What Dr. Campolo says about budgets at the end could be a lesson for us all. Some more than others. 🙂
[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=ebi_EMqyOi4]
About Tony Campolo: I really dig Campolo…
Protestant that he is. His famous sermon, “It’s Friday, Sunday’s Coming” and his speech on Teenagers helped nudge me onto the road to Holy Orthodoxy. After all, being asked to pay attention to what Christ actually said can, if one is a bit deviant, lead to paying just as much attention to what Christ did, and that leads to a visible, identifiable, historical Church that begins with Christ and is spotless and without blemish and unbroken until now, despite it being full of spotty individuals like me. In any case, Campolo’s emphasis on the poor as the summa of Christian interest in the world, is decidedly … well… Christian. His warnings about confusing Christianity with neoconservatism are well taken.
However, it concerns me that when he places the poor over against “issues” like abortion, he’s missing a fundamental Christian truth, and certainly one championed by Orthodox Saints, the earliest Christians, and our whole tradition – namely, that the infant, from conception, has always been considered by the Church – especially the threatened and unwanted infant – to be among the poor. When tens of thousands of such children are victims of legalized infanticide by abortion and other methods, every year, we’re looking at a campaign of extermination of the poor that cannot be countenanced by any faithful Christian. False dichotomies will not do.