On New Year’s Eve, Kairos Center co-director Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis joined Rev. William Barber of the Moral Mondays movement and Repairers of Breach to talk about our Moral Revival Poor People’s Campaign Watch Night service, and the call from clergy to President Trump to embrace a moral agenda and reject hate and extremism.
Click here or on the image below to watch the clip.
[aesop_image img=”https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Selection_030.jpg” alt=”Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and William Barber on MSNBC” align=”center” lightbox=”off” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off”]
Read more coverage of the Moral Revival Poor People’s Campaign Watch Night service:
“Rev. Barber: A ‘Moral Center,’ Not a ‘Religious Left,’ Will Save Us in 2017” (Religion Dispatches)
Barber criticized conservative white evangelicals who insist that the moral issues of the day are standing against LGBT people and women’s access to reproductive health care, saying that their priorities are “so far from biblical faith and the politics of God that it is heretical.” At the same time, he rejected a characterization of the Repairers of the Breach as the “religious left,” insisting that it represents the same kind of “moral center” that powered previous social justice movements.
“Progressive religious leaders seek meeting with Trump to push for ‘moral agenda’” (Washington Post)
Barber argues that Trump should meet with his critics because “the role of clergy is not to make candidates comfortable, but to challenge their conscience and to challenge them with the politics of God and not the politics of any particular party.”
“We challenge persons not because of their party but because of their policies,” he continued. “Those who are fighting to deny people health care and living wages, pass policies that hurt the poor and deny voting rights, deny immigrants their rights, refuse to fix our criminal justice system and who hurt public education, they are engaged in an immoral agenda.”
“Reverend Barber, Moral Revival, and the Way Forward: A National Poor People’s Campaign” (Daily Kos)
While we in NC, and many other states, continue to fight against strong disenfranchisement efforts and extremist super-majority state legislatures, we must also expand our efforts to build a national fusion movement of the poor Brown, White, and Black Communities in order to deliver the social and economic security in our nation that allows everyone “full citizenship” and an equal place at the table of Justice.