Will D. Campbell | The Sun Magazine

Will D. Campbell

Will D. Campbell is a Baptist preacher and civil-rights agitator living in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. His latest book is Soul among Lions: Musings of a Bootleg Preacher (Geneva Press).

— From May 2000
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Reconciled

I was laughing at myself, at twenty years of a ministry which had become, without my realizing it, a ministry of liberal sophistication, an attempted negation of Jesus. A ministry of human engineering, of riding on the coattails of Caesar, of playing in his ballpark, by his rules, and with his ball; of looking to government to make and verify and authenticate our morality, of worshiping at the shrine of enlightenment and academia, of making an idol of the Supreme Court; a theology of law and order and of denying, not only the faith I professed to hold, but my history and my people — the Thomas Colemans. For, as much as Jonathan Daniel, they were loved. And if loved, forgiven. And if forgiven, reconciled.

May 2000
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