Across the nation from the gathering of the PC(USA)’s 226th General Assembly, the Poor People’s Campaign held an assembly of its own in Washington, D.C., and it featured spirited comments from two Presbyterian pastors.
The Mass Poor People’s and Low Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March featured talks by both the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-founder of the Poor People’s Campaign and director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights & Social Justice, and the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins, the PC(USA)’s advocacy director.
“I was raised to see that faith and justice were completely linked, and so I just think it’s about living out one’s faith,” says the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who talks with the Rev. Sara Hayden on the “New Way” podcast about being raised by an activist mother and where she is finding hope and challenge in her own activism and motherhood today.
The Poor People’s Campaign held a virtual pep rally this week to encourage the public to head to Washington, D.C., for an in-person Moral March that’s being organized to stimulate voter turnout and push for policies to uplift people who are struggling under the weight of poverty.
“I was raised to see that faith and justice were completely linked, and so I just think it’s about living out one’s faith,” says the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who talks with the Rev. Sara Hayden on the New Way podcast about being raised by an activist mother and where she is finding hope and challenge in her own activism and motherhood today.
The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival announced Monday that it will once again hold an assembly and march in Washington, D.C., to call attention to the plight of poor and low-wage workers, push for moral public policies and encourage people to vote.
The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian pastor who co-founded the Poor People’s Campaign and directs the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights & Social Justice, took 75 minutes Wednesday evening for the first of two scheduled Zoom conversations on the Matthew 25 Movement’s foci of eradicating systemic poverty and dismantling structural racism.
The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who co-founded the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and runs the Kairos Center housed at Union Theological Seminary, brought the four-week, denomination-wide study of Matthew Desmond’s “Poverty, by America” to a close Monday saying she’s “really excited” that denominational leaders organized the online book study “and so many are interested in this work of becoming poverty abolitionists.”
Participants from across the country, representing 15 of the 16 synods of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), traveled to the Atlanta area the week of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday for the first Matthew 25 Summit. The Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, Presbytery of Baltimore and Denver Presbytery drew the greatest number of participants, but 93 of the 166 presbyteries of the PC(USA) — 56% — were represented at the Summit. The event was fully booked with a waiting list of 30 by the time it commenced on the campus of New Life Presbyterian Church in South Fulton and online.
A powerful sermon by the Rev. Hodari Williams, team leader of New Life Presbyterian Church in South Fulton, Georgia, deftly set the stage for the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, who brought conference-goers to their feet with her opening plenary on the first day of the historic Matthew 25 Summit.
