Will D. Campbell

Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

Reconciled

I was laughing at myself, at twenty years of a ministry which had become, without my realizing it, a ministry of liberal sophistication, an attempted negation of Jesus. A ministry of human engineering, of riding on the coattails of Caesar, of playing in his ballpark, by his rules, and with his ball; of looking to government to make and verify and authenticate our morality, of worshiping at the shrine of enlightenment and academia, of making an idol of the Supreme Court; a theology of law and order and of denying, not only the faith I professed to hold, but my history and my people — the Thomas Colemans. For, as much as Jonathan Daniel, they were loved. And if loved, forgiven. And if forgiven, reconciled.

May 2000