Bestselling Christian author, activist, and scholar Tony Campolo and his
son Bart, an avowed Humanist, debate their spiritual differences and
explore similarities involving faith, belief, and hope that they share.
Over a Thanksgiving dinner, fifty-year-old Bart Campolo announced to his
Evangelical pastor father, Tony Campolo, that after a lifetime immersed
in the Christian faith, he no longer believed in God. The revelation
shook the Campolo family dynamic and forced father and son to each
reconsider his own personal journey of faith--dual spiritual
investigations into theology, faith, and Humanism that eventually led
Bart and Tony back to one another.
In Why I Left, Why I Stayed, the Campolos reflect on their individual
spiritual odysseys and how they evolved when their paths diverged. Tony,
a renowned Christian teacher and pastor, recounts his experience, from
the initial heartbreak of discovering Bart's change in faith, to the
subsequent healing he found in his own self-examination, to his
embracing of his son's point of view. Bart, an author and Humanist
chaplain at the University of Southern California, considers his faith
journey from Progressive Christianity to Humanism, revealing how it
affected his outlook and transformed his relationship with his father.
As Why I Left, Why I Stayed makes clear, a painful schism between
father and son that could have divided them irreparably became instead
an opening that offered each an invaluable look not only at what
separated them, but more importantly, what they shared.
