| In Association With... |  |
|
|
|
Red Letter Christians: A Citizen's Guide to Faith and Politics | 
 enlarge | Author: Tony Campolo
Publisher: Regal Books
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $7.39
You Save: $12.60 (63%)
New (34) from $7.39
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 13761
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0830745297
Dewey Decimal Number: 277.3083
EAN: 9780830745296
ASIN: 0830745297
Publication Date: February 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New Publishers Overstock, May have a Remainder mark. FAST SHIPPING WITH EMAILED USPS DC # ! All addresses welcome...
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In today s political environment, who speaks for whom is not always clear. Over the past couple of decades, evangelical Christians have tended to be associated with the religious right and the most conservative positions of the Republican Party. Rebelling against this designation are those who prefer to be called Red Letter Christians, desiring to live out the red letters of Jesus words in the New Testament. Believing that Jesus is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, Red Letter Christians want to jumpstart a religious movement that will transcend partisan politics and concentrate on issues such as fighting poverty, caring for the environment, advancing peace, promoting strong families, and supporting a consistent ethic of life, all viewed as critical moral and biblical values. Into this arena of thought steps Tony Campolo, the powerful evangelist known for his passionate and prophetic sharing of the radical message of Jesus. In this book, Campolo examines many of the hot-button issues facing evangelicals from the perspective of Jesus red-letter words in the Bible. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, Campolo will make you think and pray and act.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 Campolo September 26, 2008
Campolo attempts to recast the traditional definition of evangelical in his book. He challenges the popular image of evangelicals as being one and the same as the religious right. He does not believe that Jesus was either a dem or a republican. He takes on a host of hot button issues one by one (including poverty, the environment, terrorism, education...) and lays out his positions based on what he believes to be God's will.
It is no secret that Campolo is left of center, and at times very much so. He believes religion has a place in politics (beyond abortion and gay rights) and quotes Gandhi in writing "those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is" (p. 25). I certainly did not agree with him on all of his arguments and think his books casts a wide net at times.
I like the idea of this book more than I liked the book itself. Unfortunately it is not especially well written and so I'm left giving it only a couple of stars. I found Wallis' book, God's Politics, to be more engaging and balanced.
 Abortion issue August 26, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
One simple answer to abortion: adoption.
I have two close family members who had to go out of the country to adopt. We Americans prefer abortion.
It is unfathomable to me that there are Christian leaders out there today, like Tony Campolo, who have figured out ways to diminish if not justify something like abortion which has to be the most atrocious abomination to the heart of God than anything else I can think of in modern times....more than wars and rumors of war; more than capital punishment; more than bad governmental policies; more than a person's lack of insurance; even more than societal mores that actually encourage a fatherless culture.
The condoning of abortion by Christians leaves me speechless.
So this is how the Church now beckons the little ones.
 How to think politically and religiously August 17, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is a good primer on what the relationship between faith and politics may mean. However, if you have read Jim Wallis or Tony Campolo before perhaps those books are better written and not so rote.
Warning! Campolo's theological house of cards....a man seeking justification for his own error August 15, 2008
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
Campolo is a liberal Clinton loving, Obama-supporting democrat. A regular staff on the hate site huffingtonpost. You really have to wonder about the authenticity of anyone who calls themselves a Christian who is a writer for Huffpo, a site whose mission is to propagate hate. You think Campolo isn't immersed in partisan politics? He is a regular contributor to the democratic party. Yea, this guy is a hardline democrat and he criticizes Christians for being republican! This is called bigotry. Look at the entire Campolo family donating to democrats: http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=name&lname=Campolo So yea, Campolo very much is a partisan Christian tied to a political party.
Imagine someone who is an adulterer. In her mind she has justified it. "I'm unloved...my husband ignores me...I have needs...." After spending many nights justifying an affair, she finally goes for it and begins an adulterous life. She has to justify it, because she has a conscience and doesn't want to be a bad person. But after a while, its not enough for her to justify it for herself...she needs to tell *others* that adultery is "ok" too. So now she starts justifying it to people at work, and people she meets. She has discovered that all this time she was wrong about adultery, and its not so bad after all.
Campolo is like an adulterer who spends considerable time coming up with logical reasons to justify the theological adultery. And once he justified it for himself, it wasn't enough. He needs to convince others too. By having others come to his side, he can feel less torn and less guilty about his life.
Campolo's main mission in this book is to grab Christians and pull them into leftist progressive socialism. That is his true goal. He has a burning need to convince evangelical Christians that progressive leftist socialism is healthy and good (thereby making him feel better and more comfortable about his own duality). His goal is to tell conservative Christians not to be so narrow minded. His goal is to criticize and put down conservative Christians. This has nothing to do with God, and everything to do with his own personal need to justify his abhorrent and incoherent position. He has embraced mutually exclusive positions and has contrived a delicate concoction (a literal house of cards) of logical ploys that he needs in order to sleep at night. He needs to justify his own existence as a leftist socialist and the more Christians he can lure over to his side, the better and more secure he will feel as a Christian.
Ironically, Campolo goes out of his way to criticize Christians who are republicans because they should not be propagating the republican party using Christianity...yet this is exactly what Campolo is doing. He is attempting to propagate progressive socialism using the Bible, and he does so fervently. He would want nothing more than all Christians to vote for Obama, and vote candidates supporting progressive socialism. For me personally, I have thought seriously about leaving the republican party because it is getting too liberal. The day the republican party embraces abortion on demand, is the day I leave it. As a Christian, I am not tied to a party...I am bound politically by moral law. Campolo is not, he freely abandons moral law in order to embrace humanistic progressive socialism.
Socialism is, at its core, moral relativism. It declares humans are born as blank slates upon which the government grants rights. Moral absolutism states that by virtue of being human, you have inherent rights and the role of government is to protect those rights.
It is the liberal progressives who gave abortion to this country
It is the liberal progressives who would eradicate man-woman only marriages
It is the liberal progressives who are at war with Christianity in America
It is the liberal progressives who threw God out of schools
It is the liberal progressives who marginalize Christianity as incompatible with scientific thought.
Progressive socialism is humanism, and it states in its heart that man does not need God
It is the liberal progressives who have set themselves up as enemies of the Christian faith...and Campolo has taken their side in the fight by embracing them and voting for them in the voting booth.
Campolo has embraced in his core philosophy, progressive socialism, while attempting to logically justify himself. He fails. Campolo is, in his core, a progressive socialist. After he is a leftist socialist, then he takes the Bible and filters it through. Campolo did not let the Bible shape his world view. He shaped the Bible to fit his. How many women will sadly make the decision to kill their babies because Campolo is on a crusade to "win over" Christians to the left. On one side of his mouth he is against abortion, on the other side, he relentlessly endorses those who would make it widely available. Good try Campolo, but the word for that is hypocrisy. By supporting the left, he further enables abortion, and the removal (not the separation, but the removal) of faith from our society. Stop justifying your theological adultery Campolo.
Campolo and people like him are the reason that the Church is becoming Laodicea. When the moral fabric of our society decays, and the church is silent, what results is utter apathy towards christianity. Campolo is in the tank with the left, yet thinks he can "stand out" by taking a moral high ground. In reality, he is a pawn of the forces of darkness that use him in order to decay and water down the unfettered truth.
He wants to have it both ways: be a progressive socialist, and take sides with the left, and yet be a follower of Jesus. I can only hope that one day his house of cards crumbles to the ground, and he has a crisis of faith that causes him to either abandon Christianity outright, or embrace it fully. But this elaborate logical scheme he has employed to justify mutually exclusive positions and his incessant need to convince other people they can have both worldly and Godly beliefs will hopefully cease.
The path of righteousness is a narrow road. Campolo wants to make it the widest road in the universe. The problem for Campolo is...he is not God, and God already said the road is narrow...and therefore the road remains narrow.
Is he about religion or liberal politics? The answer shocked me. July 19, 2008
10 out of 14 found this review helpful
This book frankly upset me. At times I could hardly read it.
I am a Catholic, not an Evangelical, but I expected to mostly agree with a book written by a Protestant minister.
Campolo's blind indifference to moral problems such as an illegitimacy rate closing in on 40%, the breakdown of the family, and abortion distressed me greatly. He prefers to natter on about lobbyists, gun control and government waste.
How could any believing Christian, and especially a minister, not see the moral chaos around us? Doesn't he care about the harm done to children in our country when families are so unstable? Single parent children are abused in staggering numbers and are at great risk for suicide, drug abuse, school and emotional problems, and sexual promiscuity, as shown in the research of Barbara Defoe Whitehead and Blankenhorn's "Fatherless America". Shouldn't that be what a minister writes about?
Instead Campolo discusses the environment. But everyone agrees with him there. What about a troubling moral issue like abortion? Campolo is "unwilling to become single-issue voters whose politics are determined solely by abortion" (p 121).
I was downright queasy at his solutions to abortion. He believes "enabling poor women to afford a better life is an obvious way to encourage them to reject abortion" (p 122). What about encouraging the father to marry the mother? If we had a society which promoted love, God, and marriage, rather than selfishness, everyone would be better off. And it's exactly what I'd expect a Christian minister to call for.
Over forty MILLION babies have died in America by abortion since legalization. That's a continent of human beings. Campolo seems blind to the situation.
Then there is his take on partial birth abortion, still legal and performed every day in America. A baby has scissors stabbed in his head and then his brains are sucked out. Campolo notes that even in such cases "to vote against abortion is, to some Red letter Christians, a vote against the right of women to make decisions that determine their biological destinies" (p 124). Never mind the rights of the baby whose brains are sucked out. I had to wonder if Campolo had ever asked himself what God wants, not what the smartest way to vote is.
Time and again I agreed with Campolo on small issues, which was pretty much the only things he wrote about. The difference is I found them small and he didn't. I agree "blind patriotism is not a virtue" (p 47) since Christians should care first about God and God's laws. I don't care about politics at all, except for moral issues.
But where is the evidence Campolo cares first about God? And if not God, then what does he believe in? He fusses on about government waste as if government waste wasn't a problem a thousand years ago, and likely will be a problem 1,000 years from now.
Every single issue he mentions is a plank of the Democratic party, and he blindly adheres to every one of them. Like a robot, he reiterates the party line on the minimum wage, gun control, the environment, federal debt, government waste and political lobbyists. How could any religious person think these are critical issues compared to the moral breakdown of our society?
This book distressed me greatly.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
