In a speech at the Democratic National Convention last week, Rev. William Barber II sent shock waves across the country.
“"In this season, when some want to harden and stop the heart of our democracy, we are being called like our foremothers and -fathers to be the moral defibrillators of our time. We must shock this nation with the power of love. We must shock this nation with the power of mercy. We must shock this nation and fight for justice for all. We can't give up on the heart of our democracy. Not now, not ever."
That jolt was felt the very next day, when a federal appeals court overturned part of North Carolina’s voting ID law, saying the law was enacted with “racially discriminatory intent.”
Barber is President of the North Carolina NAACP, leader of the Moral Mondays movement, and President and Senior Lecturer at Repairers of the Breach. Faith and moral leaders across the country are uniting for a National Revival tour, hoping to “redefine morality in American politics.” A few hours before the Boston revival— Monday night from 6:30—8:30 at the Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain— Barber stopped by Boston Public Radio to chat about morality, humanity, and his latest book, The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, Fusion Politics and the Rise of a New Justice Movement.
Jim: Reverend, it is a pleasure to meet you.
Barber: I’m glad to be here with you.
Margery: What did you mean by ‘moral defibrillator’?
Barber: If you look in our history, there has always been the need for persons, some persons, to decide, I am not so much interested in left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican, but how public policy lines up, in terms of what I like to say being constitutionally consistent, morally defensible and economically just, and economically sane. In that sense, they’ve had to shock the nation like a defibrillator shocks the heart, because people began to want to implement policies that are hardening us, our consciousness… as Otto Scharmer says, at MIT, we begin to commit ‘attention violence’ against the poor. We begin to not recognize, as Dr. [Martin Luther] King said, “we are all inextricably bound together.” What I was really speaking to is, where we are, right now, in this country, when you can actually run for office and your agenda can sound like this: if you elect me, I’m going to take your healthcare—even though, by getting elected, I get free healthcare. I’m going to deny you a living wage, I’m going to attack you if you’re an LGBTQ person. In a country where we’ve seen God shed his grace on you, I’m not going to have grace for the immigrant community, I’m going to deny racism in criminal justice, I’m going to suppress the right to vote. I’m going to castigate religion, in a country that has no religious test, and then after I do all that, I’m going to make sure you can get a gun quicker than you can vote. That represents a hardening of our heart of our democracy. It is a moral problem, not just a left-right problem.
Jim: If *that man* had invited you to Cleveland for the RNC a week before, knowing what I know of you, my guess is, you would have accepted the invitation?
Barber: Not only that, we were in Cleveland. This movement, the revival time for a moral revolution… we actually are delivering to all presidential candidates, and governors, and senators, the higher ground moral declaration. We tried to do it in Cleveland, and they actually called the cops on us while we were praying, and that’s all on video.
But it’s not “that man.” I wasn’t even talking about that man, I was talking about… since the Southern strategy in 1968, we have seen this attempt to limit the moral discussion to praying in school, abortion, where you stand on homosexuality, where you stand on guns… that’s very different from what Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King talked about in what I call the Second Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement. We’ve seen this intention of limiting the moral conversation. [James] Dobson, [Jerry] Falwell, persons like that have this whole notion of so-called Christian evangelical, or Christian-right, which is neither right nor evangelical, according to our deepest moral values. By trying to limit the moral conversation, you are actually blocking the heart of our democracy, blocking the depth and the value of our democracy. We have to —particularly as preachers, particularly as people of different faith— come out and no longer contain ourselves to the sanctuary, but get in the public square and shock the heart of the nation.
To hear Rev. William Barber II’s full interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio link above.
