Will Campbell cracks me up! He’s the only Baptist preacher I know of that can be described as “Author, civil rights activist and Baptist minister Will Campbell is friend to Klansmen, whores and the hopeless —but he rejects the “soul molesters” of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
I met him several years ago at St Charles Ave Baptist Church in New Orleans. This summer, when I spoke there on three occasions, my hands shook as I thought of teaching from the same place as Campbell, Frank Stagg (Another of my Baptist heroes), and others.
Here’s a link to a very detailed story about Campbell. It contains some gems like these:
At one time, before they became lifelong friends, Campbell simply baffled Kris Kristofferson, who read about Campbell in a Life magazine article and realized it was the preacher who had an office directly below his small apartment on Nashville’s 18th Avenue.
“What the hell kind of place is this?” yelled Kristofferson, barging into Campbell’s office. “You’ve got a preacher who marches with Dr. Martin Luther King and also ministers to members of the Ku Klux Klan. I’m a Rhodes Scholar, and I don’t understand that.”
“Maybe the reason you don’t understand it is that you are a Rhodes Scholar,” Campbell said.
Campbell recalls the time a few years ago when the SBC held its annual meeting in New Orleans and the Convention’s Lifeway Bookstore told a publisher that he could not sell Campbell’s books at its facility. This was also the time when Will was in the press room at the annual meeting and encountered a man well on his way to becoming one of the highest ranked Convention officials. The two began discussing the proposed expansion of the federal death penalty.
“You do believe in the Commandment, ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’ don’t you?” Campbell asked.
“Well, certainly,” the SBC official said.
“Well, then, surely you are opposed to this death penalty expansion?” Campbell asked.
“Absolutely not,” the official said with resolve. “We sent a letter to the White House in support.”
“Well then, you are a hypocrite and a jackass,” Campbell said.
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