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Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Visit us online at faith.yale.edu.

Rev. William Barber: Thorough, deep, public theology. If we're going to be in the public square, and I believe we have to by our faith, and you know, what Jesus did was in public, he was crucified in public. He ministered in public. He challenged Caesar in public. The prophets arose when the king and the priest weren't doing their jobs.

So, we have to be in public, but we cannot enter as partisans. We must enter rooted deeply in the principles of faith. So, when somebody says, well, is your faith position the, uh, the, therefore, the social gospel? I say, you know what it is? It's Orthodox Christianity. It's Christianity 101. Let's start with Jesus.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: We have so many churches where public theology hasn't happened, so people have a very thin understanding. Of what the scripture says about, you know, these calls to justice that are very basic to the story, you know, from the beginning to the end. In the absence of a public theology, people have been very easily manipulated.

Rev. William Barber: One of the things about Jesus is not just what he said, but how he taught and how he would, before he would do a miracle, he would put the pain in public. He forced the to see. This is. You're talking about your brother. You're talking about your neighbor. The reason we say public theology and public policy is we say, we want to have the economists, the theologian, and the impacted person in the same room.

We said systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, denial of healthcare, the war economy, philosophy of religious nationalism are sin, sinful, less than what God intends for humanity. 

Evan Rosa: This is For the Life of the World, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. I'm Evan Rosa with the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

There are 135 million poor and low wage people in America. The total population of America is estimated at 345 million. So the quick math is 39 percent of our country is poor or low wage individuals. That's over 50 percent of American children. Figures like that might be moving to some, but without human faces to go with the stats, it's unlikely to really connect.

Perhaps that's because we so successfully hide the poverty. We fly over it. We roll up the window on it. We refuse to humanize and personalize poverty in our minds. It turns out it's incredibly easy to ignore a stat. It's a lot harder to ignore a child at school, or a playground, or a little league practice, who might not have eaten for 24 or 48 hours.

When you get to stats about the disparity between the most affluent and the least of these, it starts to get more sickening, and you start to wonder why we can't solve this one. It makes me think Jesus was woefully spot on when he said, The poor you will always have with you. We need to get better at associating poverty with death.

It's not easy to stay alive on 7. 25 an hour, more quick math for you, that's 290 a week and 15, 080 per year. No wonder, cumulative poverty, that is, living at or below the poverty line for 10 or more years, is the fourth leading cause of death, behind only smoking, cancer, and heart disease. But even a single year poor is the seventh leading cause.

This is beyond a partisan political issue, and associating poverty with people of color is as false as it is harmful. For 26 million poor are Black, about 66 million of America's poor are white. So why can't, or perhaps more accurately, why doesn't the wealthiest nation in the world do something? Our guests on the show today are the Reverend William Barber and Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, co authors of White Poverty, how exposing myths about race and class can reconstruct American democracy.

They're also collaborators at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. And as communities across the United States consider the issues ahead of November's election, the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy is offering a 10 session online course for study and group conversation in classrooms, congregations, and community centers.

In the show notes for this episode, you can find a link to the videos for each session and a resource guide. And even a sign up form for a live Zoom conversation with Dr. Barber and the Center staff. Here's Ryan McAnally Lenz with Bishop William Barber and Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, discussing the political, moral, and spiritual dimensions of poverty.

Thanks for listening.

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Reverend Barber, Jonathan, thanks so much for taking the time to join me today. I've got a book that's just come out and a lot of work you're doing all the time. So I much appreciate it. so much. I wonder if you could start by telling a little bit of the story of how you came to see poverty as a crucial moral issue for our society to be wrestling with.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: We're both from North Carolina. I grew up in Stokes County, North Carolina in the 80s and 90s, and I was raised by people who taught me to love Jesus. And to, uh, love the scriptures. I also grew up at a time when moral issues were shaped by a political movement that was really targeting churches, white rural churches like the one I grew up in.

And so, uh, I had a very narrow understanding of what the moral issues were that were shaped by that political moment. I wanted to do all I could for Jesus, so I went to Washington, D. C. and I was paging for a senator. I thought I needed to get involved in politics. But I came to a point where I recognized there was a basic division between what I had read in the Bible and what was being practiced in Jesus name.

And I didn't know any other way to practice my faith in public life. So I came back to North Carolina somewhat confused, you know, as a 17 year old kid. And I met this guy who was preaching a different way of Uh, following Jesus in public and, uh, at the heart of that was Jesus's message of good news to the poor.

And so, uh, that reoriented my life and, uh, and certainly the way I understand. Jesus's moral concerns in order. 

Rev. William Barber: Yeah, I came back, I was brought home to North Carolina by my parents who were in Indianapolis, Indiana, my father's home, North Carolina, my father's home, Indianapolis, my mother's home. She was the daughter of a coal miner who had actually worked with white and black coal miners in the 1920s in, in West Virginia who were fighting against poverty.

But we, they came home after the March on Washington. They got a Macedonian call to give up basically their lives, their middle class lives. They both were well educated, but they were asked to come back to the South to help with the issue of, of, uh, integration, desegregation. In the 1960s, I was about five years old when they finally got relocated to North Carolina.

But my father was early on involved with white and black people who were trying to get fair wages from the pulp mill, we call it, in Plymouth, North Carolina. And I grew up in a home where you never separated Jesus and justice. Um, you know, we had, my home church was somewhat Um, they were very tough on personal issues and, and personal salvation and having a call, being baptized, immersed, um, living a holy life.

My father and others were also very clear that, um, segregation was sin and that, uh, poverty was sin because it didn't have to be. And that Jesus's first sermon was clear. They preach good news to the poor. And later on, when I was in seminary, that's where I learned that the word poor was patokos. It means those who've been made poor, uh, caught by economic exploitations.

And I read the other scriptures, Isaiah in places talked about, Isaiah 10, woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights and make women and children their prey. But I also grew up in the 13th poorest congressional district in the country. And And all my life, my father was working with poor people, poor farmers.

Um, so I didn't know any other way. Um, to talk about Jesus in public life in a very private, personalized way, and then omit, um, the public was a scripture contradiction, scriptural contradiction. I was taught early on Matthew 23, 23, you, you tithe, you give your tithe, your mint, your cumin, all these little leaves, but you leave undone the way the abundance of the law.

And the first thing is justice or righteousness. Um, and it's from that place that I went to seminary, originally intended to be a went to school not to go to seminary. I ran from the faith because of some contradictions in the church. And it got to the place where some new leadership came in that wasn't really interested in social justice.

So I said, I'm not going to stay with this. I'm going to, Go to law school and try to go to different schools anywhere that they didn't have any course in religion and ended up going to North Carolina Central University and having a real epiphany experience at about 20 years old and was called into ministry, um, and then went to seminary to put it all together.

And my father, uh, was with me the first three years and then he passed on, but he had taught me so much about you cannot claim Jesus and then dismiss it. But finally my seminary professor, Dr. Jonathan, knew him well, Dr. Turner, one day in a class on pneumatology taught us, he said, you can call your spiritual experience, whatever you want to call it.

Dipped, slain in the spirit, baptized, Episcopal, Baptist, congregational. But if it doesn't produce a quarrel with the world's injustice, then your claim to have Christian spirituality is terribly suspect, terribly suspect. 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: I'm struck in, in each of your stories about the way that, uh, firsthand being with the poor.

Folks. You. are struggling living on the edge as you, Ray, played a role and, um, and, and noticed in your writing, you focus on, on 

Rev. William Barber: seeing the poor. Well, seeing them and then opening your eyes because poverty is not just someone asking you for spare change or living on the street. You know, I grew up with people who worked hard every day, but the living way, the minimum wage was so low.

It was difficult. I worked around farmers. Uh, but they didn't get treated right in the way in which their crops were priced. They would often argue about, particularly black farmers that grew tobacco, they would get a lesser price when they went to market or, or people that worked in this pulp mill that refused to be unionized.

So it blocked wages and blocked healthcare. This was in the seventies and eighties. And so one of the things we talk about in the book is we, we've, we've been lied to so much about poverty. You know, the official government. Measurement tells us, or did tell us, was only 30 million poor and low wage folk, and actually over 140 million in 2016, after COVID, about 135 million, and it constantly hit it back up.

And, and, and the description of the poor, like, the manufacturer. The teacher who works all day, and then sleeps in their car at night. The teacher that's poor. The teacher, it's got a teaching degree, and it's poor because the pay teacher is so little. The poor are on a low wage, or the person who washes your backside is a nurse's aide and can't even afford to get healthcare themselves.

The face of poverty is every color, every geography, every race, everybody who is forced in this country to work at 7. 25 an hour as a minimum wage, less than 15 a living wage, and waiters and waitresses that work for 2. 13 an hour. You know, we deal with poverty by America the specific way, as Desmond says, Matthew Desmond said, that poverty in this country is a created reality that is actually unnecessary.

That's it. 

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: It's created by policy and there are whole communities of people who've been taught to not think of ourselves as poor. I think that was very much my experience that I grew up around, around a lot of poor folks, but, uh, you know, we, we wanted to think of ourselves as middle class. I think there was a lot of shame in our, because people had internalized this narrative that, you know, if you're poor, you must not be working hard enough.

If you're poor, you know, you must have some personal deficiency, some problem with your family. And, uh, in so many ways, the movement that You know, we've been part of them and trying to help build has been teaching me that, um, uh, you know, poor people. are the agents of change that this country needs. And, uh, people sort of stepping out of, you know, that shadow that's been created by a myth, uh, and saying, well, yeah, we're poor and it's not our fault, right?

We're, we're poor because of something that's been done to us. And we, we are going to change that reality. That's, that's been important for me and has really helped me read again, the ministry of Jesus. And realized that that's what Jesus did, you know, when Jesus said, blessed are the poor, he was talking to people who were poor and who were blamed by the system that they lived in.

But that was a gospel that helped people to see that they could be part of something that would bring a new world right into the shell of this old one. And that's, um, yeah, it's, it's helped me, uh, live within the scriptures. More, more than I could before. 

Rev. William Barber: Man, and you know, my dissertation work, Jonathan, was on the Holy Spirit, the theology of the Holy Spirit for churches engaged in economic empowerment.

That's right. And part of what it did is unpack Luke 4, that Jesus wasn't just saying, good news to the poor. Good news is get saved and go to heaven, but good news is God cares. I've done it. I release you nonviolently to stand against the systems that create poverty, that create broken heartedness, that create, uh, uh, high forms of captivity simply because you're poor and imprisonment and that shun you and make you feel like you're not a part of those who God actually welcomes.

He says, my house shall be a house of prayer for all people. And Jesus was sought after to be killed because he, uh, in fact, the first sermon that he preaches, people don't read the rest of the text and they almost killed him that day. Because he said that this gospel I'm preaching about the poor is for all people, regardless of their, their, their DNA, regardless of their heritage.

And, and, and I think that when we look at it in this country, the reason we wrote white poverty, because a lot of our white brothers and sisters have been so dismissed, black people have been demeaned. You know, we, when we do talk about poverty, we, we need them to see it on the news of black woman, you know, getting welfare.

When the fact is the majority of poor people are white women, 66 million out of 135 million are white, 26 million are black, but that 60 percent of black people, and that 30 percent of white people. So what happened is, I found out later, the majority of the people in North Carolina that were getting food stamps were white, but the shame of it, they, in the grocery stores, they would hide that they were using the food stamps, and politicians would shame them because they thought that whiteness in itself It meant that if you're poor, you've now become one of them because they were taught that you're poor because black people are getting something rather than you're poor because you elect these people who, who, who come to you and promote wage issues.

Like I'm for against school busing, I'm against gay people, I'm against abortion. But when they get to Washington DC or Raleigh, they always vote with the oligarchs. They always vote with the powers that be. And breaking that cycle and bringing people together from Appalachia to the Delta, from the Appalachia in North Carolina to the Sandhills, the Black Belt in North Carolina, is something we learned really more how to do during Moral Monday, been doing all our lives, and it's the key to transforming this democracy into a place that says, we're not going to have this level of poverty.

And in addition to having a level of poverty, the level of death. You know, 295, 000 people dying a year every year from poverty and low wealth, 800 people a day should cause every particular other person of faith to just tremble. You know, I often say sometimes we have lied in pulpits. We've stood over people and preached their funerals and said, God called them home.

God did not do that. God welcomed them into his kingdom, but he didn't call them. They were killed by policy violence. They were destroyed by policy violence. And, and, and that's the realness that we have to bring in this moment. 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: I hear you talking about poverty as a moral issue and also talking about policy.

which implies that policy is, is moral. And I wonder if you all could say something about what's, what's difference does it make to treat policy questions as moral questions rather than political or partisan questions? Well, they're 

Rev. William Barber: political too. If you look at, you talked about the politics of God. I mean, Christians are not required to be non political.

We're required to be non partisan. In other words, we don't identify God with any power, but what we do bring to the public square is the particular critique, Reinhold Niebuhr knew this, Martin knew this, you know, and what we say to the country is, listen, if you're going to have a document called the Constitution, and it says that the whole purpose of this governmental experiment is to establish justice.

to provide for the common defense, to promote the general welfare, to ensure domestic tranquility. Then, then put that on top of every policy and ask the question, does it meet these four standards? If you're going to require to some degree that people put a hand on the Bible or the Quran or the Jewish Old Testament and swear themselves in the office, at least you ought to know what it says.

And in all three of those, Books of the faith or religion, how you treat the poor is a judgment upon government systems. And if you cut the Bible open, if you cut every scripture out in the Bible that talks about how you treat the least of these, how you treat women, how you treat children, how you treat those on the margin, how you treat the poor, you have no Bible anymore.

It literally disintegrates in your hand. So we have to bring that critique. And remember King's first sermon, I always go back to it, Jonathan, when he was in Montgomery. Yeah. Yeah. And he said these things. He said, if we're wrong, then the constitution is wrong. If we're wrong, then Amos, the prophet in the Bible is wrong.

And he said, let's just, if we're wrong, Jesus was a utopian dreamer. So, so we have to bring that critique to the public square. 

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: That sermon, uh, we know is the fruit of a tradition that he was raised and educated in because he wrote it in 20 minutes. He didn't create that thing on his own. He was channeling what he had received in so many ways.

I think the importance of. Public theology is that we have so many churches where public theology hasn't happened. So people have a very thin understanding of what the scripture says about, you know, these calls to justice that are very basic to the story, you know, from the beginning to the end. And In the absence of a public theology, people have been very easily manipulated.

So we have, in this country, a political movement that uses religion. Sociologists describe it now as Christian nationalism. Basically, you know, this idea that we can use your faith to get you to do certain things because of this kind of, uh, you know, identity politics that's really about using faith to appeal to somebody's race more than anything.

Uh, that's what whiteness looks like in this moment we're living in. That's a vulnerability that comes from not having a thick public theology in our churches. And part of what we've been talking about and what I've been learning is that, that theology is there and has been there, uh, in many communities that have been overlooked and neglected by our, you know, most respected institutions.

So we, we've got some recovery work to do, right? To, to turn attention to the places that have been doing public theology all along. And there's nowhere 

Rev. William Barber: when public theology is truly done where we use language like this is left side of Christianity or right side of Christianity. Those are terms people came up with to give two unequal moral stances equal standing in the public square.

And we resist that. You don't find that in Scripture. What you have to do is look at where the prophets stood. You know, they're very clear. Jeremiah says, go down to the king's house and say these things. You know, stop killing people, treat the poor right. Rescue those that are being treated unjust. Isaiah 58 says, cry loud and spare not.

Cold shofar, lift your voice like a trumpet. Loose the bands of wickedness. And wickedness in that text means, uh, harshness and evil. And an unfair pay in the workplace, then you shall be called repassibly. Jesus said, look, every nation is not going to be judged by was it left or was it right? When I was hungry.

When I was sick, when I was in prison, when I was an immigrant. And when you start doing that, you know, and talking about how does this policy represent love, the love that is agape love, the love that cares specifically about the leper and the left out. Well, who are the lepers and the left out today? If you do it that way, then you don't automatically start divided.

If you start out, I'm only left, you're on the right, then we automatically divide. The problem is on tabular media. That's how they describe it. Um, and many churches have been described the way. And as Jonathan said, you know, whether it's the tributary runs all the way through it's slave master religion.

that tried to come up with a way of using religion to, to, to enslave black bodies and destroy black bodies. Then the, then the, um, right after the new deal or during the new deal, there was a big money put in by corporations to take over American pulpit. Cruz, Kevin Cruz writes a book, talks about One Nation Under God, the purchasing pulpit, where they actually said that any program that lifted.

Poor people was non Christian, was anti Christian because it didn't allow people to pay for their sin because their poverty was a result of their moral sin and inactivity. Or then you get, you know, the religious so called right or the moral, what they call the, uh, moral majority that once was anti desegregation, then became anti gay anti.

Uh, abortion. But these have been distortions, distortions. Now on the other side, I'm a registered independent, always have been, because it's not about them just saying, okay, let's just go be Democrats. No, it's about challenging the public square. 

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: And if you're from the South, you know, 

Rev. William Barber: Democrats have done a lot of damage.

My first battles in public square was against Democrats who in North Carolina, when I was president, they refused to pass raising the minimum wage for 12 years. They had complete control of government and they refused to expand voting and same day registration. And we had to challenge them too on moral.

Uh, the minimum wage has been 7. 25 since 2009 in this country, even though the scriptures say paid labor, the labor's worth is higher. Both parties have had complete control of both branches and the presidency from during that period of time, and neither one of them. have said, wait a minute, this is immoral.

That's why we need a thoroughgoing, deep, public theology. If we're going to be in the public square, and I believe we have to by our faith, you know, what Jesus did was in public. He was crucified in public. He ministered in public. He challenged Caesar in public. The prophets arose when the king and the priest weren't doing their jobs.

So we have to be in public, but we cannot enter as partisans. We must enter Rooted deeply in the principles of faith. So when somebody says, well, there's your place position, the, uh, the, therefore the social gospel, I say, you know what it is? It's Orthodox Christian. It's Christianity 101. Let's start with Jesus.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: The other big danger of accepting this, you know, left, right framing is that Christians are often tempted to say, well, you know, we'll be charitable and we'll we'll strike a middle ground. Right. Right. But if you've accepted that framing, then you, you, you have to ask, well, what's the middle ground between, between, Feeding the hungry and not feeding the hungry.

Right. What's, what's the middle ground between justice and injustice? No, we don't want the middle ground . We, we want, we want to reframe the whole conversation about what is just, what is moral, what is good. The scriptures give us a guide for that. And I think that ought to be, uh, a frame that Christians can bring to the world rather than accepting this one that's being imposed on it.

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: What do y'all say to, to folks who say, I'm, I'm, I'm with you. I see this as a moral issue, not a partisan issue. I see that poverty is much more widespread in America than official statistics would suggest because the realities of people's lives are hard for many, many people. But on the policy issues, I, I just disagree about what's actually going to work to solve the problem, to reduce poverty, what, what's actually going to make a difference in people's lives.

You know, take an example like the minimum wage and somebody who says, well, if you raise the minimum wage, it will reduce employment, which overall will make people worse off. Is that a different kind of conversation once you say we agree on the moral ground or how do those conversations go? 

Rev. William Barber: Well, you know, I'm from the country, so part of that's practical for me.

So you say the minimum wage, having a minimum wage higher as a living minimum wage will take away jobs. But you don't ever resist your way, your race. Politicians don't ever cut their salaries. That's just, that argument doesn't make sense. But then the other side of it is, we have plenty of data from Nobel Peace Prize economists.

In fact, a group. A few years ago, won the Nobel Peace Prize on this very issue, saying that it was a distortion of the truth. It wasn't the truth. That if you actually raise minimum wage as a, as a living wage, it would increase income in society. It would not harm jobs and prices. And in fact, let's go back in history a little bit.

In 1963 at the March on Washington, they wanted the minimum wage to be 2 an hour indexed with inflation. If we were going to have a truly democratic society, it wasn't just a march about black civil rights, about jobs and justice. If the minimum wage had, that had been done, the minimum wage today would be 15, 16 an hour.

You're talking about just doing what is right. And if somebody says, I disagree with the policy as a Christian, then we say, well, let's talk, let's see what Jesus said. Jesus said the labor is worthy of their hire. How can you be worthy of your hire when you can make a minimum wage in this country where it is and still be existing in poverty?

There's not a county in this country where you can work, make a, work at a minimum wage job and afford a basic two bedroom apartment. That does not match with what we claim to be as Christians. And what our faith tells us in the scriptures. So we, we have to keep challenging and then we have to show people the face on it because so many people think, well, that person making a middle wage job is some lazy person, uneducated, da, da, da, da, da.

And we say, no, no, no, it's your neighbor, it's your neighbor, let's show you, it's your neighbor. Now, what does the script say about your neighbor and how you're supposed to treat them? 

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: Yeah, I think it's crucial. This is this is the conversation we want to have. I think it's this conversation that Scripture demands of us.

You know, how can we, uh, the church be good news for the poor? Unfortunately, it's not the conversation we're having in so many places. You know, we've often cited this Pew study that was done of sermons in the United States a few years ago. You know, what are the top themes in sermons? Uh, poverty doesn't register in that study, but it's Jesus's first and last sermon.

Um, so, so yes, to your question, I would say, uh, absolutely. We want to have the conversation about this issue. And I think public theology teaches us, and this is reflected in what Reverend Barber is saying here, public theology teaches us certain commitments we have to have in those conversations, right?

So, sure, there are arguments that can be had based on data about this policy versus that policy. And if a Christian is going to have the conversation, we have to, uh, take seriously The Bible's commitment to listening to those who suffer, right? From the Exodus all the way through the scriptures say, God hears the cries of the suffering.

So what are people who are living, trying to live, trying to survive on, uh, uh, unlivable wages saying that's a, that's a critical piece of that conversation that we want to have. And what we've heard universally is that people say, you know, we don't want to hand out. We want to be paid enough for what we do that we can pay for ourself and our family.

And, and, and 

Rev. William Barber: the corporate world says, give, give us more and more and more CEOs now make 300 and 600 times more than the average worker. Corporate world uses welfare, government welfare tax cuts, and then benefit from the so called welfare we give to other people so that they don't have to pay it when what they really should be doing is sharing their wages.

Now, Isaiah, for instance, says, That's a problem when you, you, I think it says you, you, you beat people in the workplace. You, you, you, you throw a mean punch in the workplace. And that's why you have a divided society rather than a society that repairs breaches. But I, but I think also, Jonathan, in, in this conversation, policy.

The reason we say public theology and public policy is we say we want to have the economists, the theologian, and the impacted person in the same room. We say, let's, let's, let's identify systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, denial of healthcare, the war economy, philosophy of religious nationalism are sin.

Sinful, less than what God intends for humanity. Now, if it's sinful, then we have to address it, but let's, let's address it with everybody in the room so that you're not having bifurcated conversations, right? We said, put an M, that's what we do at the Center for Public, the Art and Public Policy. We have impacted people.

The economists, sociologists, the public health in the room with Marlin religious leaders. So we, we established a theological framework from the scriptures and from the teachings of Christianity. We hear from the impacted people. So we put a face on it. You know, Jesus did miracles based on who he met and saw.

If he met somebody who was paralyzed, the only way he addressed it, he addressed that public policy issue and, and, and then we have moral and religion and then the economists and let's debate the policy. Somebody might say. It's going to do this, but is that actually the policy? Is that actually true? And what we have, a lot of people are saying that if you provide healthcare, it's communism.

So, no, it's not. Uh, if you provide healthcare, that's Obamacare. No, Theodore Roosevelt talked about the need for healthcare a hundred years before. So let's have a honest public policy conversation and not just throwing out Obamacare. so much, Bill. Bill. Uhh, I'm so excited to have you. I know it's just, I'm a little bit nervous, but I know a lot of people are, uh, so excited to be here.

You Does this provide for the common defense? If we can't ask those questions of public policy, is this love? You know, one of my professors, that's what got Dr. King killed. It wasn't that he loved folk. It was that he demanded love in the wrong place where they didn't want to hear about love. They want to hear about love when it came to racist policy.

They want to hear about love when it came to economics. He said, no, if you claim to be Christian, how does this reflect the love that you claim to have as a Christian? And that's what makes the faith prophetic and troubling. It doesn't allow people with empire, empire mentalities to, to feel comfortable because it shakes up the status quo.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: One of the things we're saying in this book is that in the moment we're living in, we have a broad policy consensus on several things that would, uh, lift the country for everyone, expanding, you know, living wages, expanding healthcare, uh, uh, access to. affordable housing and paid family leave. I mean, there's some basic things that policy experts agree would benefit everyone and that the majority of Americans say, you know, we've got what, 60 percent of people now in Mississippi, which is broadly considered to be a so called red state.

Republicans. Yeah, 60 percent of Republicans in Mississippi want, um, uh, You know, health care for everyone. So, if that's the case, you know, the question becomes, well what's preventing it from happening? And in so many ways, uh, the conversation we're having is, is what could shift the the frame of political possibility in this country.

And that's where, uh, we we've come to believe that there has to be a movement based on history, uh, uh, in the history of the United States. Um, it's moral movements that have changed the conversation at critical moments. And, uh, in this moment that we're living in, we think it's critically important for what White and black and brown folks to come together and to build a fusion movement that, that, that forces politicians on both sides of the aisle to, uh, to address these issues that most people realize must be addressed.

Rev. William Barber: There is not a major problem. public policy that we all enjoy today as Americans, the social security, uh, even the minimum wage as it is having a minimum wage in the first place that did not come about abolition, uh, ending segregation, but without a moral movement. Somewhere in the mix saying, wait a minute, they're deep.

There are other questions here. So for moral reality for us, it's not just feeling good. It's doing good. There was a time that economics was studied as a part of moral philosophy. Then it was removed. It was suggested that you don't raise moral questions with the money, but that's not Christian.

Christians say you can't serve God and mammon. You have to raise the moral question. The second piece is. You have to put a face on it. You have to make people see one of the things we've done in the way we talk about poverty, the way we, the poverty numbers are made to seem so small through the government measurements that haven't been changed since the 60s is to suggest it's an anomaly.

It's in the margins when in fact it's big, it's everywhere, it's every race is, and it's white women that you don't expect, it's working people. So but when you reduce it as something marginal or saying it's just black and brown folks, you actually undercut the conversation politically. And then lastly, if any other people were dying at a rate of 800 a day, Every debate we have for people running for president would raise that question.

Because when we got to 500 people dying a day from COVID, it was epidemic. It was everywhere. It was on the news. If, if, if homicide is on the news every night, more people die from poverty than gun violence. Respiratory disease is lower than poverty. Poverty is the fourth leading cause of death. One of the things about Jesus is not just what he said, but how he taught and how he would, before he would do a miracle, he would put the pain in public.

Like when he healed that boy that had epilepsy, he couldn't talk and he couldn't hear. He discussed it right there in public. The man on the stretcher in public, he forced the folk to see. This is, you're talking about your brother, you're talking about your neighbor. We must do that. That's why we're having these massive movements because without the seeing, and I often tell this story in recent days because it struck me, what made people say we must deal with this epidemic?

People saw Death. They saw the crates of people, uh, in ice trucks. What made people respond to brother Hamlin who fell out on the field, football field in front of us? We saw it, right? And people that didn't even know him, they didn't worry about part of it. They said, this man is dying. People were praying when he got up, people prayed for him.

They wanted him up. They gave to his, um, foundation. Never knew him, but they saw death. And we must make this country see the death and, and say that the faith, our faith, if it's about anything, it's about life, abundant life, resurrected life. We, we resist the last enemy there. So we have to resist any policy that's in cahoots with the last enemy there.

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Dr. Barber. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a wonderful conversation. Uh, I've appreciated getting to hear from you very much. 

Rev. William Barber: Thank you so much. We look forward to more. 

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove: Indeed, thank you.

Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured the Rev. William Barber, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Ryan McAnally-Linz. Production assistance by Alexa Rollow and Kacie Barrett. I'm Evan Rosa, and I edit and produce the show.

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