Long before the pandemic and the social upheaval of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, the church had been preparing and mentoring leaders who could lead communities in faithful means of protest. The New Poor People’s Campaign, co-chaired by Presbyterian pastor the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis and Disciples of Christ pastor the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, is one such visible and contemporary example of this work.
The Poor People’s Campaign says it’s high time the nation undertakes a Third Reconstruction. The campaign, co-chaired by the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastor, and the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, took an initial step in that direction Monday with a rally in Raleigh, North Caroline, which PPC livestreamed here.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Associate Director of Advocacy the Rev. Jimmie Hawkins participated in a Poor People’s Campaign event Monday, calling for the end of the filibuster in the United States Senate.
The co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign delivered this post-election message during an online event Thursday: Now that voters have turned out in record numbers to cast their ballot, the real work of advocating and caring for the 140 million Americans who are poor and low income must begin in earnest, no matter who sits in the Oval Office or walks the halls of Congress and the nation’s 50 statehouses.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exploited wounds we never healed.
Once who knows that truth all too well is the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, president of the group Repairers of the Breach, co-chair (with Presbyterian pastor the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis) of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, and pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in North Carolina, where he preached a sermon as part of the Festival of Homiletics.
How would the political landscape change if the needs and demands of poor and low-income voters were better represented in the electoral process?
That’s what a report issued this week by The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, attempts to answer.
Dr. Jelani Cobb, a staff writer at the New Yorker, historian and the Ira A. Lipton Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, concluded a lecture before an audience at the University of Louisville Wednesday with a personal story that may say as much about race relations in the U.S. as the hour-long lecture that preceded his story.
The Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis was delivering an impromptu sermon at the end of a long, hot day riding around Western Kentucky on a bumpy bus when she turned to the story of a leper who approached Jesus.“The leper said, ‘If you choose, you can heal me,’” Theoharis said. “’If you choose, you can heal me.’“Now that leper had gone a lot of places up to that point. He went to the HMOs of his day, and they turned him away. He went to the hospitals nearby, they had closed down. But Jesus traveled around the land opening up free healthcare clinics, never charged a co-pay. The leper said to Jesus, ‘If you choose, you can heal me.’“The question before us this afternoon is, ‘Do we choose?’”
Leaders from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Racial & Intercultural Justice ministry and Office of Public Witness participated in a Monday morning announcement by The Poor People’s Campaign that it will be embarking on a National Emergency Poverty and Truth Bus Tour in the coming months.
