His uncompromising theology led him to keep his distance from political movements. He insisted that "anyone who is not as concerned with the immortal soul of the dispossessor as he is with the suffering of the dispossessed is being something less than Christian" and that "Mr. Jesus died for the bigots as well". These convictions sometimes caused friction between Campbell and other civil rights figures. Campbell was an "...unofficial chaplain to the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan ... He refused to 'cancel' white racists out of his life. He refused to demonize them as less than human." He visited James Earl Ray in prison. He remarked in 1976, "It's been a long time since I got a hate letter from the right. Now they come from the left."