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Speaking My Mind: The Radical Evangelical Prophet Tackles the Tough Issues Christians Are Afraid to Face
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Average Rating:  out of 21 Reviews
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Price: $13.99
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Sale: $3.83
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Manufacturer: Thomas Nelson
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780849908231
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Tony Campolo
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Publisher: Thomas Nelson
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Dewey Decimal Number: 248
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Publication Date: 2005-04-01
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Reading Level: 240
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Description: Fifteen years ago, Tony Campolo's 20 Hot Potatoes That Christians Are Afraid to Touch pushed, pulled, and prodded Christians into serious consideration of controversial but critical issues related to the Christian life. Campolo challenged his more than 150,000 readers to re-think their convictions (and prejudices) and to do something about them! Dubbed by Christianity Today as "the positive prophet" and "a ferocious critic of Christians left and right," Campolo lives up to his reputation in this latest book examining some of today's toughest questions and issues: - Is evangelical Christianity anti-feminist?
- Is our affluent lifestyle at odds with our faith?
- Is America really in moral decline?
- Is Islam really an evil religion?
- Should Christian parents pull their kids out of public schools?
- Was the war with Iraq a "just" war?
Speaking My Mind…Tony Campolo at his best.
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Mostly on Islam: Campolo responds to my email |
Date: 2008-02-08 |
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Details: I have only read the chapter on Islam because that was all I had time to read as I briefly viewed the book. The chapter was extremely disturbing in its inaccuracies and in the transparently obscurantist & apologetic approach Campolo took to the issue. If the other themes in the book were handled with a similar level of academic rigour the book should be considered among the least helpful volumes on contemporary issues and should be treated with great scepticism.
Below is an email I sent to Dr Campolo after reading the chapter:~
"Dear Dr. Campolo,
Having been a fan of yours, having gone out of my way in the past to ... hear you talk and having recommended you to my friends I find your comments on Islam in the above mentioned book extremely troubling.
I am completing an MTh on the subject of dialogue between Evangelical Christianity and Islam and regret to say that your chapter on Islam was extremely unprofessional, I must even go so far as to say it was unethical and outright damaging as regards establishing an informed relationship to Islam.
... Your research seems to have been of the most superficial kind and your readiness to dispense with the very basics of Islam which are widely accepted by Muslims themselves had me, frankly, attributing some ulterior motive to your effort.
To touch on just one point of your departure from the common orthodox Islamic understanding: your statement that the idea that Muhammad married Aisha at the age of 6 found its genesis in a couple of disgruntled ex-Muslims who recently wrote some kind of Islamophobic book is nothing short of asinine. The Bukhari Hadith - one of the two most trusted accounts of the traditions surrounding the life of the Prophet of Islam - states plainly that "The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consumated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. until his death)." Sahih Bukhari Vol. 7, book 62, Hadith 88.
[...]
Sir you have done neither the cause of Christ nor inter-faith relations justice by propagating such falsehoods.
I attach my 13,000 word study on dialogue for your perusal and invite further correspondence."
UPDATE
Reply has been received and is pasted below with my response below that again.
Dr. Campolo:~
"Dear Mr. Howarth,
I do not claim to be an authority on the subject of Islam. However, the
information that was set forth in my book, Speaking My Mind, was largely
gleaned from conversations with Karen Armstrong of Oxford University, who is
considered one of the foremost authorities on the subject. Granted that I
was using a secondary source, but I believe her to be a very trustworthy
source. I may be wrong in what I wrote, but I did want you to know the
source of my information.
Thank you for your thoughtful letter. When time permits, I will look
further into this whole matter.
Sincerely,
Tony Campolo"
My response:~
"Dear Dr. Campolo,
Thank you for your reply. Your uncritical reliance on Karen Armstrong
explains everything about the content of the chapter in question. As I
expect this to be our last communication on the matter, I will be brief.
This is very disappointing. Suppose you, as a lecturer, set an assignment
and a student submitted their paper having in their bibliography one single
author. And that the person's work referred to was of the most ahistorical
& jaundiced nature. What mark would you give that assignment?
As an Evangelical there are several stellar Islamicists you could have
chosen to rely on, my fellow Anglicans Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali and Canon
Patrick Sookhdeo to mention only two. The fact that you chose to ignore such
people and focus on perhaps the most prejudiced apologist for Islam we
currently have should be a cause of intense embarassment for an Evangelical
academic. The fact that many thousands of Bible believing Christians will
read your chapter on Islam trusting you give an accurate picture upon which
they can base their relationship both to Islam and to Muslims should have
engendered in you an acute desire to transmit the very best information
available. Apparently it did not.
You said in the book that if Muhammad had in fact married a six-year old
that he would be a paedophile and naturally we should condemn him. I don't
quite agree with that harsh analysis, however, now that you have found this
to be the reality will you now come out and publically state this?
I encourage you to read the works of the authors mentioned above and others
I refer to in my assignment. This is too urgent a matter to remain
uninformed about. There is absolutely no reason why Christians should stop
loving and working for justice for Muslims simply because they have a
realistic idea of the more unpalatable realities of their religion. In fact to continue to
blunder on in the dark will only lead to greater sufferring.
In Christ,
Graeme Howarth"
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Review Summary: My Mind Can't Speak b/c it Hurts |
Date: 2007-10-17 |
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Details: Typical of Tony Campolo, Speaking My Mind offers a intelligent explanation for the tough issues facing modern day Christ-followers. The chapter on Science was worth the price of the book. It's a challenging read for many reasons, but one you won't regret. |
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Review Summary: NOT An Update of 20 Hot Potatoes |
Date: 2007-05-09 |
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Details: I had used the book 20 Hot Potatoes Christians Are Afraid to Touch as a resource for teaching a Sunday School class years ago, and found it to be provocative, discussion starting, and yet grounded in the Biblical tradition of which Tony Campolo is a part (American Baptist). I thought this book might be an update of that book, and ordered it for use in teaching a class. I find it to be difficult for the participants in the class to understand. The chapters are longer than the earlier work, and the discussions are less thought-provoking.
For a reader interested in the sociology of religion or theology and its relation to current controversial topics, this is a good book. For the general reader, I'm not sure it's the best of its genre. |
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Review Summary: Excellent survey of Evangelical issues |
Date: 2007-05-08 |
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Details: `Speaking My Mind' by sociologist and writer on Christian Evangelical themes is a remarkably refreshing statement of social and theological positions from within what is traditionally known as American Christian Fundamentalism. For me, who see Fundamentalism from the perspective of `conventional' (I am Lutheran), churches this book is a revelation of the diversity of social, political, and theological positions in this large block of American Christians.
While I find the title a perfect reflection of the book's point of view, the subtitle is a Gordian knot of misstatements, and I am very happy that the author points out that it was provided by his publisher and not by his own pen. The most misleading suggestion in this subtitle is the notion that Mr. Campolo is a prophet. His area of expertise is as a sociologist, and he speaks with great authority from that speciality. He also demonstrates a sound knowledge of Bible study, which serves him well in criticizing some Fundamentalist social positions that use scripture to support their stand.
I have been avoiding the use of `Evangelical' up to now in speaking of the body of Christians to which Mr. Campolo claims allegiance. This is because my own Lutheran church, following the lead of Martin Luther, emphasize the teachings of the bible and eschewed layers of interpretation laid on it by the Roman Catholic church in the 1500 years leading up to the Reformation. In fact, `Evangelical' is part of the name of the Lutheran church in America and the Luther inspired church in Europe is simply the `Evangelical' church. In spite of our sharing this name with the `non-liturgical' churches such as the Baptists (Campolo's denomination), Lutherans and Campolo's `Evangelicals' tend to interpret scripture just a bit differently. I will go out on a limb here and say that Evangelical fundamentalists take scripture just a bit more literally and may give just a bit more weight to the Old Testament than Luther and Lutherans, whose center of gravity is usually Paul's Epistle to the Romans, which demonstrates how the Gospel of Christ replaces Old Testament covenants. But the theological difference between liturgical and non-liturgical denominations is not the subject of this book.
Campolo's subject in Part I is a sociological discussion of how Evangelical Fundamentalists have become so successful at the expense of the more conventional liturgical denominations, commonly grouped together in The American Council of Churches. The vanguard of this success is the Reverend Billy Graham, whose crusades pushed awareness of this reading of Christianity with success similar to the `Great Awakening' in colonial America. And, not only were fundamentalists successful in recruiting domestic members, they have had far greater success in spreading missionaries throughout the world.
In Part II Campolo speaks of issues in both social policy and in theology. On the first, Campolo is lucid, authoritative, and convincing. On the second, where he is the amateur Theologian and semi-professional Bible scholar, he is less convincing, however, his weaknesses here to my Lutheran eyes may be less with Campolo's own positions than in his loyalty to the literal authority of scripture, and his reliance on the writings of theologians representing his wing of Christianity.
This appraisal in no way diminishes the superb value of Campolo's book as a survey of issues arising from Evangelical Fundamentalism.
Campolo's treatment of Evangelical Fundamentalism's doctrines on the role of women and on homosexuality is lucid and heart-felt. This is especially true of his position with regard to homosexuality, where he even disagrees with his wife by being closer to the center of Fundamentalist doctrine, while still criticizing the patent unfairness of many Fundamentalist spokespeople on the issue. The interesting theological issue here may be the kind of legalistic analysis of scripture at which our Jewish friends are so good. While there are New Testament statements against homosexual practice, especially from St. Paul, Campolo makes excellent points that suggest Paul was not railing against what we know as safe, consensual sex with a person of the same sex, but specific practices which may have even been aberrant in Hellenistic society, which at the very least, tolerated homosexuality. Campolo still comes down against homosexual practice (but not homosexual inclinations). I may suggest that the scriptural command to love your neighbor and `do unto others as you would have them do unto you' trumps specific bans, even from the pen of such an important source as St. Paul. This `prime commandment' is the one from which all other rules flow.
One topic I find most interesting is Campolo's attempt to reconcile Christian doctrine with science. By citing several important authorities, he makes an attractive case; however, the effort is ultimately misdirected. Scientific and Theological doctrines are simply in two entirely different worlds of discourse, and hooking the believability of a Theological doctrine on a scientific theory (in Campolo's case, Einstein's theory of relativity) is cast adrift if science disproves the theory on the basis of improved observation, just as Michaelson and Morley disproved the existence of ether, clearing the way for Einstein's theory. The most compelling image here is Wittgenstein's metaphor of language as a toolbox, with tools for a wide variety of purposes, and (my extension here) science's ruler and calipers cannot do the same job of Theology's hammer and saw. The sooner Evangelical Fundamentalists move on beyond the red herring of creationism, the sooner they will have more energy to devote to more substantial issues.
I was especially interested in Campolo's dismissal of John Robinson's famous short book, `Honest to God', which rested on theology from Dietrich Bonhoffer and addressed the `Is God Dead' issue so popular in the 1960s. This book awoke my interest in Christian thinking, especially as it was consistent with the compelling views of existentialist theologian, Soren Kierkegaard.
As a laundry list of `tough issues', this book is superb, and I have not touched on all of them. I only wish Campolo had given us a bibliography of all his sources.
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Review Summary: Words From a Wise Man |
Date: 2007-03-19 |
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Details: In this book Dr. Tony Campolo presents his thoughts and opinions on some of the issues of today: the war in Iraq, Islam, homosexual marriage, sexism, racism, etc... In the pages of this book, his thoughts are clearly presented.
Tony Campolo is a great preacher. In 45 minutes he can present God's message crystal clear stripped of all politics and other outside influences. If you're on an life issue, listening to him preach will clear it up. Is it ok for a Christian to drive a BMW? What should I do with my life? Is God a compassionate loving God of the New Testament or a righteous discilinary God of the Old Testament? Listen to Tony preach, and formerly unclear, muddy issues are clear.
He has 71 years of life experience most as a Christian. He has been a pastor, a professor, a manager, a father, and a missionary. Sitting at his feet and listening to what he says is well worth the time.
He makes some very telling observations. With respect to homosexuality, he notes that many who fight against homosexual marriages don't object to divorce and remarriage even though Jesus said that is adultery. With respect to Iraq, he pondered what would have been the result if we as a Christian nation followed the Biblical principle of loving (and feeding) thy enemy rather than over a decade of economic sanctions and no fly zones.
There are some very interesting original comments in this book. THIS IS NOT THE SAME OLD SAME OLD!
At the same time I must say that he is NOT a theologian. With respect to wives submitting to their husbands, he uses Ephesians 5:21-25. 5:22 says "Wives submit yourselves to your husbands" but 5:21 says "submit yourselves one to another". Tony claims that 5:21 Paul is speaking specifically to married couples and therefore he interprets the passage not as wives submit to your husbands but as submit yourselves one to another. He neglects to point out that Colossians 3:18 and 1 Peter 3, the same wives submit to your husbands command is given WITHOUT the "submit yourselves one to another" qualifier. He also neglects to point out 1 Cor. 11 that says that the head of the woman is man. Did Tony ignore this? Or was he ignorant of it? Either way is concerning. It is one thing to interpret the Bible in light of the culture at the time and conclude that maybe the literal application is not right for today's society. It is another thing to intentionally twist scripture so that it fits what you want to believe.
In the subject of whether there is a second chance for those who die without Christ, Tony is also kind of fast and loose with scripture.
But nevertheless, he has a lot to say, and a lot of what he says is very meaningful and well worth reading. |
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