Pilgrim: A Theological Memoir

Late pastor Campolo (Connecting Like Jesus), who died in 2024, recounts in this sensitive memoir his lifelong search for a set of “spiritual ethics.” He grew up Baptist, and as an adolescent joined a fundamentalist Christian youth group that promoted the idea that the world is a “dirty and dangerous” place full of spiritually impure people. Charting how he dismantled that theology, Campolo recalls how seeing a woman cast out of his childhood church because she was Black influenced his later efforts as a pastor to expose housing discrimination, and how in 2015 he reversed his long-held opposition to gay marriage, drawing widespread condemnation from evangelical churches and leaders. Woven throughout is an up-close analysis of the hardening of the religious right during the latter half of the 20th century, as leaders wielded highly emotional issues like abortion to galvanize Republican voters and disguise, in Campolo’s words, “the ugliness of their political agenda” on “non-Christian” issues, such as fracking and other environmentally damaging activities. The result is a revealing window into an unique theological mind. (Mar.)