And speaking of old files, THE SCRAPBOOK was startled to find a clipping from President Clinton’s favorite evangelical, his spiritual adviser Tony Campolo, warning that “To tie up evangelicalism with any particular presidential administration is a serious mistake. It should be obvious that if that administration becomes tarnished by scandal, then evangelicals will be harmed by association.”
Then we noticed the date on the clip: It was a remnant from the bad old days of the Reagan administration — May 9, 1987 — when Campolo, a leading evangelical liberal, deplored religious conservatives’ allowing themselves “to be put into the hip pocket of the Reagan administration.”
Campolo’s own political activism goes back at least to his unsuccessful run for Congress in the early 1970s as a McGovernite Democrat. In this decade, his political enthusiasms led him to become a frequent visitor at a White House that eventually did, spectacularly, become tarnished by scandal. Perhaps to his credit, Campolo stood by the president who had called him “my good friend” in the 1994 State of the Union address. On the other hand, Campolo’s insight from 12 years ago that close association with the scandal-prone can harm a reputation wasn’t all wrong. His own activities may not have helped the cause of liberal evangelicalism.
