By CASEY DUNNING
Tony Campolo, a provocative national religious speaker, is coming to Missoula to address people from a spectrum of religious perspectives.
Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University and the founder and president of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, will talk about the need for differing religious groups to respect each other, find common ground and collaborate toward serving marginalized people in our communities.
Campolo’s March 14 talk will serve as a kickoff event for the Missoula Interfaith Collaborative, a relatively new organization committed to working on homelessness, food shortages, domestic and sexual violence and other pressing community issues.
Campolo’s talk is titled “Putting Feet on Your Faith,” and he has been a steadfast advocate urging Christians to do just that in terms of social change. In fact, Eastern University has a school named in honor of the professor/pastor: The Campolo School of Social Change, where graduate programs are “aimed at developing Christian professionals who will use their skills to transform urban communities around the world.”
Nationally recognized Sociologist, Pastor & Motivator, Tony Campolo addresses “Putting Feet On Our Faith”.
He has written more than 35 books and served as a spiritual advisor to President Bill Clinton. Campolo is also one of the founders of the Red Letter Christian movement and blogs regularly at his website, redletterchristians.org. The goal of Red Letter Christians is, “To take Jesus seriously by endeavoring to live out His radical, counter-cultural teachings as set forth in Scripture, and especially embracing the lifestyle prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount.”
The Missoula Interfaith Collaborative is excited to have Campolo come to Missoula because he’s been a leading voice calling for the world’s great religions to overcome theological and historical differences and converge on the common values of compassion, love, and peace for each other and the world.
“We’ve had pastors living and working in this town for years who have never met because they come from different theological and ideological perspectives,” said Rev. John Lund of Emmaus Campus Ministry. “With MIC and now Tony coming to town, we are actually all going to sit down and have a conversation with the hope of many more to come.”
The collaborative started in the fall of 2011 as part of a master’s practicum research project at the University of Montana. The project soon found widespread interest and energy among both faith communities and social agencies, and now has threepracticum students, three service projects, and plans to launch as a funded nonprofit by June.
The three projects are: partnering with Opportunity Resources to help build social contacts and opportunities for ORI clients; working with the Poverello to train and staff volunteers for the Homeless Outreach Team; and working with faith leaders and agency staff to empower faith communities to proactively address domestic and sexual violence in our community.
“We have been trying to figure out how to engage faith communities on domesticviolence issues for years but have never had a collaborative way to do so,” said KellyMcGuire of the Missoula County Crime Victim Advocate’s office. “In working with MIC, we are finally able to make some headway, which is exciting.”
For more information check out their the Collaborative’s website, or find them on Facebook.
