Prominent Religious Left activist The Rev. Dr. William Barber preached that Christians must support expansive social welfare programs or else be proponents of death.
Sprinkling the words of the prophet Amos throughout his thickly political sermon, Barber posited that most injustices are interlocking consequences of a racist history. To resolve this blunt diagnosis of injustice requires an equally blunt solution: Big Government and wealth redistribution.
“It is no longer a matter of left or right,” Barber argued from the pulpit of the Episcopal Church’s Washington National Cathedral on June 14, “but life or death.”
Barber is the facilitator of the “Moral Monday” movement that protests against fiscally conservative policies at the North Carolina statehouse. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) clergyman, along with other liberal North Carolina clergy, argues that racism is a main motivation behind U.S. military conflicts. But on June 14, Barber pushed this argument further: racism is the main reason for all economic and health disparities in the U.S.
In his sermon delivered from the Episcopal cathedral’s Canterbury pulpit, Barber outlined political compromises that he claimed mobilized oppression and death throughout America’s history. First, the U.S. Constitution gave Southern slaveholding states twenty years to end the international slave trade which resulted in planters and breeders consolidating political power.
Next, the Electoral College drew Barber’s ire. He insisted that the Electoral College protected the southern delegates’ influence over the African American population, leaving Northern states without the ability to contest their slave-supported power. Barber condemned the South further when noting how southern power increased after counting black individuals as 3/5 of a person. Barber failed to mention that Southerners originally wanted slaves to be counted as a full person without freedom in order to increase Southern representation in Congressional reapportionment. Northern states were, in fact, the ones who required the 3/5 compromise. “Only in Congress,” Barber declared, “people are fractionized for the sake of political compromise.”
Finally, Virginians insisted that the Constitution guarantee states the right to bear arms and their own militias because they feared violence from their black neighbors. Racism was the reason, Barber insisted, that Americans have 2nd Amendment gun rights and a police force that he charged “disproportionately targets black bodies.”
These political compromises never had to happen, Barber declared. But because of them, America allowed the Civil War, lynching, higher mortality rates of pregnant black women compared to white women, more cases of asthma in black communities, and higher COVID-19 mortality rates in black populations. While most of Barber’s statistics were sound, many of them stemmed from problems that are too complex to be attributed to racism alone. And when his statistics were not sound, they were exaggerated. For instance, he claimed that “one black man was lynched per day between 1900 and 1930.” However, about 55 people were lynched per year during this period, many of whom were white. While these numbers are still egregious, exaggerating a troubled past will not prevent a troubled present—a fact that a self-proclaimed truth-teller, such as Barber, should know.
Barber listed out multiple disease outbreaks that were attributed to certain marginalized groups in the 19th century: the Spanish were blamed for the flu, Irish were blamed for cholera transmission, Italians for polio, and tuberculosis spread as a supposed “Jewish disease.” Barber argued that immigrants, people of color, the vulnerable—essentially anyone not white—were blamed for bringing disease and destruction throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. However, Barber did not address the possibility that diseases were named based on their perceived origin and without racist intent. To him, racism and racism alone is the sole reason behind disease categorizations.
The National Cathedral guest preacher went on to say that a congressional hearing and presidential briefing was instigated for seven individuals who died from vaping, but “not a word was spoken for the thousands who died because they were denied healthcare.”
The Poor People’s Campaign official claimed that for every discretionary dollar in the Federal budget, $0.53 is spent on war and less than $0.16 is spent on health care, education, and infrastructure. However, Barber did not include mandatory, discretionary, and interest spending. If he had provided a more comprehensive picture of federal spending, military spending accounts for less than 20 percent. In 2019, $644 billion was spent on Medicare and $409 billion on Medicaid, which is more than the $676 billion spent on defense (not to mention the trillions spent on social security, non-defense, and national interest each year). Barber’s numbers lacked that context.
Barber stated that indigenous peoples were forced to trade their land for healthcare and—even after the trade—were given only $0.16 for every dollar required to meet basic medical costs. He claimed this is the reason indigenous deaths account for the second highest death rate in the U.S. behind African Americans during COVID-19. Congress budgeted trillions in relief funds for COVID-19, but Barber fumed that “84 percent of that money went to corporations and banks.” Barber seemed to assume that these corporations and banks kept the money in inaccessible vaults rather than keep business afloat and pay employees.
Thus, Barber told the congregation that the “virus was never powerful in and of itself” but was exacerbated by the wounds inflicted through a history of racism and poverty.
But, Barber offered, Americans can stop choosing death.
The first step towards life, according to Barber’s interpretation of Amos, is lamentation and addressing a racial past. If the majority does not participate, God will send a remnant to weep and to wail. That remnant, Barber interpreted, can be seen protesting on the streets today. Barber did not distinguish between violent and nonviolent protestors as belonging to “God’s remnant.”
Following lament, Barber gleaned several specific contemporary policy points from the 8th Century, B.C. biblical author: restrict the influence of “big money” in politics, implement automated online voter registration, pay a universal living wage, end mass incarceration, and reallocate funds from patrolling the southern border to Medicaid. Barber suggested that the present state of affairs would be better if “6.4 trillion dollars poured into the War on Terror” were instead used towards a renewable energy grid. Barber claimed that “a small tax on Wall Street trade” could have raised more than $70 billion and enabled free public college for all. A wealth tax on the richest households in the country would have facilitated $275 billion dollars a year for funding public infrastructure.
Barber concluded his sermon with a warning that we are bound together, and if we choose death, “none of us can breathe.” It is time, Barber said, “that America spoke truth and chose life.” Apparently, Big Government and wealth distribution is Barber’s formula for life.
Barber’s sermon can be viewed in full below:
Comment by Diane on June 24, 2020 at 5:55 pm
I live not far from Barber’s church in NC. Several years ago, two new public schools were built during the same year. One was close to the tracks, the other was across town outside the entrance to the country club. I taught in the school near the tracks, where most students were from low-income black and Hispanic families. The entire building, interior and exterior, was brick. No air conditioning, so classrooms were like brick ovens after three consecutive days of ninety-degree heat. It was literally nauseating to walk into the classroom. On those hot days, I took my kids outside after lunch for the remaining of the day, as it was unbearably stifling and sickening inside. Sometimes I walked the kids to a nearby grocery store, bought them popsicles and sat under the shade of a tree. Our PTA requested air conditioning and offered to pay for it. The parents’ pleas were ignored by the majority white school board. No signage was placed on our new building, no landscaping was done, and the playground lacked equipment. We were under a desegregation court order and ten years later, white students were bused in. Their parents couldn’t believe we had no air-conditioning. They went to the school board and suddenly we had AC, signage and landscaping.
The country club public school got air conditioning, upgraded classroom white boards, signage, landscaping and plenty of playground equipment when their school was built. They served a student body where 95% were white children from middle to high-income families.
When the court-ordered busing ended, the school board voted for a return to “neighborhood schools” within two weeks.
This is but just one example of white-instigated racial inequity in eastern NC, about thirty miles from Barber’s church. He speaks the truth.
That’s just one example
Comment by Dan W on June 24, 2020 at 8:10 pm
Diane, you wrote that those schools were built “several years ago.” You then wrote “ten years later, white students were bused in” so I’m not sure what decade those schools were built. I went to City of Atlanta schools. My elementary school did not have air conditioning when I attended, and the student body was 100% white. (My school began to be integrated when I started 1st grade.) We started school after Labor day and ended the 1st week of June – so theoretically the schools didn’t “need” air conditioning. The copious amounts of asbestos used in these schools may have been a factor(!) It was blazing hot the first few weeks of September, and was hot again by the time school ended in June. The lack of a/c was not due to racism, at least in my white Atlanta neighborhood.
Comment by Lee D. Cary on June 24, 2020 at 9:11 pm
Diane, you make an exceptional argument for homeschooling, options for school choice, and vouchers for parents to send their children to private and/or church-supported schools instead of paying for inferior public schools thru required tax payments.
What you are accurately criticizing, Diane, are GOVERNMENT run schools. And they are failing all across the nation. Particularly in the Big Blue Cities, with the occasional exception of magnet schools. The statistics measuring their effectiveness are shameful. Essentially, they are weekday holding cells for children who would otherwise be free to roam the streets.
Your criticism in an indictment of GOVERNMENT mandated incarceration facilities masquerading as education. So tell us, Diane, who are the racists enabling this disaster? Name them.
Comment by Linda Rosenblum on June 25, 2020 at 11:52 am
Your story had to have happened at least 30 to 40 years ago. Busing programs ended in the 1980s. Your argument is hardly convincing since it doesn’t speak to current conditions.
Comment by George on June 27, 2020 at 8:15 pm
I really doubt that any school has been built in any southern state in the past forty years lacking air conditioning. Must we live in the past and keep lashing out to those who were in charge during the Jim Crow era ? Your story is bogus and you are the problem, not the rest of us.
Comment by Dan W on June 24, 2020 at 6:12 pm
Why would Rev. Dr. Barber want the U.S. government to collect and redistribute all of this money? Doesn’t he claim the U.S. government has been the root cause of all our problems for 200+ years?
Could it be because racism equals $$$$$ in his pockets? LOL, what a snake oil salesman!
Comment by Clayton Narron on June 26, 2020 at 8:56 pm
Barber gives “Reverend” and “Doctor” demeaning connotations.
Comment by Diane on June 24, 2020 at 6:35 pm
$$$$ in his pockets? You can’t be serious. The man is not wealthy, neither is his family. Ever been to Goldsboro, NC? Ever seen Greenleaf Christian on the side of the road? Not a mega church, not wealthy.
Comment by Lee D. Cary on June 24, 2020 at 10:50 pm
Diane, https://tinyurl.com/yc6zanp2 will take you to a YouTube interview with Thomas Sowell.
If you watch 42:30-47:41, you’ll hear Sowell’s explanation of the failure of Public Schools, particularly in NYC where the current Mayor has blocked Charter and Success Academy Schools, by yielding to the highly politicized Teachers Union. It’s happening across the nation in Big Blue Cities.
I trust you know who Thomas Sowell is. The interview is entitled “Thomas Sowell on the Myths of Economic Inequality”.
Comment by Steve on June 25, 2020 at 6:30 am
A Goldsboro-based organization headed by the Rev. William Barber this year received nearly $350,000 of your tax dollars. Yes, that William Barber – the ringleader of highly partisan political protests against the General Assembly the past few years.
The protests were dubbed “Money Mondays” by the Civitas Institute after research exposed the fact that organizing groups received more than $100 million in direct state grants in recent years.
Many of those groups have had their taxpayer funds cut off by the legislature, but Barber’s group, “Rebuilding Broken Places Community Development Corporation (RBPCDC)” was awarded a $338,000 grant from the Department of Public Instruction this year.
Comment by Lee Cary on June 25, 2020 at 8:31 am
“$$$$ in his pockets? You can’t be serious,” writes Diane.
But, alas, Steve surfaces the truth. Thank you, Steve.
Comment by Steve on June 25, 2020 at 9:50 am
Rеvеrеnd Wіllіаm Ваrbеr ІІ Nеt Wоrth
Аѕ оf Јunе 2020, Rеvеrеnd Wіllіаm Ваrbеr ІІ hаѕ gаthеrеd а nеt wоrth оf $2 Міllіоn. Не hаѕ gаrnеrеd mоѕt оf hіѕ еаrnіngѕ frоm hіѕ саrееr аѕ а Рrоtеѕtаnt Міnіѕtеr аnd Роlіtісаl Асtіvіѕt.
Comment by chavez on June 24, 2020 at 8:10 pm
Barber was head of the NC NAACP during the Duke lacrosse case, and shamefully helped lead the attempt to lynch (and I use that term deliberately) three innocent students for a crime that never happened.
The Durham churches held a single city-wide meeting about the case, in which the keynote speakers — officers of the New Black Panther Party — denounced whites and Jews from the pulpit.
The congregation, consisting of the city’s leadership and clergy, did not object. (Color solidarity meant more than anything else, even for the clergy and inside a church.)
I have no interest in anything Barber has to say, nor, for that matter, any clergy from NC. They were weighed in the balance and found wanting.
Comment by Jim on June 25, 2020 at 9:45 am
So “reverend ” Barber when you say Americans should choose life are you thinking we should end abortion on demand? If so, I agree!
Comment by Lee Cary on June 26, 2020 at 8:05 am
Which suggests the question: Do black fetuses matter to Black Lives Matter? Haven’t seen an assault on any PP facilities.
Comment by Joan Oliver on June 29, 2020 at 7:12 pm
Great Question!! I think I’ll start asking it!
Comment by Conway Morphis on June 27, 2020 at 1:33 pm
As long as the left media keeps him in the news spewing his venom ,some will keep believing. It is amazing how some people are never satisfied mainly because it keeps him in the “money”. My hope is that GOD’s will be done!