The Rev. Campbell once divided the White congregation of her church by inviting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to speak and then decades later - as a minister in King’s denomination - rose to lead an influential national alliance of churches. As general secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC) - a group linking dozens of Christian denominations with over 40 million worshipers - Rev. Campbell endorsed priorities such as battling climate change and expanding health care that often spilled over into wider political debates.
From 1991 to 2000, she went on missions such as accompanying the Rev. Jesse Jackson to Serbia in 1999 to gain the release of three U.S. soldiers, captured on a patrol amid a NATO bombing campaign seeking to halt ethnic bloodshed during the breakup of Yugoslavia. She also was at the center of partisan and cultural shifts that strained the coalition of mainline Protestants, traditionally Black churches (such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church), and Orthodox traditions such as Greek and Assyrian. In response, Rev. Campbell formed a political lobbying group, the Interfaith Alliance.
In 1965 at her church in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, she was juggling dual roles as a mother raising three children and as a local activist, her home became a hub for groups supporting the civil rights movement and opposing the Vietnam War. During a visit by King to Cleveland, he met briefly with Rev. Campbell and mentioned offhand that he had never been invited to speak at a mostly White church in the area. She suggested he come to the Heights Christian Church, where she was belonged to the congregation. Some church members felt honored to host King, but other members rejected him, claiming the presence of the civil rights leader was too politically charged and divisive. Bomb threats were made targeting Rev. Campbell’s home. Eventually, a compromise was reached for King to speak on the church steps. “There were at least 3,000 people there to hear him, and that would have never been true had it been inside the church,” Rev. Campbell said.
King told the crowd: “Without brotherhood, we can’t survive.” On a nearby sidewalk, white-nationalist protesters marched against him. The showdown inspired Rev. Campbell to expand her activism, including working on the 1967 Cleveland mayoral campaign of Carl B. Stokes, who became the city’s first Black mayor.
She was ordained in 1980 by the Progressive National Baptist Convention, a denomination rooted in the civil rights movement whose members included King and Ralph Abernathy. Rev. Campbell’s ordination was later recognized by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the American Baptist Churches. She served as executive director of the U.S. office of the World Council of Churches, the umbrella group for national Christian church coalitions internationally. In 1986, she was the only woman among the clergy in the procession for Desmond Tutu when he became the Anglican Church archbishop in Cape Town. Rev. Campbell was elected in 1990 to lead the NCC, becoming the first ordained woman to head the group.
At a 1997 memorial service for the astronomer Carl Sagan, with whom Rev. Campbell had helped found the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, she recalled an exchange they had. “He would say to me, ‘You are so smart, why do you believe in God?’” she said. “And I’d say, ‘You are so smart, why don’t you believe in God?’” Her honors include the Interfaith Alliance Foundation’s Walter Cronkite Faith and Freedom Award in 2010 for promoting tolerance and public dialogue. Her book, Living into Hope: A Call to Spiritual Action for Such a Time as This was published in 2010 (Nashville, Tennessee: SkyLight Paths).
Rev. Campbell also served for 14 years as director of religion at the Chautauqua Institution, a retreat in western New York. In a 2012 sermon, alluding to her past activism, she urged the congregation to recognize their role in fighting for social justice. “I believe that it is in times of uncertainty,” she said, “when we question our thoughts and decisions, that God can enter our lives.”
