Statement from the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, following his release from custody:
In the rotunda of the US Capitol yesterday, while praying in front of the monument that honors the founders of the women’s suffrage movement, we were arrested by Capitol police. We have been released from custody; thank you to everyone who has reached out to ask about us. We are OK, but all is not well.
We were in Washington, DC, yesterday to launch Moral Mondays with fellow clergy, moral leaders, and scores of people who will be directly impacted by the disastrous budget that Congress has just come back into session to work on. Every illegal attempt to slash federal programs that Elon Musk tried to force through DOGE over the past 100 days is now being proposed as law by the leadership of this Congress.
Though the mainstream media has not yet focused on the details of this budget, the facts are clear. Numbers do not lie. You cannot cut $1.5 trillion from the federal budget without slashing Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, Head Start, Section 8, and other life-saving and life-sustaining programs that millions of Americans rely on and the vast majority of people support. This is why 12 Republican members of congress have already written to House Speaker Johnson to challenge the proposed cuts to Medicaid. This is not a Republican versus Democrat debate. It's a life or death decision.
We are Christian preachers. When we made a vow to preach the good news to all people, in season and out of season, we committed to address life or death issues. This is often intimate and deeply work. We bless babies when they are born, we visit the sick, we welcome strangers to our dinner tables, and we pray with people when they are dying. But life and death work is also public work. As Christian preachers, we are also public theologians. When someone dies from poverty and a lack of healthcare, we cannot lie and say, “God called them home.” We have to tell the truth. They died because we live in a society that has chosen not to care for them.
In the Bible, God calls public theologians to relocate their ministry when life or death issues are being decided in the public square. “Go down to the palace of the King,” God tells Jeremiah in a time when policy was decided in the King’s court. Why does the preacher need to go to the legislative body? Jeremiah is sent with a message for the legislators. “Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place.”
If a preacher knows that legislators are developing policy that will create injustice, it is our duty to “go down to the palace of the King.”
If we know the people are being robbed by a budget that will take from the most vulnerable to give tax breaks to the rich, it is our duty to relocate our ministry to where these life and death decisions are being made.
If our elected representatives are planning to pass a budget that will do violence to the “alien, the orphan, and the widow” by slashing funding at home while funding a bloated military budget that we know is being used to “shed innocent blood” in other places around the world, then we have a moral responsibility to be in our Capitol’s rotunda.
We have a duty to pray—and to pray in public.
When Jeremiah prayed to God that his head might become a fountain of tears to grieve over the destruction of his people, he didn’t sit and pray in private. He went down to the palace of the King.
When Jesus wept in the Garden of Gethsemane, crying and sweating blood in agony, he didn’t stay there. He went to the cross and made his prayer public.
When our foremothers and forefathers gathered in Southern churches to cry out to God during the freedom movement, they prayed and sang and anchored themselves in faith. But they did not stay in the church house. They marched out into the streets and nonviolently confronted injustice.
This is why we could not abdicate the obligations of our vocation when someone asked us to be quiet.
We appreciate the Capitol police and have prayed with them and for them as they have dealt with the trauma of being assaulted during the insurrection on January 6th. We thank them for their service and have reassured them that our objection is not to them doing their job. Our insistence on prayer at this moment and in this space is about whether America’s elected representatives will do the job they swore to do when they put their hands on Bibles, the Quran, other sacred texts, and the US Constitution, promising to “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty.”
We know legislators cannot do this work alone. They are representatives of the people, and the people must help them to do what is right.
We came to the Capitol rotunda to pray for representatives who currently support this immoral budget to see the danger of policy that kills and choose life. We came believing that God can take out a heart of stone and give anyone a heart of flesh. And we came knowing that, whatever their choice, we must nonviolently embody our prayer. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, we must “pray with our feet.” We must trust that, when we align ourselves with the truth at the heart of the universe, our action can unleash power beyond us, setting others free to act and respond in their own way to the moral urgency of this moment.
Now is the time for each of us to stand up and speak up. We willingly and nonviolently submitted to arrest rather than cease our prayer not because we wanted to be arrested, but because we know that now is the time to arrest the attention of this nation.
Now is not the time to shrink back in fear. Now is the time to courageously join our voices in a general lament for the cruelty we are witnessing in the hope that a new movement of love and justice and truth is already rising to overcome it.
No one would not be fighting this hard to pass a budget that is so extreme if they were not afraid. The extreme minority of elites promoting this disastrous budget understand the potential power of a coalition of people coming together across race and region, across faiths and family traditions, to build an America that works for all of us. In fact, they may understand better than many of us do how much power we have.
That power is unleashed when we stand up and say, “We are not afraid. We will not hate you. We will transform you through the power of love.” That power, which is greater than any threat or fear, is unleashed when we commit to become the answer to our prayers. It is fleshed out when we inform our communities about what is happen, register people to vote, and rally around an agenda that lifts from the bottom so everyone can rise.
That is why we chose to pray in the Capitol rotunda yesterday. And that is the prayer we hope to embody with a growing and expanding moral movement in this nation until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Unfortunately the majority of our current legislators are more than happy to have a king and abdicate their responsibility to their constituents, whom they are supposed to represent. Maybe next time the pastors need to protest at the palace of the corrupt and cruel king himself.
my understanding is that the Republicans that voted against this shameful "budget" did so because it DID NOT CUT ENOUGH, not because it was an unconscionable move against the poorest, most helpless among us in favor of megarich oligarchs like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, etc.
I’m so impressed by this reminder of what all of us are going through right now. I am glad that Dems are on the side of wanting good for all people. It distresses me so to see the Reps not speaking up for their own constituents. Until we can convince any of them to cross the aisle, we are going to have to put up with all the treachery this administration doles out. Please let them see the light!
I am glad to see they are finally attaching the word REPUBLICAN to all of this instead of just Trump, Trump, Trump. Long overdue, make Trump and Republican like Hama & Eggs, can't think of one without the other.
Truth! The Republican Party -- with a major assist from Big Money and the Supreme Court -- made Trump possible, and maybe even inevitable. And let's not discount the power of racism, which has been rocket fuel for the Republicans ever since Nixon's "southern strategy."
I agree, but Big Money, SCOTUS, and Project 2025 are all related For 30 years, Leonard Leo, Chair of the Federalist Society, and a conservative Catholic, worked to pack SCOTUS with conservative Catholics, in order to end Roe v Wade, and pursue his religious agenda. Leo supported the campaigns of Roberts, Thomas, and Alito. as well as Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett. In 2021, Leo received a gift of $1.6 billion. He funneled more than $55M into Project 2025 groups.
Leo is involved with the Catholic Information Center in Washington DC, "which doubles as the Opus Dei office in Washington, and the national network of wealthy and powerful right-wing Catholics affiliated with it are among the most effective forces in MAGA world and the American Christian-nationalist movement.”
Kevin Roberts, the CEO of The Heritage Foundation, and Project 2025 mastermind, is an active member of Opus Dei, and he believes they are in the midst of a revolution, which will end the separation of church and state, end abortions, end contraception, and change the role of women so our primary goal is to reproduce.
In 2019, JD Vance converted to Catholicism, after Kevin Roberts introduced him to an Opus Dei priest. Vance wrote the foreword to Kevin Roberts’s book, Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to save America. (The subtitle was later changed.) Roberts has said that Vance is one of the leaders of their movement.
I have one additional comment to make, which I feel is very important. While I understand the importance of Jeffries' and Booker's sit-in, and the purpose of speaking out against Trump's budget, I believe we must be very careful of using our own religious backgrounds as a way of opposing Republicans.
One of the greatest tenants of our democracy is the separation of church and state, and Trump already has blurred it. Kevin Roberts, Leonard Leo, and JD Vance are using their conservative Catholic religion to "attack the secular foundations of the United States." And, Trump is their spokesman. In an excellent article (linked below) by Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom from Religion Foundation, she writes: "In Project 2025, there is an "overtly Christian National laundry list of what they want to achieve, including "instituting universal vouchers for religious schools, which Trump has endorsed" and SCOTUS will probably pass.
"Vice President J.D. Vance, and others are also calling to resuscitate the 1873 “Comstock Act,” which would ban the mailing and shipping of contraceptives or abortifacients, thus abolishing access to most contraception and abortion. And Project 2025 advocates for a 'biblically based' definition of marriage and family and dismantling nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Americans in the name of 'religious liberty.' https://progressive.org/op-eds/trump-will-bulldoze-church-state-separation-gaylor-20250121/
Yes, that thread throughout history remains unbroken, tragically. Fierce resentment of those who dare take privilege from European Whites- and now we must resent Europeans. It’s as if this rage is running out of targets or reasons to exist, so will support any effort to vanquish somebody else. Maybe this is new dynamic must be met with new tactics and new determination. NESSimism: Goodness, Kindness, Fairness.
Our country is in a constitutional crisis because it is in a moral crisis. How could Americans profess to any code of morality, sectarian or secular, and vote for an amoral monster like Trump? The answer to that question has to begin with our naive and egotistical assumption that wealth is the ultimate measure of success and personal worth. A so-called American Dream based on that assumption is in reality an American Nightmare that has come to fruition. We cannot all be rich, but we can all be prosperous as well as moral if we govern our nation for the benefit of everyone. The Chinese sage Confucius summed this up cogently:
"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
You and I are on the same page. In early February I wrote and posted on Substack a LONG reflection of my thoughts on current events. My 5th bullet point on fighting back and healing was:
5. Begin a process of redefining wealth as not how much we have, but as how much we give. ... (I need to rewrite this and build it out at some point)
We need to snatch a page right out of the Iroquois handbook. Get rid of their tendency to engage in blood feuds but adopt their democratic model of living and governing. It was awesome IMHO.
Agnostics/Athiests I know are extremely “spiritual” as well, and must be included in this shift. Faith in Goodness, Kindness, Fairness (I call it NESSimism) is a concept that can steer the many in a common direction, while allowing space for individual ideas about religion. Dems must be careful not to endorse the fundamentalism which continues to tear us apart.
Ms. Rubin, thank you for this. No person of faith should follow Trump, a cruel atheist along with Musk, who gleefully take AIDS medication from expectant mothers and children overseas, who accept Israel's blockade of all humanitarian aid to Gaza, and who take food from children in the US, defund Meals on Wheels (!), and want a work requirement for Medicaid, because apparently Great-Grandma in the nursing home needs to go flip burgers in a fast-food chain to justify spending Federal and state dollars on her care.
I'm an atheist and most atheists I know are more moral and kind than most Talibangelical christians. Trump and Muskrat are narcissists. The only god they worship is themselves.
Thank you, nmgirl! I'm atheist also, and get really tired of religious types who automatically equate atheism with evil. Or evil with atheism, as the case may be. Note Trumpet CLAIMS to be Christian, tho his behavior sure doesn't reflect this.
Harris repeated that over and over again. It wasn't enough. Why not? This isn't merely a nice idea, it's a PRACTICE. As long as "we the people" don't put it into practice (and help our MAGA neighbors, family members, colleagues etc to learn HOW to put it into practice), it will remain a vague idea, for those "Christian nationalists".
After all, MAGA Christianity is a hollowed-out form of Christianity, in which only judgment (and as a consequence, self-hatred) is left. It lacks the emotional intelligence tools needed to train the mind to learn HOW to become much more compassionate towards yourself and others.
So it's not a coincidence that MAGA is led by two atheists who feel as if compassion is "overrated" and "weaponized", and who suffered from severe childhood abuse in violent environments. What MAGA leaders tell their voters is that it's not their fault if they do NOT see The Other as having more in common with them than what could possibly separate us. If you're stuck in a moral judgment system, you either judge yourself or The Other. MAGA tells them that it's okay to judge the Other, which implicitly sends them... a compassionate message, telling them that THEY are okay, AS they are. In the meantime, non-MAGA voters feel exasperated at the immoral behavior of MAGA. So WE tend to judge THEM for it... which only makes things worse.
The best approach, IMHO, is indeed to (1) reclaim both the flag and an authentic practice of religion from MAGA, and (2) VERY kindly talk WITH (instead of to) MAGA voters the way Pete Buttigieg or Adam Mockler do, namely putting into practice our belief that we will always have more in common with them than what could possibly separate us, and that deep down, they are mostly "good people" too, just like us.
If we can do that, we CAN defeat fascism at the ballot box, because its fuel is cynicism and division...
... "reclaim both the flag and an authentic practice of religion from MAGA? ... and VERY kindly talk WITH (instead of to) MAGA voters..." This is a TALL order when Medicaid is your only source of income, Medicare your only means for healthcare, you and your family are hungry. The food kitchen's and homeless shelters have been shuttered and homelessness is now a crime by Executive Order. I write this with a heavy sigh. I just witnessed a homeless man dead, lying under a blanket in front of a convenience store and rage just burst forth from every pore of my body! And people just walked past him or her seemingly as if it didn't matter. Who are we? as individuals? as a caring, truly loving nation? Ok, EUWTB. Your sentiment has merit. BUT when they can't here me and/or they shut the door in my face in rejection of Truth and Love and Compassion and Decency, I will shake the fucking dust off my feet and keep steppin'.
It feels like a losing battle some days, and maybe it is a losing battle (although in the long run the authoritarian state, too, will crumble, as all states seem to do).
Nevertheless the challenge to live an honorable life in this Republican era is greater and more complicated than ever before.
Nine tenths of honor is to keep the faith: not to capitulate, not to be eased into acceptance, and above all not to forgo doing the right thing simply because it's become quite terrifying to live and act in a principled way.
Every time someone stands up and shows courage in the face of the authoritarian Blitzkrieg now consuming us, it is a reminder that it is still possible to be fully human, a reminder that sinking into the cruelty and corruption of the Republican regime is not the only option.
I think it will feel like a losing battle -- right up until the moment it's shown to be a winning one. I think of people in previous dark times, kindling faith, keeping watch, doing justice, helping others, strengthening hearts. I remind myself -- no one promised it would be easy. But what else is there to do? As Rabbi Hillel once said, if I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, then when?
Bravo to Rep. Jeffries and Sen. Booker for their moral witness in this era of widespread immorality among U.S. Congress politicians and all others who ignore the poor and worship the super rich.
I think mainstream Christians need to activate, specifically on a moral basis. They are too timid to make it a matter of faith wanting to avoid being pushy as a believer. But the situation is not normal in which we can be silent and patient.
WHY AM I ONLY READING THESE DERAILS NOW???? Where was the timely covering if this vital event? All that made it out here to the boonies was just a few lines saying Booker and zjeffries held a sit in on the Capitol steps.
And don’t forget the pastors that were arrested inside the capitol rotunda last week who were quietly praying in protest of bill.
I still want to know who gave the order for those arrests.
Mikey did, no doubt.
After Stevie told him to...
Yes...speaking of anti-Christian discrimination!
https://episcopalnewsservice.org/2025/04/29/the-rev-william-barber-arrested-in-capitol-rotunda-after-praying-against-republican-led-budget/
Statement from the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, following his release from custody:
In the rotunda of the US Capitol yesterday, while praying in front of the monument that honors the founders of the women’s suffrage movement, we were arrested by Capitol police. We have been released from custody; thank you to everyone who has reached out to ask about us. We are OK, but all is not well.
We were in Washington, DC, yesterday to launch Moral Mondays with fellow clergy, moral leaders, and scores of people who will be directly impacted by the disastrous budget that Congress has just come back into session to work on. Every illegal attempt to slash federal programs that Elon Musk tried to force through DOGE over the past 100 days is now being proposed as law by the leadership of this Congress.
Though the mainstream media has not yet focused on the details of this budget, the facts are clear. Numbers do not lie. You cannot cut $1.5 trillion from the federal budget without slashing Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, Head Start, Section 8, and other life-saving and life-sustaining programs that millions of Americans rely on and the vast majority of people support. This is why 12 Republican members of congress have already written to House Speaker Johnson to challenge the proposed cuts to Medicaid. This is not a Republican versus Democrat debate. It's a life or death decision.
We are Christian preachers. When we made a vow to preach the good news to all people, in season and out of season, we committed to address life or death issues. This is often intimate and deeply work. We bless babies when they are born, we visit the sick, we welcome strangers to our dinner tables, and we pray with people when they are dying. But life and death work is also public work. As Christian preachers, we are also public theologians. When someone dies from poverty and a lack of healthcare, we cannot lie and say, “God called them home.” We have to tell the truth. They died because we live in a society that has chosen not to care for them.
In the Bible, God calls public theologians to relocate their ministry when life or death issues are being decided in the public square. “Go down to the palace of the King,” God tells Jeremiah in a time when policy was decided in the King’s court. Why does the preacher need to go to the legislative body? Jeremiah is sent with a message for the legislators. “Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place.”
If a preacher knows that legislators are developing policy that will create injustice, it is our duty to “go down to the palace of the King.”
If we know the people are being robbed by a budget that will take from the most vulnerable to give tax breaks to the rich, it is our duty to relocate our ministry to where these life and death decisions are being made.
If our elected representatives are planning to pass a budget that will do violence to the “alien, the orphan, and the widow” by slashing funding at home while funding a bloated military budget that we know is being used to “shed innocent blood” in other places around the world, then we have a moral responsibility to be in our Capitol’s rotunda.
We have a duty to pray—and to pray in public.
When Jeremiah prayed to God that his head might become a fountain of tears to grieve over the destruction of his people, he didn’t sit and pray in private. He went down to the palace of the King.
When Jesus wept in the Garden of Gethsemane, crying and sweating blood in agony, he didn’t stay there. He went to the cross and made his prayer public.
When our foremothers and forefathers gathered in Southern churches to cry out to God during the freedom movement, they prayed and sang and anchored themselves in faith. But they did not stay in the church house. They marched out into the streets and nonviolently confronted injustice.
This is why we could not abdicate the obligations of our vocation when someone asked us to be quiet.
We appreciate the Capitol police and have prayed with them and for them as they have dealt with the trauma of being assaulted during the insurrection on January 6th. We thank them for their service and have reassured them that our objection is not to them doing their job. Our insistence on prayer at this moment and in this space is about whether America’s elected representatives will do the job they swore to do when they put their hands on Bibles, the Quran, other sacred texts, and the US Constitution, promising to “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty.”
We know legislators cannot do this work alone. They are representatives of the people, and the people must help them to do what is right.
We came to the Capitol rotunda to pray for representatives who currently support this immoral budget to see the danger of policy that kills and choose life. We came believing that God can take out a heart of stone and give anyone a heart of flesh. And we came knowing that, whatever their choice, we must nonviolently embody our prayer. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, we must “pray with our feet.” We must trust that, when we align ourselves with the truth at the heart of the universe, our action can unleash power beyond us, setting others free to act and respond in their own way to the moral urgency of this moment.
Now is the time for each of us to stand up and speak up. We willingly and nonviolently submitted to arrest rather than cease our prayer not because we wanted to be arrested, but because we know that now is the time to arrest the attention of this nation.
Now is not the time to shrink back in fear. Now is the time to courageously join our voices in a general lament for the cruelty we are witnessing in the hope that a new movement of love and justice and truth is already rising to overcome it.
No one would not be fighting this hard to pass a budget that is so extreme if they were not afraid. The extreme minority of elites promoting this disastrous budget understand the potential power of a coalition of people coming together across race and region, across faiths and family traditions, to build an America that works for all of us. In fact, they may understand better than many of us do how much power we have.
That power is unleashed when we stand up and say, “We are not afraid. We will not hate you. We will transform you through the power of love.” That power, which is greater than any threat or fear, is unleashed when we commit to become the answer to our prayers. It is fleshed out when we inform our communities about what is happen, register people to vote, and rally around an agenda that lifts from the bottom so everyone can rise.
That is why we chose to pray in the Capitol rotunda yesterday. And that is the prayer we hope to embody with a growing and expanding moral movement in this nation until “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
—
Thank you for sharing Bishop Barber’s words.
Reverent Barber has been an advocate all his life, quietly and unsung. That is what religion should be about.
Unfortunately the majority of our current legislators are more than happy to have a king and abdicate their responsibility to their constituents, whom they are supposed to represent. Maybe next time the pastors need to protest at the palace of the corrupt and cruel king himself.
Yes, thank you for this! Do you have a link to it?
my understanding is that the Republicans that voted against this shameful "budget" did so because it DID NOT CUT ENOUGH, not because it was an unconscionable move against the poorest, most helpless among us in favor of megarich oligarchs like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel, etc.
I’m so impressed by this reminder of what all of us are going through right now. I am glad that Dems are on the side of wanting good for all people. It distresses me so to see the Reps not speaking up for their own constituents. Until we can convince any of them to cross the aisle, we are going to have to put up with all the treachery this administration doles out. Please let them see the light!
I repeat. Trump dissent brewing as Republicans fear midterm defeat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX7JWLJ0-cY
Jerry Weiss Feathers of Hope. https://jerryweiss.substack.com/
I am glad to see they are finally attaching the word REPUBLICAN to all of this instead of just Trump, Trump, Trump. Long overdue, make Trump and Republican like Hama & Eggs, can't think of one without the other.
Truth! The Republican Party -- with a major assist from Big Money and the Supreme Court -- made Trump possible, and maybe even inevitable. And let's not discount the power of racism, which has been rocket fuel for the Republicans ever since Nixon's "southern strategy."
I agree, but Big Money, SCOTUS, and Project 2025 are all related For 30 years, Leonard Leo, Chair of the Federalist Society, and a conservative Catholic, worked to pack SCOTUS with conservative Catholics, in order to end Roe v Wade, and pursue his religious agenda. Leo supported the campaigns of Roberts, Thomas, and Alito. as well as Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett. In 2021, Leo received a gift of $1.6 billion. He funneled more than $55M into Project 2025 groups.
Leo is involved with the Catholic Information Center in Washington DC, "which doubles as the Opus Dei office in Washington, and the national network of wealthy and powerful right-wing Catholics affiliated with it are among the most effective forces in MAGA world and the American Christian-nationalist movement.”
Kevin Roberts, the CEO of The Heritage Foundation, and Project 2025 mastermind, is an active member of Opus Dei, and he believes they are in the midst of a revolution, which will end the separation of church and state, end abortions, end contraception, and change the role of women so our primary goal is to reproduce.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/26/kevin-roberts-project-2025-opus-dei
In 2019, JD Vance converted to Catholicism, after Kevin Roberts introduced him to an Opus Dei priest. Vance wrote the foreword to Kevin Roberts’s book, Dawn’s Early Light: Burning Down Washington to save America. (The subtitle was later changed.) Roberts has said that Vance is one of the leaders of their movement.
I have one additional comment to make, which I feel is very important. While I understand the importance of Jeffries' and Booker's sit-in, and the purpose of speaking out against Trump's budget, I believe we must be very careful of using our own religious backgrounds as a way of opposing Republicans.
One of the greatest tenants of our democracy is the separation of church and state, and Trump already has blurred it. Kevin Roberts, Leonard Leo, and JD Vance are using their conservative Catholic religion to "attack the secular foundations of the United States." And, Trump is their spokesman. In an excellent article (linked below) by Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom from Religion Foundation, she writes: "In Project 2025, there is an "overtly Christian National laundry list of what they want to achieve, including "instituting universal vouchers for religious schools, which Trump has endorsed" and SCOTUS will probably pass.
"Vice President J.D. Vance, and others are also calling to resuscitate the 1873 “Comstock Act,” which would ban the mailing and shipping of contraceptives or abortifacients, thus abolishing access to most contraception and abortion. And Project 2025 advocates for a 'biblically based' definition of marriage and family and dismantling nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Americans in the name of 'religious liberty.' https://progressive.org/op-eds/trump-will-bulldoze-church-state-separation-gaylor-20250121/
Yes, that thread throughout history remains unbroken, tragically. Fierce resentment of those who dare take privilege from European Whites- and now we must resent Europeans. It’s as if this rage is running out of targets or reasons to exist, so will support any effort to vanquish somebody else. Maybe this is new dynamic must be met with new tactics and new determination. NESSimism: Goodness, Kindness, Fairness.
Our country is in a constitutional crisis because it is in a moral crisis. How could Americans profess to any code of morality, sectarian or secular, and vote for an amoral monster like Trump? The answer to that question has to begin with our naive and egotistical assumption that wealth is the ultimate measure of success and personal worth. A so-called American Dream based on that assumption is in reality an American Nightmare that has come to fruition. We cannot all be rich, but we can all be prosperous as well as moral if we govern our nation for the benefit of everyone. The Chinese sage Confucius summed this up cogently:
"In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
Well said!
Thank you. Once in a while the verbal portion of my brain gets its act together. 😉
You and I are on the same page. In early February I wrote and posted on Substack a LONG reflection of my thoughts on current events. My 5th bullet point on fighting back and healing was:
5. Begin a process of redefining wealth as not how much we have, but as how much we give. ... (I need to rewrite this and build it out at some point)
We need to snatch a page right out of the Iroquois handbook. Get rid of their tendency to engage in blood feuds but adopt their democratic model of living and governing. It was awesome IMHO.
These men, and all who joined them, continue to inspire me. We need them, and many more like them, to take back our country!!
Agnostics/Athiests I know are extremely “spiritual” as well, and must be included in this shift. Faith in Goodness, Kindness, Fairness (I call it NESSimism) is a concept that can steer the many in a common direction, while allowing space for individual ideas about religion. Dems must be careful not to endorse the fundamentalism which continues to tear us apart.
Ms. Rubin, thank you for this. No person of faith should follow Trump, a cruel atheist along with Musk, who gleefully take AIDS medication from expectant mothers and children overseas, who accept Israel's blockade of all humanitarian aid to Gaza, and who take food from children in the US, defund Meals on Wheels (!), and want a work requirement for Medicaid, because apparently Great-Grandma in the nursing home needs to go flip burgers in a fast-food chain to justify spending Federal and state dollars on her care.
I'm an atheist and most atheists I know are more moral and kind than most Talibangelical christians. Trump and Muskrat are narcissists. The only god they worship is themselves.
Thank you, nmgirl! I'm atheist also, and get really tired of religious types who automatically equate atheism with evil. Or evil with atheism, as the case may be. Note Trumpet CLAIMS to be Christian, tho his behavior sure doesn't reflect this.
It wouldn't be surprising if he actually belongs to a satanic cult.
That is something Dems must emphasize--that we are all more alike than what separates us.
Harris repeated that over and over again. It wasn't enough. Why not? This isn't merely a nice idea, it's a PRACTICE. As long as "we the people" don't put it into practice (and help our MAGA neighbors, family members, colleagues etc to learn HOW to put it into practice), it will remain a vague idea, for those "Christian nationalists".
After all, MAGA Christianity is a hollowed-out form of Christianity, in which only judgment (and as a consequence, self-hatred) is left. It lacks the emotional intelligence tools needed to train the mind to learn HOW to become much more compassionate towards yourself and others.
So it's not a coincidence that MAGA is led by two atheists who feel as if compassion is "overrated" and "weaponized", and who suffered from severe childhood abuse in violent environments. What MAGA leaders tell their voters is that it's not their fault if they do NOT see The Other as having more in common with them than what could possibly separate us. If you're stuck in a moral judgment system, you either judge yourself or The Other. MAGA tells them that it's okay to judge the Other, which implicitly sends them... a compassionate message, telling them that THEY are okay, AS they are. In the meantime, non-MAGA voters feel exasperated at the immoral behavior of MAGA. So WE tend to judge THEM for it... which only makes things worse.
The best approach, IMHO, is indeed to (1) reclaim both the flag and an authentic practice of religion from MAGA, and (2) VERY kindly talk WITH (instead of to) MAGA voters the way Pete Buttigieg or Adam Mockler do, namely putting into practice our belief that we will always have more in common with them than what could possibly separate us, and that deep down, they are mostly "good people" too, just like us.
If we can do that, we CAN defeat fascism at the ballot box, because its fuel is cynicism and division...
YES WE CAN!
... "reclaim both the flag and an authentic practice of religion from MAGA? ... and VERY kindly talk WITH (instead of to) MAGA voters..." This is a TALL order when Medicaid is your only source of income, Medicare your only means for healthcare, you and your family are hungry. The food kitchen's and homeless shelters have been shuttered and homelessness is now a crime by Executive Order. I write this with a heavy sigh. I just witnessed a homeless man dead, lying under a blanket in front of a convenience store and rage just burst forth from every pore of my body! And people just walked past him or her seemingly as if it didn't matter. Who are we? as individuals? as a caring, truly loving nation? Ok, EUWTB. Your sentiment has merit. BUT when they can't here me and/or they shut the door in my face in rejection of Truth and Love and Compassion and Decency, I will shake the fucking dust off my feet and keep steppin'.
Thank you for lifting up this good work and testimony.
And what does our Creator ask/require of us but to
DO JUSTICE
LOVE KINDNESS
AND WALK HUMBLY WITH OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS AND ALL CREATION.
It feels like a losing battle some days, and maybe it is a losing battle (although in the long run the authoritarian state, too, will crumble, as all states seem to do).
Nevertheless the challenge to live an honorable life in this Republican era is greater and more complicated than ever before.
Nine tenths of honor is to keep the faith: not to capitulate, not to be eased into acceptance, and above all not to forgo doing the right thing simply because it's become quite terrifying to live and act in a principled way.
Every time someone stands up and shows courage in the face of the authoritarian Blitzkrieg now consuming us, it is a reminder that it is still possible to be fully human, a reminder that sinking into the cruelty and corruption of the Republican regime is not the only option.
I think it will feel like a losing battle -- right up until the moment it's shown to be a winning one. I think of people in previous dark times, kindling faith, keeping watch, doing justice, helping others, strengthening hearts. I remind myself -- no one promised it would be easy. But what else is there to do? As Rabbi Hillel once said, if I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, then when?
Rabbi Hillel coined my favorite quote. :)
Thank you for your wise words. You articulate the best of the American soul.
You write beautifully and the message is clear. If I remember correctly, you were the writer about the Vietnam Memorial Wall as well.
Bravo to Rep. Jeffries and Sen. Booker for their moral witness in this era of widespread immorality among U.S. Congress politicians and all others who ignore the poor and worship the super rich.
Thank you for your heartfelt coverage of this most important testament to our Better Angels…
I think mainstream Christians need to activate, specifically on a moral basis. They are too timid to make it a matter of faith wanting to avoid being pushy as a believer. But the situation is not normal in which we can be silent and patient.
WHY AM I ONLY READING THESE DERAILS NOW???? Where was the timely covering if this vital event? All that made it out here to the boonies was just a few lines saying Booker and zjeffries held a sit in on the Capitol steps.
Thank you Jennifer for writing this incredibly profound, beautiful, heartfelt piece!
Love this! Keep it up, we need more!!!