God's Politics Blog » Bart Campolo

Nothing But Faith

Bart Campolo — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 14:34:33 +0000

The jobs that pay my bills — speaking and managing EAPE – often carry me far from the jobs that don’t: writing and loving my neighbors here in Walnut Hills. Just a few weeks ago I found myself in Port-au-Prince,…

Bedbugs: A Modern-Day Leprosy. Seriously.

Bart Campolo — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:00:59 +0000

Stanley is a dirty old man, and by that I don’t just mean he talks about younger women in inappropriate ways. He smells bad, too. Really bad. On the other hand, Stanley is about as gentle a fellow as you…

Redemptive Poetry on a Night of Violence

Bart Campolo — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:00:22 +0000

It is Sunday night, and I am suddenly awake at the crack of too-close gunfire. I creep to the window without turning on the light, more curious than afraid until I remember I don’t know if my daughter Miranda and…

When Grace Backfires

Bart Campolo — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:00:15 +0000

In 1958 the Teddy Bears released the song “To know him is to love him,” which might as well have been called “To know, know, know, him is to love, love, love, him,” since that’s the way everybody remembers it.…

What is Wrong With Me, When Seeing Babies is Depressing?

Bart Campolo — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:00:54 +0000

I’ve heard from many of you who liked last month’s post, or were at least relieved by its more positive tone. It turns out a lot of folks have been thinking all this ghetto reality is bringing me down, and…

Kids Need All the Positive Words They Can Get

Bart Campolo — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:30:32 +0000

Recently a bunch of people e-mailed me the same New York Times column, which cited a variety of scientific research suggesting that what we think of as intelligence is quite malleable in children and owes little or nothing to genetics. What…

Are We Offering Grace, or Just Another Program?

Bart Campolo — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:00:31 +0000

I really like Marlena, but that doesn’t mean she is a good person. She is smart and easy to talk to, but only if you are talking about her stuff. She is attractive and has her hair done every week,…

A Good Story: ‘I’m Going to Kill You’

Bart Campolo — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:00:12 +0000

I often tell people not to ask me for statistics because in this work all the statistics are bad. Ask me for stories instead, I say, because even in the worst of times I always have a good story. Whether…

Miracle Shots: On the Court and on the Street

Bart Campolo — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:00:02 +0000

I stayed up way too late in a Buffalo hotel room the other night, eating string cheese and Oscar Mayer salami from the convenience store across the parking lot, watching the tail end of the Connecticut-Syracuse basketball game on television.…

My Hope is not Entirely Dead

Bart Campolo — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:52:20 +0000

I want to be hopeful these days, what with Barack Obama just being inaugurated as our nation’s 44th president, but Tanya and Terry are making it awfully hard. I know I shouldn’t let the problems of two little people here in…

Readings on War, Happiness, and Cultural Amnesia

Bart Campolo — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:57:09 +0000

Need a good book? Check out some of these titles:

War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges. Very helpful to my effort to understand what draws people to street life.

Social Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman. Fascinating blend of…

Addicted to the Streets

Bart Campolo — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:35:01 +0000

Twelve years ago our dear friend Julia took a badly neglected baby boy away from his crackhead mother and made him her own. That boy, Michael, is now a strong, quiet, menacingly handsome teenager who adores his “Mom” and grudgingly…

Not Voting is Irresponsible, Not Less Responsible

Bart Campolo — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:01:42 +0000

Dear Shane,

Your recent post is helpful, well-written, and -– to my way of thinking –- very thoughtfully irresponsible. You do own stock in this country’s government, by accident of birth, so you have no choice but to help choose the commander…

A Generational Thing?

Bart Campolo — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:30:37 +0000

Good stuff from both of you, Ryan and Jimmy! Maybe my perspective is a generational thing, and you younger folks have transcended monolithic cultures of origin. Or maybe it’s a generational thing, and you younger folks simply have a different experience and…

Bad News and Good News for a Dream Deferred

Bart Campolo — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:06:43 +0000

Remember Bobbie Williams, the tough but hopeful friend we sent to truck-driving school back in May?

Well, the bad news is that Bobbie washed out of the course a few months later, after her adult daughter suffered complications in childbirth and…

Dealing With Rejection

Bart Campolo — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:06:05 +0000

The other day Marty invited some neighborhood kids over to help with a mailing she brought home from work. Before they got started, she sent 12-year-old Heather across the street to fetch 13-year-old Jasmine, who has been part of our fellowship from the very beginning. Heather returned a few minutes later, alone and puzzled.

"They were in there, but they wouldn't open the door" she told Marty. "Jasmine's mother said you need to call her."

You [...]

Fear and Fun on a Fellowship Field Trip

Bart Campolo — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:35:27 +0000

I've been on lots of roads trips, but none of them compare to The Walnut Hills Fellowship's weekend journey to Chicago. Start to finish, it was a thing of rare beauty. We had been talking about it for months, of course, but I think most of our neighborhood friends still didn't really believe it was going to happen. After all, people around here are always talking about things they don't really intend to do. [...]

Hard-to-Learn Love

Bart Campolo — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:05:54 +0000

I won't even try to describe all of the maddening details of finding a HUD apartment for a homeless, no-income family that consists of a mother, five kids under the age of nine, and a nurturing father. It suffices to say that after three weeks of slogging through that kind of absurdity and ugliness, I began to understand why the mother, our friend Jaleena, tried to kill herself when her original building got condemned. Even with all that, we barely managed an awful apartment, and by the time [...]

Small-Time Ministry, Big-Time Dreams

Bart Campolo — Fri, 09 May 2008 14:39:40 +0000

There are plenty of times I miss running a legitimate ministry organization like Mission Year. Like when I’m breaking down my “office” every night so my family can eat at the kitchen table, or hand-addressing the envelopes for our donation…

Keeping the Faith

Bart Campolo — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:03:44 +0000

For as long as I can remember, I've ended my letters and e-mails with the encouragement "Keep the faith." I must have picked that up from my father, since he's the only person I know who signs off the same way. It might have been more lucrative for me to have picked up "It's Friday, but Sunday's coming!" instead, but I've always preferred the flexibility of the simpler phrase. Not everyone who hopes for God's grace is a Christian, after all, and we who are surely hope for more than that. We [...]