “the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church.”

Campolo taught sociology at Eastern University and authored more than 35 books. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Peggy. Also surviving are their daughter Lisa Goodheart (Marc) and son Bart Campolo (Marty); their grandchildren Miranda Stowers (Tyler), Roman Campolo (Ali), Nina Goodheart, and Naomi Goodheart; and three great-grandchildren, according to an Eastern University obituary.

Tony Campolo Associated Press / Photo by Nellie Doneva / Abilene Reporter-News via AP