On Monday, our co-chair, Bishop William J. Barber II, DMin, announced the establishment of the new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy in collaboration with Yale Divinity School. Please read his message to our Poor People’s Campaign community below:
Dear Poor People’s Campaign Family,
I am so glad to share this news with you today. As many of you know, I have been a pastor engaged in movement work for three decades. While I will remain co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and President of Repairers of the Breach, 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.
This coming year, I will retire as pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where I have served as senior pastor since 1993. I will join the faculty at Yale Divinity School as a Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy.
The Center will focus its work on the intersection of theology, social justice, and public policy. This endeavor is a continuation and institutionalization of decadeslong moral movement-building work that grows out of a deep understanding of theology and practice of public ministry.
The Center will teach and train students to examine the relationship between conventional religious study and practice and their theologically-based moral requirement to care for “the least of these” who face poverty, injustices, and oppression in their everyday lives. Through the Center, students will have the opportunity to participate in social justice movements and to study and learn directly from clergy and pastors who do social justice work as an integral part of their pastoral obligations.
The Center will also be a collaborative space for scholars, advocates, researchers, economists, and activists to come together to engage in critical research seeking policy solutions to respond to the injustices that plague our nation, and to examine the moral framework and under-pinning for the country’s most significant civil and human rights movements. I believe the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy is a new and important addition to the movement’s collective work. It is not a replacement for the work we will continue to do together as we build this Campaign across the nation.
After this incredible year of mobilizing for the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls and surpassing our goal of reaching over 5 million poor and low-wealth voters in this past mid-term election, I am looking forward to the intensification of our efforts towards ending the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.
We must continue our work to shift the narrative, build power, and implement a Third Reconstruction Agenda that fully addresses the needs of poor and low-wealth people in this nation.
Forward Together, Not One Step Back!
Bishop William J. Barber, II DMin.
Bishop Barber will continue to serve as founding president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
Forward Together!
Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival Team
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