Seeing Red Letters

A November 2024 article in Christianity Today announced the death of Tony Campolo. Campolo was an in-demand speaker and writer, especially in the late twentieth century. He was often “edgy” in what he presented and how he presented it. One thing that Campolo was particularly famous for was what he called “red letter Christianity.” He promoted his view of faith and the world by focusing on a common phenomenon in many Bibles: printing the words of Jesus in red ink. 

Where did that practice get started? According to a Crossway article, “The Origins of the red-Letter Bible,” the red-letter Bible is a fairly recent thing in the history of the church. It was the brainchild of Louis Klopsch, editor of Christian Herald magazine around the beginning of the twentieth century. The first red-letter edition came out in 1899. In my seminary days I worked at a Christian bookstore in downtown Cincinnati. Many customers who came in shopping for Bibles demanded they be red-letter versions. Many also wanted the words “Holy Bible” printed on the outside cover, but that’s another story. 

Tony Campolo used this situation to promote his view of the Christian faith. He launched Red Letter Christians. It is still an active group with a website, devoted to just what Campolo promoted: connecting Christians to left-leaning politics. He thought he could best make his case by appealing to “the words of Jesus.” He described his view of the Bible this way: 

“I believe the Bible to have been written by men inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit. I place my highest priority on the words of Jesus, emphasizing the 25th chapter of Matthew, where Jesus makes clear that on Judgment Day, the defining question will be how each of us responded to those He calls ‘the least of these.’” 

Campolo went much further than this. He insisted that the response of Christians to this matter had to include Christians lobbying for governments to do most of the responding. Campolo criticized evangelicals for embracing right wing politics. His solution was to urge evangelicals to embrace left wing politics—and that is exactly what he did. He thought his elevation of the words spoken by Jesus to an authoritative status over the rest of the Bible would aid his campaign to promote Christian acceptance of left-wing politics. 

What I did not realize until researching this article was just how closely Campolo’s use of the “red letters” fit with the intent of Louis Klopsch in first creating a red-letter edition of the Bible. According to Klopsch: 

“Modern Christianity is striving zealously to draw nearer to the great Founder of the Faith. Setting aside mere human doctrines and theories regarding Him, it presses close to the Divine Presence, to gather from His own lips the definition of His mission to the world and His own revelation of the Father.” 

While Klopsch does not state this, implicit in what he says about the red-letter Bible is that what Peter, John, or Paul might say about God, Christ, and the Christian faith might not be quite as good, not quite as accurate, as what Jesus says about these matters. 

This is a theme that far too many Christians have silently accepted for far too long. Red-letter editions of the Bible are probably not just an innocent, colored ink curiosity. They quietly introduce a dangerous false doctrine. 

However, the words spoken by Jesus during His ministry are not more important or more accurate than the words of the Apostles. How do we know this? In one of the great ironies of all time, in those very red letters so near and dear to the hearts of Klopsch and Campolo, Jesus says so! We find these words in John 16:12-15. And, yes, in the digital edition of the NIV in my collection, these words are in digital red ink, so to speak. Jesus, speaking to the twelve, says: 

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own; He will speak only what He hears, and He will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to Me by taking from what is Mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is Mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is Mine and make it known to you.” 

It is difficult to read this as anything but Jesus saying that when those who will be Apostles speak and write, they will not be writing their own words, but the very words of Jesus, delivered to them by the Holy Spirit. What this means is that if you take the “red letters” of the Bible as somehow more authoritative than the rest of the New Testament, you are contradicting Jesus! If you think what Jesus says is a more direct and pristine revelation of the nature of God and His will than the later teaching of the Apostles, you are at odds with God. 

With this whole false view of the Bible in mind, Tony Campolo came to all kinds of highly questionable positions. He claimed that there are “2,000 verses of Scripture that call upon us to respond to the needs of the poor.” He never bothered to point out that in none of these does the Bible call on Christians to lobby for the state to do this “caring.” However, in his red-letter quest to convince evangelicals to be political leftists, Campolo went beyond just advocating for an ever-larger welfare state. 

Campolo beat the Supreme Court of the United States to the punch in redefining marriage. According to the Christianity Today article, “Campolo, grounding the argument in his faith, said he believed the primary purpose of marriage is sanctification. A same-sex marriage should be affirmed by the church, he said, if it encouraged people to grow in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and the other fruits of the Spirit.” This sounds suspiciously like an end-justifies-the-means argument. Somehow, with red letters perhaps, a practice on the list of “will not inherit the kingdom of God” activities is transformed into an approved practice. Transformed, that is, once left-leaning politics so declared that it should be. 

Our purpose here is not to castigate the late Tony Campolo. From everything he wrote and said, Campolo was completely sincere and very honest about what he believed. Sadly, he was very mistaken about some of what he believed. His use of the red-letter Bible phenomenon was also sincere, but it was utterly mistaken and completely misleading to far too many people. 

This is because it was one of those things that, at first glance, seemed good at a superficial level. Why wouldn’t we want to elevate the very words of Jesus? That just sounds holy, and like the right thing to do. It does, if you don’t bother to think about it much, seem like a “Christian” thing to do. It seems like it, that is, until we engage our minds with Scripture and examine things even a little below the surface. 

Tony and his red-letter friends are a good example of something Christians need to be on constant guard against. Tony Campolo was an excellent public speaker. He was engaging in the way people used to being entertained can enjoy. He sometimes had some good things to say, but that didn’t make his worst conclusions reasonable or scriptural. 

Perhaps red-letter Bibles can serve a good purpose if we use them properly. A whole movement promoted its ends based on an appeal to those red letters. People, accustomed to red-letter Bibles for almost a century, accepted that appeal. When you see those red letters in your Bible, don’t think of the words of Jesus. Think of a “STOP” sign. When you hear something theological that sounds smooth and attractive, stop and think about for more than a moment. Examine the Scriptures to see if that slick-sounding thing is really true. 

* Kent B. True is the alter ego of Harold N. Orndorff, Jr., a retired campus minister who has taught college and seminary courses in the fields of apologetics, philosophy, ethics, and logic. Lately he enjoys studying his grandchildren, who are very interesting one and all.