Top 60 Tony Campolo Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The kingdom of God is a glorious and gigantic party!”

— Tony Campolo

2. “Your past is important but it is not nearly as important to your present as the way you see your future.”

— Tony Campolo

3. “Grandchildren are God’s reward for not killing your kids.”

— Tony Campolo

4. “There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money, there’s something wrong with keeping it.”

— Tony Campolo

5. “Our call is to be God’s agents, to rescue not only the human race but the whole of creation.”

— Tony Campolo

6. “If we were to set out to establish a religion in polar opposition to the Beatitudes Jesus taught, it would look strikingly similar to the pop Christianity that has taken over the airwaves of North America.”

— Tony Campolo

7. “Don’t be satisfied with just pumping blood.”

— Tony Campolo

8. “I don’t know how your theology works, but if Jesus has a choice between stained glass windows and feeding starving kids in Haiti, I have a feeling he’d choose the starving kids in Haiti.”

— Tony Campolo

9. “That a new humanity will be brought forth from this Christ consciousness in each person.”

— Tony Campolo

10. “A person is as young as their dreams and as old as their cynicism.”

— Tony Campolo

11. “When you listen to Christian radio stations – and there are thousands of them now in the United States – and when you listen to Christian television networks – and there are thousands of Christian television shows across the country – they are all politically right.”

— Tony Campolo

12. “There is a gift of the Holy Spirit that is given to both men and women in the New Testament. This is what makes the New Testament a New Testament rather than the Old Testament, in which women did not have such privileges.”

— Tony Campolo

13. “Jesus is the only Savior, but not everybody who is saved by Him is aware that He is the one who is doing the saving.”

— Tony Campolo

14. “When in fact we live in a society that makes life hell for gays and lesbians, this community has got to stand up and say, ‘We’re on your side as you struggle for dignity,’ and, ‘Yes, we will defy anybody who says otherwise, even if we have to go to Disneyland to prove it.’”

— Tony Campolo

15. “I do not mean that others represent Jesus for us. I mean that Jesus actually is present in each other person.”

— Tony Campolo

16. “I am not suggesting that all those missionary organizations working in Haiti should pack up and go home, but I am urging them to understand that Haiti does not need clever Americans with newly contrived schemes for saving their country.”

— Tony Campolo

17. “Often, we ignore the fact that our spiritual condition and psychological state of mind are highly affected by what is happening to us physically. Sometimes depression is simply the result of exhaustion.”

— Tony Campolo

18. “That’s what they do in Europe. You go down to the city hall and you become legally connected. You have a civil union there. Then, if you’re religious, you go down to the church, and the church blesses the union. That gets the problem solved.”

— Tony Campolo

19. “Rituals keep us from forgetting what must not be forgotten and keep us rooted in a past from which we must not be disconnected.”

— Tony Campolo

20. “It is hard to say what the future holds, but this is probable – it won’t be just like the past.”

— Tony Campolo

21. “Even if there were no heaven and there were no hell, would you still follow Jesus? Would you follow him for the life, joy and fulfilment he gives you right now?”

— Tony Campolo

22. “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.”

— Tony Campolo

23. “Anyone who resists the notion of women preachers is functioning as a tool of the devil.”

— Tony Campolo

24. “I don’t know what to make of the Muslim mystics, especially those who have come to be known as the Sufis. What do they experience in their mystic experiences? Could they have encountered the same God we do in our Christian mysticism?”

— Tony Campolo

25. “One of the most startling discoveries of my life was the realization that the Jesus that I love, the Jesus who died for me on Calvary, that Jesus, is waiting, mystically and wonderfully, in every person I meet. I find Jesus everywhere.”

— Tony Campolo

26. “It has been said that people never do evil with more enthusiasm than when they do it in the name of God.”

— Tony Campolo

27. “I’m not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians.”

— Tony Campolo

28. “I am saying that there is no salvation apart from Jesus; that’s my evangelical mindset. However, I am not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians.”

— Tony Campolo

29. “If being human requires freedom, then enslavement to the cares of this world is dehumanizing.”

— Tony Campolo

30. “Sigmund Freud was the apostle of disbelief. He was the one who made psychoanalysis a part of our culture, and in so doing he kicked out a flying buttress that had been essential for holding up our cathedral of faith.”

— Tony Campolo

31. “I’ve always been skeptical of those television healers who are bald. If I had that gift, that’d be the first thing I’d fix.”

— Tony Campolo

32. “Artists are the best theologians. They feel things that are true before theologians can jargonize them into obscurity.”

— Tony Campolo

33. “Some people think the theists get off easy by offering eternal life, but in my experience it is awfully difficult to reconcile the death of a child with the idea of a loving God. As a Christian, I knew what to say, but I don’t think my words made much of a difference. What mattered most was just being there and sharing the hurt.”

— Tony Campolo

34. “Rise up, you suckers, and go out and do the work of Jesus!”

— Tony Campolo

35. “The real problem that I think those of us who are evangelicals and Democrats have to face up to is that the political right controls the religious media.”

— Tony Campolo

36. “One of the main reasons I remain a Christian is because I love knowing that my sins are not only forgiven, but also forgotten!”

— Tony Campolo

37. “If marriage really is a sacred institution, then why is the government controlling it, especially in a nation that affirms separation of church and state?”

— Tony Campolo

38. “Certain things happened in the early church. Women who had never had any freedom suddenly have the ability to stand up and speak and be treated as equals within the life of the church.”

— Tony Campolo

39. “Like most Christians, I believe the Genesis account of creation is a description of six different stages of creation, each of which may have taken eons of time.”

— Tony Campolo

40. “When you talk about evangelicals, don’t forget that a significant proportion of the evangelical community is African American. And most African Americans – well over 90 percent, thoroughly evangelical, thoroughly biblical – will probably vote Democratic.”

— Tony Campolo

41. “I contend that Bush would be a lot more moderate if there weren’t some fundamentalists breathing down his neck every time he wants to establish the state of Israel, every time he wants to do justice for the Palestinian people.”

— Tony Campolo

42. “Getting the government to put money into social programs run by religious institutions is a practice that started during the Clinton years, when Bill Clinton advocated the AmeriCorps program.”

— Tony Campolo

43. “Clinton’s successor in the White House, George W. Bush, was committed to expanding government spending for faith-based initiatives.”

— Tony Campolo

44. “We must not be so concerned with the unborn that we fail to pay attention to the born.”

— Tony Campolo

45. “Evangelicals need to take a good look at what their issues are. Are they really being faithful to Jesus? Are they being faithful to the Bible?”

— Tony Campolo

46. “Today, some of the most spiritual people I know claim to be without religion.”

— Tony Campolo

47. “Christianity isn’t the only group that has fundamentalists.”

— Tony Campolo

48. “But I think it’s up to a local congregation to determine whether or not a marriage should be blessed of God. And it shouldn’t be up to the government.”

— Tony Campolo

49. “And we’ve got to ask ourselves some very serious questions as to whether or not certain religious leaders, in terms of raising money – I hate to bring this up – are pushing hot buttons.”

— Tony Campolo

50. “I sometimes wonder how people like Bart, who no longer believe in the grace of God, handle their guilt. Perhaps, as Sigmund Freud suggested, they repress it by burying the memories of past sins deep within themselves. But Freud went on to explain that such repression doesn’t really work in the long run, and that guilt always emerges from the subconscious, sometimes as phobias and sometimes as neurotic behavior.”

— Tony Campolo