After years of struggling to answer questions about his views on gay Christian couples, Tony Campolo released a statement June 8 calling for their full acceptance in the church.
Campolo, one of the most influential leaders of the Evangelical left and a core leader of the Red-Letter Christian movement, describes in detail how he came to this decision.
“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,” wrote Campolo.
Particularly important was his reflection on the spiritual dimension of marriage as a place where “God intends married partners to help actualize in each other the ‘fruits of the spirit.’”
Campolo explains how his and his wife Peggy’s friendships with many gay couples convinced him that their “relationships work in much the same way as our own.”
Campolo also compared this debate to biblical debates about female leadership in the church and slavery:
I am old enough to remember when we in the Church made strong biblical cases for keeping women out of teaching roles in the Church, and when divorced and remarried people often were excluded from fellowship altogether on the basis of scripture. Not long before that, some Christians even made biblical cases supporting slavery. Many of those people were sincere believers, but most of us now agree that they were wrong. I am afraid we are making the same kind of mistake again, which is why I am speaking out.
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