William Barber

Rev. Barber Calls for ‘Continuous Moral Dissent’ & ‘Dangerous Folk’

Paulina Song on August 5, 2021

On the eve of the August 2nd Moral Monday, a recurring protest organized by religious progressives, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II gave a sermon at the People’s Congregational Church in Washington, D.C. for a Service of Justice & Healing. Barber, an ordained pastor in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), is president of Repairers of the Breach, an organization that seeks to “redeem the heart and soul of our country” by advocating for policies promoted by the political Left, and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, which helped organize the Moral Mondays as part of a “season of nonviolent moral direct action to save our democracy.”

Barber began the sermon with a loose reading of The Message paraphrase of Isaiah 10:1-4: “Doom to you who legislate evil—I’ve been quoting this Scripture now about 10 years—who make laws that make victims, who rob the poor of their rights, make people miserable—laws, legislation that rob women and children and exploit defenseless widows and take advantage and make homeless children. What will you have to say on Judgment Day? When doomsday arrives out of the blue, who’s gon’ help you Israel—I mean, America? What good will your money do you? What good will it do to have the greatest gross national product in all the world? You gon’ be a sorry sight on doomsday. And God is going to make sure that you be huddled with the prisoners. If you [are] not careful and don’t change, some folk are gon’ be like corpses stacked in the street. So much death, it’s gon’ make you sick. And God is gon’ be so angry that you robbed the poor that he’s gon’ ball up his fists and say, ‘I think I’ll hit him one more time.”

“The Word of the Lord for the people of the Lord. Blessed be the Word of the Lord,” Barber finished.

Barber drew the congregation’s attention to a few takeaways from the passage. The first was the need for a “message of continuous moral dissent.”

“There’s got to be a group of folk with enough Holy Ghost and enough courage that you don’t just go along to get along,” Barber said. “God needs some dangerous folk in the world. Danger cause they ain’t looking for nothing; they don’t want no more money. They [are] not looking to get some kind of accolade. They just gon’ tell it like it is.”

Moral dissent to Barber includes “a message of contrariness.” However, he cautioned against being contrary just to be contrary. “Folk like that are aggravating; they’re not prophetic.”

Rather, constructive contrariness to Barber means, “When I look at my deepest religious traditions—values of love and justice and mercy—and then I look at my deepest Constitutional values—establishing justice, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, ensuring domestic tranquility, ensuring equal protection under the law—when I layer those values on top of any legislation, if it doesn’t live up to it then I’m supposed to have an eternal dissatisfaction.”

With that dissatisfaction, Barber noted a second takeaway from the passage: the importance of sending a clear and specific message to each person who hears it. “Woe unto you. Don’t be sending no general text messages,” he warned.

“Woe unto you, church that won’t get involved in the issues that people are facing in the street. Woe unto you, pastor, that asks your folk to tithe but won’t fight for them to have a living wage… Woe unto you, President Biden, even though we love you. Woe unto you if you don’t use this power—and you don’t have nothing to fear cause you already know you’re not going to run again.”

Barber stressed the “need to make sure that when politicians come to our churches today, they get a word specifically.”

“You will be held accountable by God, and the God we serve that will hold you accountable is greater than an impeachment,” he said. “And not only will you be held accountable—we gotta warn people so they have a chance to change—you will be the cause of this country’s downfall.”

However, Barber noted that the problem is not in any one person, but rather systemic. In the same way, he pointed to the importance of building a movement committed to change, rather than just mobilizing individuals. According to Barber, Isaiah “knew that there had to be a movement. He knew that whenever there was a movement of meanness, there had to be a movement of love. He knew that whenever there was a movement of injustice, there had to be a movement of justice… Wherever there’s a movement of lies, there has to be a movement of truth. Don’t you understand? The devil recruits… He’s always recruiting, and so we got to recruit for this message. We got to make sure the message is amplified. We got to do it like TikTok; make it so everybody can get in.”

Ultimately, Barber said, “Wherever there’s a movement of the devil, there’s got to be a movement of God.”

Faith-led movements for justice and peace have been lacking and misguided in many ways. Nevertheless, no matter how imperfect these movements may be, we can take heart because we serve a perfect God who works all things out according to the counsel of his will.

  1. Comment by Douglas Ehrhardt on August 5, 2021 at 7:43 am

    Totally insane.

  2. Comment by Kevin on August 5, 2021 at 11:24 pm

    The southern Sharpton.

  3. Comment by Catherine on August 6, 2021 at 7:59 pm

    Scary.

  4. Comment by Ken on August 8, 2021 at 10:31 am

    Any solution to our culture’s racial and class divisions that is not built on forgiveness, is not God ordained.

  5. Comment by Rebecca L. on August 13, 2021 at 10:53 pm

    Here’s a another quote from Isaiah – 5:20: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! …Taking His Word out of context is bad for your eternal life and bad for the flock.

  6. Comment by floyd lee on August 14, 2021 at 7:06 pm

    Barber — like his fellow “Hard Left Turn” political leftists — is just plain messed up.

  7. Comment by Charles Toy on August 24, 2021 at 2:41 pm

    You trolls on this thread should be ashamed of yourselves. It might be wise to read the actual words Jesus spoke. Maybe then the Holy Spirit will open your eyes.

The work of IRD is made possible by your generous contributions.

Receive expert analysis in your inbox.