Justice & Law Quote by Tony Campolo

Campolo’s line slices the culture-war knot with a pastor’s scalpel: separate the paperwork from the sacrament, and you stop forcing either institution to impersonate the other. The intent is practical, but the rhetoric is quietly radical for a clergyman. He isn’t merely tolerating pluralism; he’s insisting that the church’s moral authority depends on not outsourcing its definitions to the state.

The subtext is an attempt to preserve religious integrity while expanding civil equality. “The state ought to do its thing” sounds almost dismissive, but it’s strategic. Campolo shrinks government down to its proper, boring role: distributing legal rights. In that framing, equal access isn’t a special favor; it’s baseline competence. Then he reclaims “marriages” for the church, where blessing is discretionary. It’s a carve-out that protects conscience without weaponizing it.

Context matters: Campolo is a prominent evangelical voice associated with the Religious Left, speaking into decades of American conflict over same-sex marriage and the fear, on both sides, that recognition equals coercion. His solution tries to short-circuit that panic. Civil unions become the universal legal category; “marriage” becomes a denominational term, not a national battleground.

Why it works is in the balancing act: he offers conservatives an escape from the perceived threat to doctrine and offers liberals a clear path to equal rights. The cost is cultural: redefining “marriage” as a contested label rather than a shared civic institution. Campolo wagers that peace is worth the semantic surrender.