The Barna Foundation that does a lot of research on people who are religious, described Evangelicals like myself as people who are bigoted, judgmental and homophobic. The good news is there are a whole group of young men and women emerging under the radar screen who reject those identities. They, in fact, are committed to a new expression of the Christian faith.

First of all, they contend that the issues have changed, whereas the older generation seemed to be focused on abortion and gay marriage. That seemed to preoccupy Evangelicals. This new group of young Evangelicals are saying, Red Letter Christians are saying that the real issues of our time are these: We’re concerned about the environment. We’re concerned about poverty. We’re concerned about peace in the world. They know too many gay and lesbian people to adopt the judgmental attitude of their elders. They just know that these people are good and loving and just don’t want to make the kind of negative judgments that have been the hallmark of the Evangelical community.

Secondly, they are not those who question global warming. The adults may in fact question global warming. They don’t. They are environmentalists, gung ho. And concerning the poor, the real prophet is probably Bono of U2, and they are concerned about poor people more than almost anything else. They are young people who are more concerned about being spiritual than religious. Spirituality is big with them. They embrace the kind of mystical experiences taught by the Roman Catholic saint, St. Ignatius. They are into spiritual exercises. They want to experience God. They just don’t want to believe in him. They just want to have a feeling of presence, Divine presence, in their being. They also are committed to a life style. They are less theological and more committed to the lifestyle prescribed by Jesus. That’s why they call themselves “Red Letter” Christians. They want to do what Jesus would expect them to do.

And then this has to be said. It has to be said that they are more committed to being involved. They have a disdain for the elders who are check-writing philanthropists. Yes, it’s good to write checks. Yes, money is needed to do the work of the Kingdom. But they want to be directly involved. They say writing a check for the poor is not enough. They want to be directly involved with the poor. Hence, they work for Habitat for Humanity. They work in soup kitchens. When Katrina hit, they are down there rebuilding houses. They’re involved in that kind of thing.

No wonder their patron saint is St. Francis of Assisi. Here’s a man that they say is a model for their lifestyle. First of all, he is committed to the poor. He saw the poor as sacramental. He saw the poor as something very, very holy. These people were holy to him. If you want to get close to God, said St. Francis, you’ve got to get close to the poor. These young people very often have experienced just that. They’ve taken mission trips to third-world countries or to the inner-city. As they work for a couple of weeks or even a month or even a year among the poorest of the poor, they have felt the presence of God coming at them through the poor, through the needy, through the oppressed.  They love following Francis, who blazed a trail in this matter. Secondly, they are not about get down on gay and lesbian people for a very simple reason. St. Francis taught them that every human being was sacred. To look into the eyes of those who are beaten down and ostracized by society is to encounter Christ himself.

As a matter of fact, he tells the story of encountering a leper on the way. As he gives the leper his cloak and gives the leper his money, he finds that the leper is still looking for more, so he kisses the leper, only to find that the leper disappears. He realizes it was Jesus who he had encountered. I love that story because the modern day lepers to many Evangelicals are gays and lesbians, transsexual people. They are the lepers, very often to the religious establishment. Jesus loved them, he embraced them, and he said that they were precious. That’s what these young people are doing. They’re looking at gay people and, yes, they’ve heard the theological arguments; yes, they’ve given good attention to the Biblical quotes, which they deeply respect; but in the end love trumps legalities. When they look into the eyes of the poor and the oppressed, the gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, they feel something very spiritual there and they are not about to deny these people their place in the Kingdom.

Then, of course, there’s this: their commitment to poor people and the environment is notable. You know that St. Francis preached to the birds. You say, what did he preach? Get saved? Believe in the doctrines of the Christian faith? Of course, not! He called upon the birds of the air even as he talked to other animals and said, “Sing praises to God. Sing praises to God.” You say, wait a minute, what are you suggesting? I’m suggesting this: if you read the 148th Psalm you’ll find that the psalm calls upon every creature in the universe to sing hymns of praise to God. He calls upon the whales to sing hymns of praise to God. You say, wait a minute, are you telling me that whales sing? Of course they do. What’s more, they change the music every year, which is more than I can say for a lot of musicians. They are in fact committed to this. They are committed to the environment as Francis was. No wonder Francis was looked upon as a saint of saints among environmentalists. You know the Doxology that we sing in churches: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” and the next line, “Praise him all creatures here below.” What a great line! All creatures. And so it was that Francis called upon all of nature, as the old hymn goes, to resound in manifold witness to the Creator.

In our anthro-centric mentality, we have the idea that we’re all that matters in the universe. The truth is that when we look into the sky and say God created the heavens for our benefit, we’re lying. The heavens were not created simply for us to enjoy. The Scriptures say, particularly in the Hebrew Bible, the heavens were created to declare the glory of God. Big line. Big line! Francis in so many ways reached out to the poorest of the poor, embraced the lepers of his day, was an environmentalist. You can see why young people love him so very, very much.

I love the story of Francis going down to the place where the Crusaders and the Muslims were about to kill each other in Egypt. He spoke not only to the Christian community but he crossed the lines and went into the tents of the Muslims and tried to tell them about a God who calls them to love Christians, even as he called upon Christians to love Muslims. What a model for today’s world where Muslims and Christians seem to be at each other’s throats. In this day and age, we cannot afford the luxury of religious war. We’ve got to learn what Francis was teaching, namely, that we can love people even if we disagree with their theologies, that there is something holy about every human being and must be respected. That’s what we need to hear and Francis said it well.

I’ve got this to say: God is at work through this group of young people. They are Evangelistic. They talk about having a personal, transforming relationship with the resurrected Christ. Mystically they surrendered to an invasion of his spirit. They want to become Christ-like people, which is a little more than just saying I’m a Christian. Christian is a head thing. It’s an intellectual trip. Being Christ-like is crucial. That’s living according to those red letters of the Bible, which is why they call themselves Red Letter Christians.

I think I should end this little bit by paraphrasing Jack London: I have seen the future. It’s the next generation. I have seen the future and I like it a whole lot.

Conversation with Tony Campolo

Daniel Pawlus: Tony, thanks for joining us again today.

Tony Campolo: My privilege to be with both of you.

Pawlus: It’s always good to have you on the program. I always appreciate the passion that you bring in your messages and today I was really struck by the theme of young people, especially. I wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about what you’re experiencing when you speak to these folks in different groups. It seems like young people are very interested in being engaged in the church—in the Christian experience, so to speak—but they’re missing something. We’ve watered it down and they’re looking for more of a faith in action than just an intellectual experience like you talked about.

Campolo: Please don’t misunderstand. They see that theological doctrine, Biblical truth is very, very important, but they are strong to affirm that they ought to be doers of the word not hearers only. Let me give you an example. At Eastern University where I teach, because I spend most of my time with university students, the Catholic diocese of the city decided to throw out of the cathedral in North Philadelphia a hundred homeless people that were living there. The reaction of my students? They got in cars, drove down to North Philadelphia, went into the cathedral so that when the police would come and arrest them in the morning, they would be arrested with the homeless. The interesting thing was that at about 3 o’clock in the morning there was a knock at the door. They opened the door and here were four firemen who said, “When the diocese and the police come to throw you out of here, they’re going to do so because this building did not measure up to fire code.”

And Jonathan said, “Well, why are you here?”

“Because between now and 8 in the morning when they come, we can bring this building up to fire code.” And they did. They lived among the poor for the rest of the semester.

Sherre Hirsch: These are students?

Campolo: Yes. Commuting to their classes instead of going back to the dormitory. They went back to this boarded-up cathedral to be among the poor and it had a transforming effect on their lives. They talk about being born again a second time. You know, Evangelicals talk about being “born again” when they accept Jesus. This was born again a second time.

Hirsch: Is it your students that are keeping you so young and vibrant?

Campolo: Oh, yes!

Hirsch: I mean because one could argue that you’re of a mature age. Was that good? Was that delicately said?

Campolo: Very nicely said! Rabbis always say things nicely.

Hirsch: And also their message is very Jewish and we’ll come to that in a second. But one could argue that you could take a different stand. You could say, you know what? I’m at a time in my life where I want to step back. Is it these kids, your teaching with them? What is it that drives you to be so passionate?

Campolo: Well, when you’re with young people you pick up their visions and I would contend that people are as old as their memories but as young as their visions. I find that they continually create new visions of what the world could be. They have a hope about the future that I think a lot of older people don’t have. When I talk to older people they shake their heads, “This country’s had it. The world is going down the tubes. It’s getting worse and worse and I’m going to go out and eat worms!”

These kids—and I’m not talking about the entire youth generation, I’m saying there is emerging out of the youth generation this very select group of people and they are in the Jewish community, they’re in the Muslim community, they’re in the Christian community—are saying enough of religion that was full of hatred, enough of religion that was judgmental and hypocritical. We want to be genuine followers, in my tradition, of Jesus Christ. We want to be like him.

Hirsch: They want to feel the presence of God. So much of what I hear from students is, I want to do this because I want to feel my Creator. I don’t just want to speak to someone from which I don’t hear back. I want to feel God’s presence in my life by doing this and working and getting my hands really dirty.

Campolo: For a rabbi, you sound like Billy Graham! I want to feel Christ in my life.

Hirsch: Well, Christ I wouldn’t throw in there! But the idea that they want to feel a presence of God.

Campolo: Yes, the spirit of God.

Hirsch: I think that’s what we’re all searching for.

Pawlus: It’s interesting because you seem to hold up, Tony, that “spiritual but not religious” is not necessarily a bad thing. I think that term has been thrown around a lot in conversation right now, especially with young people who are attracted to the mystical sense, like you said, but there’s maybe a denominational pull back or what have you. I’d love to hear both of you address that.

Campolo: Well, let me start by saying the Pew Foundation has done research that points out what I’m talking about, that young people are more spiritual than they are religious. They are not against religion. They are not for pulling out of religious institutions. But what they are hoping for is that the religious institutions will make them into spiritual beings. They come to church and they hear things that don’t really do that for them. So they’re very often turned off to the traditional churches. They are starting their own churches: house churches, the emerging church movement. It’s all over the place, where they’re still into getting together, worshipping, praying, meditating, but they’re not sure that the old line denominational churches and these mega-churches are really offering them what they are hungry for.

Hirsch: It’s interesting because religion or religious has become a bad word. Right? In this group it’s okay to be spiritual but it’s not okay to be religious because they’ve decided to let this group own religiosity. The question would be, how do you think they’re going to balance bringing their religious aspects that they really love into this spiritual, experiential thing?

Campolo: It’s up to people like you. It’s whether or not the rabbis, the mosques’ imams, the ministers, the priests are able to transform institutional religion into forms that will, in fact, meet this hunger of the soul. I mean, there’s a lot of hunger for spirituality out there and a lot of churches and a lot of synagogues and a lot of mosques are catching on or are beginning to modify their message and their activities to meet this need. If they don’t, they will die.

Hirsch: Absolutely.

Pawlus: How do you think the interfaith landscape that we’re living in now, Tony, has changed over the years? Obviously, we’re interacting with people of different faiths, especially young people more than ever in colleges. How is that impacting this whole sense of desire for more spirituality?

Tony Campolo: Well, let’s take the Evangelical tradition because we tend to be the most dogmatic. That’s a nice way of saying it!

Hirsch: Yeah. That was a pretty good way of saying it!

Campolo: So when people ask me, do you believe Jesus is the only way to salvation? my answer is very simple: He’s the only way I know. I grew up in this tradition. I came to know God through Jesus Christ. It’s the only way I know. You say, well, won’t you make pronouncements and judgments about other religions? That is not my business. I need to, in fact, deal with my own faith, those who are Evangelicals, and begin to ask, have you really experienced God? The more they are alive in God, the more they will relate lovingly to people of other traditions in our pluralistic society.

Hirsch: It’s your leadership and your passion that’s really, I think, going to do that, to help us all see the spark of God in each of us.

Campolo: Yes, but you have to understand it’s not me, it’s you. You’re the younger generation. I’m the old guy. I go to weddings and the bride’s grandmother looks better than the bride! Come on, it’s your job. You’re the next generation, you’re to lead them!

Pawlus: Thanks for inspiring us, Tony, as always.

Hirsch: Thank you.