Meet ‘God + Country’ Talking Head Simone Campbell: A Queer-Affirming Zen Mystic Who Denies Jesus’s Miracles

The upcoming documentary “God And Country,” produced by Rob Reiner, alleges that politically active conservative Christians (all lumped together under the label “Christian Nationalism”) don’t understand True Christianity and have let politics subsume their faith. However, if you take a look at who is delivering this message, this accusation is a clear case of DARVO (an acronym for “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender”).

To a person, the film’s talking heads all display eye-socket logs of theological compromise in service of politics. In this series of articles, you will see the “experts” of “God And Country” are either firmly outside Christianity in theology and practice or deeply compromised on basic Christian ethics.

Today, we will examine perhaps the most obscure figure seen in the G+C trailer: Sister Simone Campbell, a longtime political lobbyist who is largely unknown in the Protestant evangelical world. “Is Christian nationalism Christian?” she is heard in the preview clip. “Um, no, it isn’t,” she replies, wincing with concern.

Later in the trailer, Campbell declares, “Being a Christian is about the values of inclusion. Christian nationalism is certainly not based on the values of the gospel.” But what is her gospel? A review of Campbell’s writings and speeches will reveal a thoroughly 21st-century view of the gospel, mostly indistinguishable from Unitarian Universalism, where mysticism, unchecked empathy, and far-left politics all but erase the actual good news of Jesus Christ found in the scriptures.

Simone Campbell, Friend to the World

Sister Campbell recently stepped down from her leadership role at NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice. Among its backers were the pro-abortion, pro-queer Ford Foundation, to the tune of $350,000. Asked by Catholic News Agency (CNA) about those grants, Campbell shrugged it off as “small money” that hasn’t “changed our mission.”

She personally remains a Senior Fellow at Auburn Seminary, which is not a school that grants degrees but an organization to support “influential faith leaders who are committed to catalyzing and advancing multifaith movements for justice.” Her colleagues include non-Christians such as Linda Sarsour and Christian-identifying non-Christians such as Jacqui Lewis.

Campbell was a speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2022, and she described the conference as “two days that vibrated with hope.”

Even if you don’t see any problem in these globalist, leftist organizations platforming her, we don’t need mere guilt by association to make a point about Campbell’s values. These associations give the color and setting for the content of Campbell’s ideas. In whose presence is she comfortable? Who seeks out her participation to advance their agenda among (at least nominal) Christians? And why? When we examine her beliefs, the picture becomes clear.

The “Zen Contemplative” Nun

Sister Campbell makes no effort to hide her New Age practices and beliefs, often referring to herself as a “Zen contemplative” in her own biographical blurbs. In a 2013 lecture at Union Theological Seminary, she said Zen practice “became the ground of my spirituality” after she was introduced to the mystical discipline. 

In a 2015 interview for the public radio show On Being, Campbell expressed a kind of monism she discerned through Zen meditation:

Zen can be used with any content because Zen is the discipline of the meditation. And — OK, so my experience was this, of meeting, of having in my imagination the sense of a sage. Saying — inviting me to go deeper. And that — being willing to do that was the biggest gift of my life ever. And being willing to know that — how can I say this? Well, to know that we’re one body. All of creation is one body. And I’m only just a little piece of it. [emphasis added]

Several public statements suggest that she holds to a universalist or possibly panentheistic stance. While talking about a particular Zen retreat, the nun admirably recalls gaining empathy for Republican lawmakers like Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell. However, she describes her thought process in a strange way: “What I got pushed to understand was that if I was at odds with the god in them, I’m at odds with the god in me.”

In the summer of 2020, she prayed an invocation at the Democratic National Convention, addressing her god as a generic “Divine Spirit.” A clip promoting the 2015 documentary Radical Grace (executive producer: Susan Sarandon), titled “Sister Simone Campbell challenges religious fundamentalism,” shows her say that God is present wherever a person may “find joy.” Holiness and lawfulness (derisively referred to as “the rules”) have little to do with it.

In her book Hunger For Hope: Prophetic Communities, Contemplation And The Common Good, Campbell writes at length about her Zen practice, offering her clearest denial of the exclusivity of Jesus Christ: “Spirituality is at the core of our daily lives and struggles… For me, this spirituality is rooted in the Catholic tradition, but I have come to learn that there are many ways to be open to the divine presence in our midst. In my experience, it is this divine presence that knits us together. You do not have to be Christian or Catholic for this journey. You just have to be open to a story that is bigger than your own” [emphasis added].

Note the irony of this proclamation. In G+C, Campbell is gatekeeping who is a true Christian and who is a false one. But she also clearly and publicly transgresses a core belief of Christianity, that Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father (John 14:6). Elsewhere in the book, she makes it obvious she sees this generic “divine presence” as the creator and sustainer of life (“we are hummed into existence by the Divine at every moment”), a role only ascribed to YHWH in the Bible. These statements amount to a denial that Christ is the only way to the Father, that in Jesus dwells all the fullness of deity (Colossians 2:9) and there is no deeper level of deity one can experience apart from him.

Revising Scripture, Diminishing Jesus

Also in Hunger For Hope, Campbell shares a strange anecdote about an interview with James Martin, the Jesuit priest who has been influential in Pope Francis’s embrace of queer sexualities:

He began with what he considered an easy question. He asked me to share my “favorite story of Jesus.” Usually I am very nimble in interviews, but this time I could not think of a single scripture story! We were both surprised.

Laughing, I finally responded that my community was dedicated to the Holy Spirit, so could he ask me about the Holy Spirit… His Jesuit community is dedicated to Jesus and therefore focused on the gospel story; my community focuses on Pentecost and the post-Pentecost vibrancy of the Holy Spirit alive in our world.

Campbell shrugs this episode off as an illustration of different emphases in different church organizations. However, it is part of a larger pattern of downplaying the incarnated Lord Jesus in her faith. In her public ministry, the activist does cite stories from the gospels often, though twisting their meaning into mere allegories for her social activism (more on that later). While researching her public statements, I have seen almost no mention of the cross, the atonement, or the resurrection from the dead.

In one egregious case, Campbell denies one of Jesus’s miracles recorded in scripture. She wrote a poem titled “Loaves and Fish”:

I always joked that the miracle of
loaves and fish was sharing,
The women always knew this.
But in this moment of need and notoriety,
I ache, tremble, almost weep at
folks so hungry, malnourished, faced
with spiritual famine of epic proportions.
My heart aches with their need.
Apostle-like, I whine, what are we
among so many?
The consistent 2,000-year-old ever-new
response is this:
Blessed and broken, you are enough.
I savor the blessed, cower at the broken, and
pray to be enough.

Looking back to G+C, obviously the film is going to do some nitpicking, particularly with charismatic preachers who have been overzealous in spiritualizing their support for Donald Trump. Those people do need correction – but not from anyone who denies the miracles of Jesus to score misandrist points.

What is the “Gospel of Inclusion”?

When not writing interpolations for the scriptures, Sister Campbell routinely twists the meaning of passages to fit her purely political paradigm.

In a 2013 op-ed for the Washington Post, she rejoiced that the newly-installed Pope Francis “seems to be loosening the bondage of fear that has held our leadership silent – and stifled the Gospel of inclusion.” 

She does not clearly define that term in the article or elsewhere, though she presents a vision of the Catholic Church “welcoming everyone into the community,” particularly those of queer sexuality, and points to several Bible stories as prooftexts:

The Gospels are filled with examples of Jesus teaching us to reach out to and welcome those who have been marginalized by others. Jesus reached out to the lepers, healed the Roman occupier’s son, asked the Samaritan woman for help, and prevented the woman taken in adultery from being stoned by judgmental men.

There is a truism here. Jesus did connect to social outcasts. However, he welcomed them into a particular kingdom, a kingdom with a particular king who has a particular law and who commands a particular faith. Those who reject his rule and authority do not become part of the kingdom, no matter how hospitably we treat them. To paraphrase the film Ratatouille: Anyone from anywhere can become a Christian, but not everyone will become a Christian.

More errors are readily evident in her view of the gospel. “The gospel is about fighting for a vision,” she said in a 2018 speech. “Politics is where our gospel lives in society,” she said in 2020. “How do we carry out the gospel in our social setting? It’s through the political realm. We have to care for those who are at the margins and to change the systems that create the margins.”

The word of God instead explains that the gospel is the good news of what Jesus has done for sinners, not the possibility of what man can do for society (1 Corinthians 15:1-11). As I often explain, the problem with the social gospel or liberation theology is the same problem as Bethel or other sects that claim the gospel is incomplete without miracles and healing on command in the life of the believer. 

God certainly will perform miraculous healings for his people, and he certainly will influence society through his people. Yet you could never see a single healing and you could never see a single law change, and you would still have the whole gospel if your sins are forgiven, the Holy Spirit dwells in you, and you have a sure hope of a bodily resurrection and eternal life with the Lord.

Campbell gets much more blatant with her mishandling of scripture elsewhere. “Jesus speaks of the need to be born again [John 3:3], and I have a hunch that the new birth we need to look for is this chance for politics to move away from moneyed interest towards the people’s interest,” she said in a 2015 speech.

In a 2017 address to mark Ash Wednesday, Campbell quotes 2 Corinthians 6:2, saying, ““[Paul writes] now is the day of salvation.’ Join me. I need you and, quite frankly, you need me to work together to create this day of salvation so that all are welcome.”

It’s quite obvious what’s wrong here, but let’s again take a moment to reflect. These anachronistic applications fit the pattern of her revision to the feeding of the thousands: rejecting God’s mighty works of salvation and offering a cheap replacement (man’s efforts toward utopia). She is clearly blinded to the actual power of the word of God. And yet Reiner’s film leans on her as an expert to define true Christianity.

Fully Affirming, Celebrating Pride Month

In addition to anti-Christian theology and spirituality, Campbell stands for anti-Christian ethics, clearly endorsing unrepentant sexual sin. In 2018, her lobbyist org NETWORK announced it was celebrating Pride Month. The next year, Campbell and NETWORK endorsed the so-called “Equality Act,” a direct assault on Christian conscience (e.g. forcing adoption charities to place children with queer couples) and a legal buttress for insanity like transgender athletes in girl’s sports.

In an interview for a podcast titled “Whosoever You Love,” recorded in the Human Rights Campaign’s studios, Campbell explained and defended her choice to support the bill. Show notes acknowledge the podcast was supported by the Arcus Foundation, a nonprofit led by billionaire Jon Stryker with an oddly specific dual focus: social justice for queer communities and ape conservation.

Campbell gives her full endorsement to the story of a woman who chose to live as a lesbian rather than repent (she derisively calls this “deprogramming”), gushing that her story is beautiful and inspirational:

Q: How are you able to reconcile your status in the [Catholic Church] with advocacy that can seem at odds with the perception and the hierarchy of that denomination?

Campbell: Well, for me, it’s a question of prayer and reading the gospel. And Jesus walked towards those who were suffering and included them. Welcomed them. Invited them in. And in my travels around the country, hearing the stories of the LGBTQ community, it’s anguish. It’s anguish. And the woman I lifted up at the rally that we were doing, or prayer vigil or whatever [low-quality video here: Campbell speaks at 12:51]. It was a mix of prayer and rally. The story of Nina, who had been thrown out of her family.

Her father was a Baptist preacher. She was thrown out of the family because she came out as a lesbian. And they said to her, if you want to be part of the family, you need to go to deprogramming. Whatever they call the Focus on the Family piece. And she did it for a few months because she so wanted to be part of her family.

And then finally, she just realized it was destroying her. It was destroying her, so she ran away. And she hadn’t had contact with her dad. She’d gotten contact with her blood sister. But what she had discovered in the process of doing her own work, her own therapy work with a therapist not in this deprogramming thing, is that she came to find love.

That the piece that was missing was a love for herself, and then she could find a partner. And that they had a baby, and she was so excited!  And then she came to this stunning realization that her community organizing work was quite like her dad as a pastor. That she cared for the community the way her dad did.

And that makes me cry to this day, the work that she did to find love and to be embracing at the time where she was most stigmatized. How could you not support Nina? I ask you, how could you not? [emphases added]

Minutes later, when asked about Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School recognizing same-sex couples in its alumni magazine, Campbell rejoiced: “Jesus is always about love and supporting love… Lifting up the love of their alums was more important to her [the president emeritus] than the kerfuffle over what sex do you identify with and who’s your partner. And I admire her greatly for the courage and clarity.”

As we examine more talking heads from G+C, you will see Campbell is not alone among them in being fully affirming of queer fornication and hostile to Christian exclusion of sexual immorality.

Conclusion

The film “God And Country” is clearly a polemic against what it calls “Christian Nationalism,” which can mean anything from ethnic cleansing projects to merely voting for Donald Trump, depending on who is defining the term. What is more important than what the film is against is what it is for. What is the form of “Christianity” that the filmmakers think is superior to their boogeyman? 

Sister Campbell’s faith is a universalist, mystical, Bible-editing, sexually libertine, ultimately man-centered religion. All of her statements that bring us to this conclusion are public information. The filmmakers are not likely to advertise her beliefs in the movie’s limited runtime, so it is important for the public to know where her critiques are coming from. What she means by “Christian” or “not Christian” is objectively at odds with the actual, historic Christian faith.

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