"We Won't Back Down!" | Bishop William J. Barber, II

We disagree with Bishop Barber's brief and passing comment regarding Israel here, but we do believe that Bishop Barber is Spirit-filled and a great moral leader of our time. We thank God for his presence among us at this time in our history.

06 24 22 Post Roe Service of Lament and Empowerment 1 2

 

We've been in a storm too long

Mightly Clouds of Joy- I've been in the storm too long

It feels to me today that I have been in a storm all of my life. Never a period of peace, always a struggle for justice. Never a moment where we could rest in confidence that all will be well.

When I read Leon Liwtack's great book "Been in the Storm So Long" years back I picked up some humility because I could measure my own experience, tough as it is, against that of  African Americans, who have a much tougher time of most everything. But I instantly identified with the title of the book and much that I read there. And I think that there are a few connections between that book and today. One is that had the Confederacy been fully defeated and the Confederacy's leadership and the south's planter aristocracy been treated as the traitors that they were, and had Reconstruction succeeded and been extended, we would not be debating states' rights, gun control, reproductive justice, structurally-based racism, and labor rights today. Those questions either would have been settled long ago or we would be approaching them in a different context. The Jackson Women's Health Organization would be doing its good work without interference.

I don't think that I am mistaken in believing that the loudest voices celebrating the Supreme Court rulings on abortions and guns this week are celebrating the rise of a New Confederacy.

Every storm ends and there are rainbows. I heard it said two weeks ago that, yes, the world is broken, but what is broken can be mended---not by time, but by intentionality. The world needs our light in this storm.
 

  

Pro-Choice, living by faith, and for reproductive justice---it's complicated, but it's real

"Out From Under the Rug" - Nicole Stewart and Rev. Daniel Kanter. Storyteller Nicole Stewart and Rev. Daniel Kanter will tell abortion stories that address how we remove shame from our lives and how we learn how to listen to others. From the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. 

Feminist and liberation theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether has died

From National Public Radio:

One of the founding mothers of feminist theology has died. Rosemary Radford Ruether was among the first scholars to think deeply about the role of women in Christianity, shaking up old patriarchies and pushing for change.

Ruether died in California on Saturday at the age of 85 after battling a long illness, according to the theologian Mary Hunt, who announced the death in a statement on behalf of Ruether's family.

"Dr. Ruether was a scholar activist par excellence. She was respected and beloved by students, colleagues, and collaborators around the world for her work on ecofeminist and liberation theologies, anti-racism, Middle East complexities, women-church, and many other topics," the statement said.

"Her legacy, both intellectual and personal, is rich beyond imagining. The scope and depth of her work, and the witness of her life as a committed feminist justice-seeker will shine forever with a luster that time will only enhance."

Read the entire story here.

This came from the National Catholic Reporter:

Feminist and liberation theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether influenced generations of men and women in the causes of justice for women, the poor, people of color, the Middle East and the Earth. The scholar, teacher, activist, author and former NCR columnist died May 21. She was 85.

Theologian Mary Hunt, a long-time friend and colleague of Reuther's, announced the death on behalf of the family.

"Dr. Ruether was a scholar activist par excellence. She was respected and beloved by students, colleagues, and collaborators around the world," said Hunt, cofounder and codirector of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER).

"Her legacy, both intellectual and personal, is rich beyond imagining," Hunt said in an email announcement. "The scope and depth of her work, and the witness of her life as a committed feminist justice-seeker will shine forever with a luster that time will only enhance."

A classicist by training, Ruether was outspoken in her liberal views on everything from women's ordination to the Palestinian state. She wrote hundreds of articles and 36 books, including the systematic Sexism and God-Talk in 1983 and the ecofeminist primer Gaia and God in 1992.

In more than 50 years of teaching, Ruether influenced thousands of students, first at the historically black Howard University from 1965 to 1975, then at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary as the Georgia Harkness Professor of Applied Theology from 1976 to 2002. She was a visiting professor at Harvard Divinity School, Princeton Theological Seminary, Yale Divinity School and Sir George Williams University in Montreal.

Read the NCR story here.

The Liberation Theologies Online Library and Reference Center entry on Rosemary Radford Ruether is here.

Notes To The Church At A Time Of Difficulty & Promise

The Poor People's Campaign & Bishop Barber in Los Angeles on May 16

The video works just fine despite what it says. Just click on it on and sit back and watch. And then take some good action.

Women, Faith, & The Church

 

The Imperatives Of Social Change & Social Justice (Illustrated)

 

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and reproductive justice

 

Moral Clarity About Our Own Atrocities---Bishop William Barber II

The following came out as an e-mail from Bishop Barber and Repairers of the Breach on Saturday, April 30. Please learn about and support Repairers of the Breach by going here.

Dear Movement Family,

In Philadelphia this week, the Pennsylvania Poor People’s Campaign organized a march from City Hall to a church downtown, where Carolyn Hill shared the story of losing her two nieces to poverty. “The child welfare department decided I was too poor to raise them,” Ms. Hill testified. “I had a roof over my head and food in the fridge and the girls were doing well in my care… But if I had had the Child Tax Credit earlier, child welfare might not have taken my nieces from me.” She hasn’t seen the babies she helped to raise in nine years because of policy decisions by Republicans and Democrats who believe lies about scarcity.

Over the past couple of months, Russia’s assault on Ukraine has produced scenes that demand action from people who want to hold onto our humanity. To see the butchery at Bucha or the massacre at Mariupol and do nothing would be to forfeit any claim to moral authority. We know this instinctively. It is why, despite the political gridlock on Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats have acted swiftly to approve historic military aid to Ukraine. In the face of such a moral imperative, it would be anathema for either party to ask, “How are we going to pay for it?”

But our moral clarity on the question of Ukraine exposes the contradiction at the heart of American politics for the past 40 years. In 1967, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. told the story of visiting Marks, Mississippi, and meeting a teacher who cut her apple into several pieces at lunch each day so that students who had nothing else to eat could share it for nourishment. In the richest nation in the history of the world, King knew it was a moral contradiction to witness such poverty and do nothing. So he agreed to work with a coalition of Black, White, Latino and Native poor people to make America see the human suffering in its midst. King was gunned down for his efforts to build a Poor People’s Campaign, but the mobilization helped compel the government to launch a War on Poverty. Republicans and Democrats agreed it was unimaginable to simply look away.

America has not sustained that moral clarity about the catastrophe of poverty. As we continue our national tour to prepare for the Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls on June 18, 2022, poor and low-income people like Ms. Hill are putting a face on the moral crisis of poverty in the richest nation in the history of the world.

As we all watch the unfolding tragedy in Ukraine, Americans are aware that the main difference between us and the Russian people is that we see the truth of the human slaughter that is hidden from them by Putin’s propaganda. If they could see what we see, we know they could not allow it to continue in their names. But if this is true of human suffering half a world away, then it must be also true of the catastrophes hidden in our cities’ homeless encampments and Walmart parking lots, filled with families sleeping in cars because they cannot afford housing. If it is true for babies in Ukraine, then it is also true for Ms. Hill’s babies.

We are no less culpable than the Russian people because we have been willing to go along with narratives that blame poor people or hide their suffering behind arguments about book bans or “critical race theory.” It is our moral duty to see the suffering of other human beings, especially those closest to us. And when we witness unnecessary suffering, it is our duty to act.

If Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine demand action, then so too does the failure of the US Senate to pass Build Back Better’s provisions for affordable housing, green jobs, living wages for care workers, and a child tax credit that will immediately lift 4 million children out of poverty. If Putin’s attack on democracy in Europe can unite Western democracies, then the assault on voting rights in state houses across America must, at the very least, unite Senate Democrats in their resolve to pass federal voting rights protections before the midterms this fall.

The moral imperative of these issues is no less pressing than the human suffering in Ukraine. We cannot ignore the cry for help from Ukraine, just as we cannot look away from the poor people and low-wage workers who are calling for a Mass Poor People's & Low-Wage Workers' Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls.

This historic gathering at a watershed moment in our nation’s history isn’t just another rally. It is a call coming from grassroots movements in communities across America where people are learning that we have power when we get together, and we have authority when we act to stop the atrocities that we have allowed here at home for far too long.

Forward together,

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II
President and Senior Lecturer
Repairers of the Breach

PS: As we focus our attention on mobilizing people for June 18th, our organizers have put together a great set of resources to help you organize a bus from your community. Please reach out to your faith community, union, neighborhood association, or civic organization to start signing people up for a bus this week. We’re putting everything we’ve got into building a national platform where we can demand that this nation see the suffering of people like Ms. Hill.

Forward together, not one step back!

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II
President and Senior Lecturer
Repairers of the Breach

“The way to heal the soul of the nation is to pass policies that heal the body of the nation. It’s the just thing to do. That’s how we as a nation can together move forward.” -Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

Challenging Messages For The Church Today

 

Richard Rohr: "One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s 'personal Lord and Savior', or continue to receive Sacraments in good standing. The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great."

The #PoorPeoplesCampaign June 18 Mobilization Tour comes to Philadelphia---This clip has ASL interpretation---FORWARD TOGETHER! NOT ONE STEP BACK!

There is some solid preaching and inspiration here. It's a call to commit and to take action. It's another way to look at faith and action. It's teaching and it's learning. It's overcoming fear. It's real.

Today is Workers' Memorial Day. We need to mourn for the dead, not be complicit in injustice, and fight like hell for the living.

Today is Workers' Memorial Day, the day when we remember all of those who died at work or from workplace injuries and illnesses. It should be a day of mourning---part of an extended period of national mourning for the victims of COVID and for our lack of a national healthcare policy and a national healthcare service---and a day of action and protest.

WATCH NOW: National Mobilization All-Call & Rally

 

The Poor People's And Low-Wage Workers' Assembly

 

Happy Easter from Catholics for Choice

On behalf of the entire team at Catholics for Choice, I want to wish you a joyous Easter, however you choose to honor this day.

Easter marks the culmination of forty days of journeying toward a radical change of heart and mind. Our community of pro-choice Catholics knows well that this kind of transformation is desperately needed, after a Lenten season fraught with new attacks on abortion access in our states, the fight to get an overqualified Black woman in her rightful seat on the bench, all in the shadow of a looming Supreme Court decision that could decimate our right to abortion.

Still, we pressed on, signing petitions, calling our lawmakers, and showing up at rallies. And we saw some signs of hope: Colorado signed the Reproductive Health Equity Act into law, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, backed by reproductive rights and interfaith leaders, was confirmed to the Supreme Court. We spoke truth to power and demonstrated to our church, country, and communities that pro-choice Catholics are the majority, and we are not alone.

As we near the possible gutting or striking down of Roe v. Wade, we must not freeze in fear and disbelief at the spectacle of injustice before us. We must, instead, encounter it and work toward the transformation of hearts and minds. Here at Catholics for Choice, we are providing education and fostering dialogue about the moral complexities of abortion, and we are emboldening pro-choice Catholics to be loud and proud about our values, our faith, and our commitment to justice.

It was because of Mary Magdalene’s faith, not in spite of it, that she chose to proclaim the resurrection and fulfillment of God’s promise to us all despite the obstacles and disbelief. It is because of our faith, and not in spite of it, that we continue the struggle for reproductive freedom and justice for all.
 

Wishing many blessings for you and your loved ones,

Wishing many blessings for you and your loved ones,

Jamie L. Manson

WATCH: This is Our Selma! | Moral March on West Virginia Launch

 

The Poor People’s Pandemic Digital Report

 

"Reproductive Justice is Justice for All" w/Rev. Barbara Prose & Rev. Marlin Lavanhar