Hello faithful reader and listener and welcome to our first ever Substack audio post.
You may be aware that Tony Campolo, American baptist minister and sociologist, died this week aged 89. Among his many achievements, Tony was one of the founders of the Red Letter Christians movement and you can find their obituary of him here. (We’ve used their photo of Tony too, and would love to credit the photographer but they are not named.)
We’ve long been fans of Tony Campolo and his work. Some of the members of the smallVOICE team were actually fortunate enough to meet and interview him when he came to Glasgow to speak at the Baptist Youth World Conference way back in 1988. He was a fantastic speaker, mixing humour and compassion, and never afraid to challenge those in authority - including in religious circles. He also wasn’t afraid to change his mind over important issues. And yes, all of this did tend to get him into trouble every now and then.
We hope to say a bit more about Tony in our December podcast, but in the meantime we thought it would be a nice tribute to let you hear a feature we put out in the smallVOICE podcast in July 2014, where Darren talked with Anne and Margaret about Tony’s book A Reasonable Faith. We hope it goes some way to demonstrating our appreciation of the man - and explains our reference to Tony giving a sh*t.
We’re also conscious that this is the first time we’ve put out something on Substack featuring our dear friend an co-presenter Anne since she died, just over two years ago. There will never be words to express our appreciation and love for Anne, nor the loss that we continue to feel, but we hope you enjoy hearing Anne’s voice again.
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