Bishop William J. Barber II.
One of the country’s leading civil rights leaders has taken a new job in New Haven to train a next generation of faith-inspired advocates for social and economic justice.
That New Haven-bound “moral movement leader” is Bishop William J. Barber II.
On Monday morning, the Yale Divinity School announced that Barber will serve as the founding director of the school’s new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy.
“Rooted in the philosophy of moral movements that have strategically and successfully used theology as the basis for challenging social and economic injustice in society, the center’s scholarly and teaching work will concentrate on expressions of public faith that contribute to movements for justice,” a Monday morning post by the Yale News states about the new center. “It will engage divinity, law, and undergraduate students in critical conversations about religion, faith, moral values, social movements, and social transformation.”
Barber — who has led North Carolina’s Moral Mondays movement, founded the movement-training organization Repairers of the Breach, and has been a leading proponent for a revival of a modern-day “Poor People’s Campaign” — will retire as pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, N.C. to take on the new job. He’ll continue as the founding president of Repairers of the Breach and as co-chair of Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
“I have been a pastor engaged in movement work for three decades,” Barber, whose new title will be professor in the practice of public theology and public policy, is quoted as saying in that Yale News post. “While I continue the work of movement building, I’m transitioning my pastoral work from the congregation to the classroom. I want to walk with the next generation of moral leaders and share with them what was passed down to me. I’ve been given too much to just take it all with me when I leave this life. I want to pass it on.”
Click here to read the Yale News post in full.
I think I will go with the late Bruce A. Dixon, and Margaret Kimberley Analysis.
Barber Sermon on Militarism Reveals Philosophical & Political Limitations of the Poor Peoples Campaign
Bruce A. Dixon, BAR managing editor
11 May 2018
The organizational forces mustered behind Rev. Dr. William Barber and the Poor Peoples Campaign are nothing less than a broad swath of mainline and other US Protestant churches, backed by the generous gifts of a galaxy of foundations and individual wealthy contributors, supplemented by the bottom-up energy pulled from many thousands of church communities, their activists, and the innumerable good works they carry on. Rev. Barber speaks for the politically leftish wing of the Institutional Church in the US, which has pretty much anointed him the mantle of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s final year with a way bigger budget, and minus the burden King carried as one of the nation’s most hated, derided and despised public figures.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/barber-sermon-militarism-reveals-philosophical-political-limitations-poor-peoples-campaign
The Poor Peoples Campaign Dishonors Martin Luther King
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
04 May 2022
There are individuals and organizations who routinely claim King’s mantle until they fall prey to the war propaganda promoted by the present day purveyors of violence.
The Rev. Dr. William Barber is sadly one such person. , Rev. Barber ought to know that questions of funding for domestic needs must always be raised. Joe Biden is requesting $33 billion in aid to Ukraine, which means money for the military industrial complex, after ending stimulus payments and other support for struggling people in this country.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/poor-peoples-campaign-dishonors-martin-luther-king