The Life and Witness of Will D. Campbell

  Will D. Campbell is one of my personal heroes in the faith. He was a preacher, writer, activist and gadfly who embodied one way of following Jesus in troubled times.  Sadly, I only discovered Campbell and his writings in the last few years and I have found that far too many Southern Christians have never even heard the name.  So I offer this post as an effort to spread the word: Will D. Campbell deserves a hearing from all Christians, especially American Christians of the South.  The following is in no way original thought.  Rather I offer aspects of Campbell’s life and thought as presented in the biographical work Crashing the Idols: The Vocation of Will. D. Campbell (and every other Christian for that matter) by Richard Goode.  If the following interests you I would highly recommend “Crashing the Idols” as a fine introduction to Campbell’s life and thought. 

William D. Campbell was born on July 18, 1924 in Amite County in Southwest Mississippi.  He was raised a Southern Baptist and eventually East Fork Baptist Church ordained him to the ministry by the laying on of hands (Goode, 4).  Campbell attended Louisiana College in Pineville Louisiana for one year before he was swept up into the spirit of the times and in 1942 he left Louisiana College to join the army.  There he spent three years as a surgical assistant in the south Pacific (Goode, 5-6).  When he returned from WWII he married and finished his undergraduate work with a degree in English at Wake Forrest.  From there he did a year of graduate study at Tulane before he moved on to Yale Divinity School where he graduated in 1952 with a degree in Divinity. 

After graduation Campbell took on a local church in Taylor, Louisiana (Goode, 9).  At his first church Campbell was already showing his tendency to make trouble as he was a vocal advocate for de-segregation and caused a stir by joining picketing workers at a local paper plant.  Campbell served in Taylor for two years before taking a position as the Director of Religious Life at Ole Miss in 1954 (Goode, 10).  At Ole Miss Campbell was involved in several controversies over his outspoken views and actions regarding race relations, including a campus ping pong match between Campbell and an African-American Baptist Clergy colleague (Goode, 13).  After two years of strife Campbell resigned from his post in 1956. 

During this time the National Council of Churches recognized the growing racial tension in the South and hired Campbell as the Associate Executive Director of the Department of Racial and Cultural Relations of the Division of Christian Life and Work of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA (Goode, 15). Based out of Nashville Tn, Campbell’s job was to:

(1) Serve as a liaison between persons and groups subjected to economic pressures as a result of race tensions.

(2) Gather facts regarding race relations in the South and to disseminate such information to denominations and inter-denominational agencies engaged in social action.

(3) Hold and attend conferences on race relations

(4) Function as a resource person for literature and materials on race relations and if necessary write any needed materials himself. 

From his position with the NCC, “Campbell became a kind of itinerant troubleshooter in the civil rights movement” (Goode, 16).  In Little Rock, Arkansas, Campbell was one of the two white Clergymen to escort the ‘little rock nine’ to school through the jeering crowds and National Guard. During this time of intense engagement with the struggle for civil rights, Campbell was quickly showing himself to be a true follower of Jesus Christ. “[Campbell] avoided both political power plays, and an easy demonization of the so-called ‘other side.’  ‘In any concern for social justice,’ Campbell told the NCC in his 1959 report, ‘the soul of the racist must concern us as much as the suffering of the victim, and when it does not we are being something less than Christian’” (Goode, 18).

For Campbell, 2 Corinthians 5 became a central part of his life and Christian action.  There we find Paul saying:

¹⁴For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. ¹⁵And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view;^* even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view,^* we know him no longer in that way. ¹⁷So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,^* not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ²⁰So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Campbell was urged on through hardship and trial, death threats and the murder of friends because he was convinced that Christ died for the victim of racism as well as the offender.  As he was no longer able to regard anyone from a human point of view, he refused to accept the mistreatment of some based on the color of their skin.  On the other hand, because he had been entrusted as a minister of reconciliation, he could not simply condemn the oppressor as a lost cause or as one who was unworthy of God’s grace.  Rather he worked to be an ambassador of God’s justice for the disenfranchised as well as an ambassador of God’s forgiveness for the oppressor. 

One example of this can be found in his response to the murder of his friend Jonathan Daniels.  On August 20, 1965 Jonathan Daniels, a seminary student from Cambridge Mass. was shot and killed while leaving a country store in Lowndes County Alabama.  He was shot by a deputy named Thomas Coleman in plain daylight before multiple witnesses.  Not surprisingly, Thomas Coleman was quickly acquitted by an Alabama court. 

Campbell’s reaction to the murder of his friend is a remarkable act of Christian witness.  In an article titled “Law and Love in Lowndes” Campbell lifts up for us the radically offensive nature of the Good News of Jesus Christ. 

“The notion that a man can go to a store where a group of unarmed human beings are assembled, fire a shotgun blast at one of them, tearing his lungs and heart from his body, turn on another and send lead pellets ripping through his flesh and bones, and that God will set him free is almost more than we can stand.  But unless that is precisely the case then there is no gospel, there is no good news.  Unless that is the truth we are back under the law and Christ’s death and resurrection are of no account. When Thomas killed Jonathan he committed a crime against the state of Alabama.  Alabama, for reasons of its own, chose not to punish him for that crime against itself.  And do we not all know what those reasons were?  When Thomas killed Jonathan he committed a crime against God.  The strange, near maddening thing about this case is that both these offended parties have rendered the same verdict-not for the same reasons, not in the same way, but the verdict is the same-acquittal.”

Campbell’s bold assertion of God’s love and radical grace for a racist murderer can be disturbing.  We are rightly troubled that the court system of Alabama in 1965 would actively prevent justice from being served.  However, we are equally scandalized that God would by the grace of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection forgive or acquit the Thomas Coleman’s of the world.  I think Campbell helps us to see the hypocrisy of claiming that “Jesus died on the cross for MY sins” while being shocked that he might have died on the cross of the sins of those who would harm us.  Campbell asks why would be so shocked at this Gospel acquittal.

“Perhaps it is because we are afraid of the Colemans of this world.  Perhaps it is because they have rebuffed us in the Delta and elsewhere.  But worse than either of these it may be that we just plain do not love them.”

Campbell forces us to reckon with the reckless nature of God’s love.  If we loved Thomas Coleman as God does we would rejoice in his forgiveness.  However, because we are scared of those who would harm us, because we just plain do not love our neighbors as we love ourselves, we build walls, borders, prisons and even churches to protect ourselves. 

Will D. Campbell’s life is one of rich Christian witness to the abundant love of God offered to all people through Jesus Christ.  If the above has challenged you or piqued your interest I highly encourage you to encounter Campbell’s writings for yourself:

• Writings on Reconciliation and Resistance by Will D. Campbell ed. Richard Goode. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2010. 

• Crashing the Idols: The Vocation of Will. D. Campbell (and every other Christian for that matter) by Richard Goode. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2010.

• Brother to a Dragonfly: 25th Anniversary Edition by Will D. Campbell.  London: Continuum, 2000.

Francis Asbury & The Methodists

John H. Wigger, American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

 In American Saint: Francis Asbury & the Methodists, historian John Wigger offers an inspiring biography of Francis Asbury.  Asbury was the second Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the most important figure in the history of American Methodism.  Accordingly, Wigger’s biography is also a history of Methodism in America. In describing the itinerant travels of Asbury American Saint also details the lives of the traveling preachers the good Bishop appointed as well as the challenges the Methodist movement faced in revolutionary era North America.

Methodism arrived and thrived in America as a missional movement for a full 15 years before being formally organized as the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1784. The centrality of mission for early American Methodism is captured by the nineteenth century saying for bad weather, “There’s nothing out today but crows and Methodist preachers” (John H. Wigger, Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America Wigger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 21).  These Methodist preachers, also known as circuit riders, lived a hard life on the road, facing weather, wilderness, illness and angry mobs all from horseback.  As the population of America boomed and expanded westward, many Methodist preachers went off road, daily cutting new trails through harsh wilderness working (as early Methodists were found of saying) ‘from the center to the circumference.’  As the above proverb indicates, regardless of the conditions, these ubiquitous circuit riders pressed forward.

No one embodied this tireless activity more fully than Francis Asbury.  Wigger estimates that from the time of his arrival in American in 1771 until his death in 1816, Asbury “traveled at least 130,000 miles by horse and crossed the Allegheny Mountains some sixty times” (Wigger, American Saint, 3).  During all this time, he never located, owned a home or anything more than he could carry on horseback.  For over 40 years he slept in the homes of the people called Methodist, sharing the joys and strains of their day to day life.  As a result of this constant travel and daily contact with common Americans “he was more widely recognized face to face than any person of his generation, including such national figures as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…and parents named more than a thousand children after him” (Wigger, American Saint, 3).  Asbury’s relentless pace was motivated by a particular understanding of mission that was foundational to early American Methodism.

In 1771 Francis Asbury volunteered to go to America as the third of John Wesley’s officially commissioned Methodist circuit riders sent to the colonies.  On the nearly two month trip from Bristol to Baltimore, the 26 year old Asbury examined his motivations for going to America.

“Whither am I going? To the New World. What to do? To gain honor? No, if I know my own heart. To get money? No: I am going to live to God and to bring others so to do. In America there has been a work of God: some moving first among the Friends, but in time it declined; likewise by the Presbyterians, but amongst them also it declined. The people God owns in England, are the Methodists. The doctrines they preach and the disciple they enforce, are, I believe the purest of any people now in the world. The Lord has greatly blessed these doctrines and this discipline in the three kingdoms: they must therefore be pleasing to him. If God does not acknowledge me in America, I will soon return to England. I know my views are upright now; may they never be otherwise” (Francis Asbury, Journal and Letters of Francis Asbury: In Three Volumes, ed. Elmer Talmage Clark, J. Manning, Potts, and Jacob S. Payton, vol. I: The Journals (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1958, 4-5).

Asbury’s journal entry captures much of the spirit of mission in early American Methodism.  First, Asbury traveled to America in response to God’s prior work on the continent.  Asbury went to America as a missionary following the prevenient work of the Holy Spirit.  As Asbury framed it, “there has been a work of God in America.”  That Asbury hoped to participate in the missional activity of God can be further seen in his explicit recognition that his missionary success would entirely depend upon the presence of God.  “If God does not acknowledge me in America, I will soon return to England.”  The primary factor that would determine the success of Asbury’s journey was not evangelistic techniques or marketing strategy, but rather the action of God.

Secondly, Asbury’s journal entry shows that for early American Methodism, mission was intimately bound up into one’s relationship with God.  As he traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, Asbury answered the question of his own motives by saying “I am going to live to God and to bring others to do the same.”  For Asbury, going – that is, a willingness to be sent – and life with God were deeply related.  Put differently, mission was not a secondary task of the Christian life.  In this way, American Methodist mission thrived off the initiative and zeal of individual Methodists.  Asbury volunteered to go to America “to live to God” because for him, the going and the living were bound together.

Once in America, this eager and responsive model of mission found fertile soil.  It has often been noted, and rightly so, that the traveling lay ministry of early American Methodism was perfectly suited for the rapidly changing social and political context of America in the 1770’s.  For example, the vast majority of the American population lived away from the cities in the still expanding countryside of the South and West.  According to historian Nathan Hatch, during the seventy years following the American revolution, the population grew from two and a half million to twenty million but “despite this dramatic growth, life in the United States remained overwhelmingly rural” (Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989, 3-4).  The itinerant model of mission allowed early American Methodists to follow this population growth, sending Methodist preachers through every community they could find.  As a result, Methodism in America grew as rapidly as the population.  Mission in early American Methodism was adaptive and responsive not only to God, but also to conditions in its larger cultural, social, and political context.

The story of Francis Asbury and early American Methodism is fascinating, inspiring and instructive.  I have come to believe that re-acquainting ourselves with our own history and the missional spirit of early American Methodism is vitally important for the future mission and ministry of The United Methodist Church.  To that end I hope to offer a series of short posts on the life and ministry of Bishop Asbury and I strongly recommend Wigger’s American Saint.