37: Jesus and Empire with William Barber

Rev. William Barber:         Jesus clearly took on empire non-violently. He he was willing to take on empire non-violently, but Jesus also never gave up even on the soldiers of the empire. 

B:           Hi. I’m Brandon Nappi. 

H:           Hi. I’m Hannah Black, and we’re your hosts on the Leaders Way podcast. 

B:           A Yale podcast empowering leaders, cultivating spirituality, and exploring theology. 

H:           This podcast is brought to you by Berkeley Divinity School, The Episcopal Seminary at Yale. 

B:           So I have one more question, and then we’re actually gonna invite, questions from from all of you. So, start thinking about a question you might want to ask Bishop Barber.

Rev. B:   And I’m sorry to be long. I’m just …

B:           No. No. Thank you. I mean, we are as likely to see you in the halls here at Yale as we are on TV. In fact, I feel like I should be in my pajamas because that’s where I often see you. And you, you were on John Stewart and, you know, and so many media outlets. And I heard … and I heard you say something that both incredibly inspired me, got me fired up, but then promptly brought a wave of … frankly, disappointment. And so I have a question about this, and you said, I might get the exact quote incorrect, but you said, Christians, I think you were speaking specifically of religious leaders, but probably of all Christians, “Christians don’t have the luxury of neutrality. We’re either … we’re either prophets of the kingdom or we’re chaplains to empire.”

               And the disappointment for me was, well, I’m disappointed in our leaders, in our Christian leaders. I’m disappointed in our churches. I’m disappointed in myself. I mean, to be in ministry is to daily see the gap between what God is inviting us to create and the reality of what is. And so this is maybe more of a personal, even spiritual question. How do you, as a as a as a preacher, as a leader, as an activist, but as a person of faith, a follower of Jesus, how do you live with just the disappointment in what human beings persist in creating? And that is the opposite sometimes of the beloved community. 

Rev. B:   Well, you know, part of living with the disappointment is living with your own. And so and, you know, the scripture in the Bible says love covers a multitude of sin and it was talking about our love towards … so I took, I said I gotta love a whole lot of people because it … you know we all … I need covering in a lot of areas but let me, let me start to work through that question a little bit.

               It’s kind of like being born or being pregnant. You either are or you’re not. You’re either born or you’re not born. You’re either pregnant or you’re not pregnant. That that Christianity is just not something you pick up and put down. That’s what, that’s why the scripture uses this language, you must be born again, or the stories in the faith– book of faith talk about people having what one writer called a crisis of conversion, something that turns you in a way that you cannot turn back from it. Redemption. You know, “Let the redeemed …” it doesn’t say let everybody, it says let the redeemed of the Lord say so. And redemption doesn’t make me you, you some person better than everybody else. In Africa, one tradition in Africa, they said that redemption is to have your head cut off and another mind put on so that you’re in the world, but you’re not controlled by the world. The world’s ideas and ethics, or lack of ethics don’t control you. You’re able to think a new way. 

               You know, Paul says that the one thing about being in the spirit, the spirit of the Lord, is there is liberty, there is freedom, you’re not bound. Rabbi Heschel once said that spirit– spiritual imagination must precede spiritual activation. We must be set free from the visions, or the false visions, that we’ve given our allegiances to. And so it was Rabbi Heschel who in 1963 before the March on Washington wrote a note, when John Kennedy called religious leaders to the White House in some ways to try to offset what was gonna happen in a few weeks, and Rabbi Heschel wrote him and said that America forfeits the right to even worship God until we deal with the issue facing the Negro. That was his word. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t, on the one hand, claim to be a worshiping community and on the other hand, ignore injustice and so much of what we’ve tried to do in this country. You know, I write a lot about– when I did my dissertation, part of it was a theology of the Holy Spirit for churches engaged in economic justice issues. And one of the things that I had to do was wrestle with the scripture Luke chapter 4, verse 18 and 19 where it says, after Jesus went in the wilderness and was tempted, he came out of the wilderness in the power of the spirit. He was driven in the wilderness, but then when he came out, he came out in the power of the spirit. And in the power of the spirit, he deliberately roots his ministry in the prophets, and he deliberately roots it in that section 59, 58, 59, 60, 61. He–only word he leaves out from 61 is, vengeance.

               But he picks up everything else and says, look, the spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor. The word poor there is protocos in Greek, which means those who’ve been made poor the economic exploitation. And he says, I’m not doing this because I just feel like doing it. The spirit of the lord is upon me. There’s something driving me. God’s spirit is driving me beyond myself. And it’s interesting that the Bible says then that day they tried to kill him. In his own home church, in the ghetto of Nazareth, Jesus stands up in his home church where he was raised, declares that this scripture has come to realization in him, says that he and all who would follow him are now free in the spirit to challenge poverty, to challenge things they call brokenheartedness and blindness, and to declare the acceptable year of the lord, which is the year of jubilee where everybody, regardless of their race, their creed, their color, whatever, is accepted. Right? And when–but when he said that, this–this now belonged to everybody; Jew and non-Jew, Nazareth and non-Nazareth. It says– the text says, and they became angry because they had become so misguided by Caesar’s model that they had lost their own remembrance of the messiah, their own remembrance of justice, and they tried to kill him.

               And then at the end of his ministry, when he’s talking about the least of these is where you see God. We’ll be talking about that in class today, the least of these. He says, he says in one translation, he says, you go out and find the most unimportant person –person you think is the most unimportant person in the world. And when you do something for them, you’ve done it unto God. And they did kill him. They tried at the beginning, and they did at the end.

               So I think part of what I’m trying to say is that this ministry of the gospel that we’re called to is not for the faint of heart. It is something that you literally are called to give your life to. It’s not vocation as much as it is, transformation. And sometimes the scriptures are clear.

               You know, in Isaiah, Isaiah says he’s caught up one day. The Lord is– Uzziah dies, the politician that he had put all his hope in, and Uzziah goes crazy and goes in the temples and starts paying revenge for people that did his grandfather wrong, and now he’s outside the city with leprosy. And Isaiah’s, Man, I had my hopes in this guy. You know? And he sees the Lord high and lifted up, and then Isaiah gets all caught up and says, Here, my lord. Here am I - send me. You know? And I—God said—You know God will fool you like that. You know? It gets you all excited, like you were when you heard that quote. But then but then I said, wait a minute. Where are you sending me? And then he says, and how long? 

               And God says, Well, I’m sending you to the place where the brokenness is and how long is until all of that’s torn down and you’ll be a new … and then Isaiah says the question that we really wrestle with; it’s not so much. The doubt is –how many people gonna listen? How how many? That’s what really is our –let’s be honest, with preachers. You know, I didn’t really gonna listen. You know, how many people are gonna listen?

               And a word comes up that comes up over and over and over again in scripture as it relates to when you have a call on your life. God says, a remnant. And Isaiah says, well, how much? And he says, 10%. You mean to tell me if I go out here for you and I stand up and I declare, like Isaiah 10, woe to those who legislate evil, robbed the poor of their rights. If I talk that kind of stuff, you know, Isaiah 58, cry loud and spare not. You know? Bring the poor.–If I say what you tell me to say, only 10%? So 90% are gonna be? Mhmm. Well, what good is that? And then God says, but that 10% will be the remnant that will cause the reshaping. 

               So how do you how do you keep your hope? First of all, this is not a place for optimism, but it is a place for hope. I don’t– I’m not an optimist. I’m hopeful. And hope has to come through the mountains of despair, not around them. Not around them. We are in a tradition where when you really, really serve, the cross is your destination first, before the resurrection. So the one that we followed first looks like a failure. You know? And you have to read text in scripture and really seek to hear it through the Spirit to really be clear about what we’re called. Just just get real clear that you’re called a priest, not to do oratory that everybody gonna like. That you’re called to serve. And like Ezekiel was told, God says, Look. Go talk– tell the people what they should do. But they’re stiff-necked, and they may –maybe won’t even listen. But if you do what I tell you, at least they will know there’s been a prophet among them, and somewhere down the line, they’ll get a hold of him.

               Or later on in Ezekiel, when he says in Ezekiel 22, the priest and the politician are conspired together. And because they’ve conspired together, evil and injustice and poverty is epidemic. Then he says, Ezekiel, I’m looking for one person that’ll stand in the gap, go and find ‘em. And he’s What? You can’t? God says, I can’t find one person. But he tells him, I’m looking for one person so that I won’t have to destroy the nation. But interestingly, God says it, but then the destruction doesn’t come. And 15 chapters later, Ezekiel finds–because God says, Hey. Look over there. There’s a valley of dry bones. There’s some people over there that have been so disregarded that they weren’t even buried properly. You think they can live? You–you think that group can be the deliverers? And Ezekiel gives the answer that you give. I don’t know. Lord, I don’t know. You gotta learn how to say that if you wanna follow god. I don’t know. And then he says, Go and declare unto them the word of god. And Ezekiel says, okay. And then God does the work of putting the spirit in and on them. So part of it is knowing what you’re called to. 

               Secondly, it’s community. We are called to community, not to be individuals. I can’t do anything. We’re called in community. We’re called into church. We’re called into the community. We don’t stand alone. A lot of times when I find people who are very, very depressed– and I, we all have those moments, but I ask them, so do you have a community? Are you in a community? Have you built a movement, or have you built a monument unto yourself? You know? Are you doing this for credit for you? Are you really interested in building a movement? So one of the ways that I keep from going totally down is I don’t get into movements to do for people. I wanna be amongst the people doing the work themselves, doing the ministry themselves. And a lot of times when I’m– when I’m out there and want to get mad about what hasn’t happened, I look at the person that’s suffering the consequences of what haven’t happened, and if they’re still believing … 

               You know, I showed the students, and I’ll say this in one minute and stop. I showed the students a tape today, and in that tape was a was a lady by the name of Pamela. Pamela lived in Alabama. She lived about 5 miles from the road that John Lewis, Martin Luther King, and all of them marched on to the –across the Edmunds Pettus Bridge. It looks like in her community, the civil rights movement never happened. Today, it looks like … You go back in her house, they– the people that sell trailers, rip them off, predatory lending. She’s got, she had animals in the house. She had all kinds of stuff. Her children all had breathing problems. She literally had sewage right near where her water was coming in, and we went down to visit with her because she wanted to be a part of this movement. She became the first person to testify before Congress in our group and do all those things. 

               COVID hits. She doesn’t have insurance. Alabama government governor won’t expand health care. She gets COVID. The first call she makes is to me, and this is what she says. And you talk about why you have to keep going.

She says, “Reverend Barber, I’m going to die. I’m calling you right now from the hospital. I cannot make it out of this. My breathing is going down. But I need to know that you all are not gonna quit because this movement has got to continue. We are gonna win. Tell my story. Tell my story. You better not shut up. Tell my story.” And she said, “Now let me tell…” and she took the last of her breath to tell me her whole story. And everywhere I go, I promise that I would. Now that’s who was in my cloud of witnesses. When I get down every now and then I hear Pamela saying, tell my story. 

               Then the last thing that keeps me going is something that Frederick Douglass did. I don’t know if you all have ever read Frederick Douglass’ speech in 1852, I think it was. It was right after the Dred Scott decision had been passed, but, I mean, had been voted on by the Supreme Court. The president had stacked the Supreme Court. That’s new. The president had stacked the supreme court by slave owner, and had given them a charge to fix it so that if a, if a southern or northern person, because there was slavery up here too, if a southern or northern person’s slave ran away that they could go anywhere, anytime, anyplace, and get them, because there’s no– a black man or woman has no rights that any white person has to pay attention to, and they did it. The Dred Scott decision. I have an attorney in there, she knows what I’m talking about. And when that decision came down the abolitionists and Frederick Douglass said “It’s over. The movement is over. We can’t come back from this. This … is it.” And Frederick Douglass was dealing with that, and one day his friend saw him in a room with his head in his hand his hand his head in his hand, depressed. And she screamed out at Frederick from across the room.

               “Frederick, is God dead?” And Frederick said that question shook him. He went and he wrote his-he said to the abolition group, “I need to speak.” They set up a meeting in May, I think it was, and he came to speak. The first hour of that speech was a horrible, terrible telling of what was done. He described it as a monstrous decision. He described it as vicious. He described it as … in all of the terms that his linguistic training would allow him to do that he had he had learned up here in or what … New London. But then he said; he said these words, “But I still receive this decision with a cheerful spirit. Because while Justice Channing can do some things, there are things that he cannot do. Chief justice Channing cannot put the sun to rest at night and raise the moon in the nighttime sky. Just just as Channing cannot …” He began to go on this poetic rip rant. And he said, “So since I know that, maybe this decision is a necessary link in the events that must take place for the downfall of the entire system of slavery, a necessary link. Therefore, in this moment, we must intensify and embolden our agitation. Because there’s one thing I know, every attempt to stop the abolition movement has only served to strengthen it.”

               I read that every week right alongside Bible verses. Because if Frederick Douglass could say that then? Who am I now to say things like, “Oh, it’s never been this bad.” I’m not dismissing out the bad. Right. But we have to find a way to hold steady. We find it in the scriptures. We find it in community, and we find it by listening to the voices of those who have faced so much. Even if we have to muse like Howard Thurman to listen to them that way. But all of that is a part of what makes it makes us keep on keeping on. Because everything that we hold dear to, every progressive piece of public policy. Most of the people said it was impossible. Until then. 

H:           Well, I have to say either you read our minds or the Holy Spirit is at work because we like to talk about hope at the end of each show. Now we’re getting on in time, but could I see hands from people who have questions? Kind of gauge how many questions there are. Davidson.

(Question):          Thank you so much for being here. I think as a student getting started here at Berkeley and knowing that, you know, a lot of folks listening into this conversation will be listening from the context of the Episcopal Church, I’m wondering, what you think about being accountable and true to the church, the tradition of the church, as especially in the context of the Episcopal Church. We love … we love our liturgy. Right? But, what about, being open to transformation to meet the moral demands of the season as you’re advocating? What do you think about that challenge of being accountable and holding true to what needs to be upheld in a tradition while also being flexible to live into the transformations that the spirit is calling us into? 

H:           So the question is, how do we hold true to our tradition especially maybe in an Episcopal context, while being open to transformation and the Holy Spirit at work?

B:           Well, I think the Episcopal church is full of the Holy Spirit. I in many ways, I think Episcopal work– The Book of Prayer saved my life, literally. The discipline of prayer. I think a lot of people have a lot to learn, but from, you know and … This discipline of daily prayer and not just make prayer just something you do in the morning real quick and something you do at a dinner, but the discipline of prayer and the discipline of reading scripture, the discipline of walking through the Psalms. I mean, what portion of scripture gives you more opportunity to wrestle with the totality of our human experiences than the Psalms? 

               So that discipline in itself was salvific for me in tough times. Right? And so I think every tradition has things that it needs to wrestle with, but also every tradition has things that it needs to keep. And the measurement of it is to go to Acts where it says, “and they continued in the apostle’s doctrine …” tradition. So you look at, is this something that lines up with the apostle’s discipline or doesn’t it? And that has to be the framework, and the apostle’s doctrine lays out several things. They continued in fellowship. They continued in prayer. They continued. And last time I checked, Episcopal Church, you know, it was still reading the Bible, and and that doesn’t change.

               And I can tell you in the Poor People’s Campaign and moving across this country it’s often been the Episcopal Church that has opened up to us, you know, and given us space downtown right near or by the seats of power. Your bishop … 

H:           Bishop Michael Curry. 

Rev. B:   Michael Curry is a dear friend of mine, a homeboy. And when other, mainline folk wouldn’t, he went to jail with us on Moral Monday. And what I love about it, he did it while he was running for Bishop and folk told him, you don’t wanna do that because, you know, people gonna think. He said, “Well, I want them to think.” He said, “I’m a crazy Christian.” You know, that’s his thing. You know? And so he was right there and made it clear.

This is we –he and I have done there’s a beautiful interview him and I doing on CNN together and several other places, you know, particularly his question of love in every conversation. 

               So I think that sometimes what we need to do is really make sure we understand our traditions, make sure that our anger I mean, there’s things we all can get upset about, but our anger is misplaced or dis-displaced. But Henry Nouwen? And when I say save my life, I don’t mean I was like commiting suicide. I’m talking about saved my life in terms of my spiritual life. It helped me to grow and not get stuck. But sometimes it was about, you know, wrestling with life itself. But Wounded Healers, oh my God. I mean, they ought to have that as required reading. Right here, if they don’t have that as required reading at Yale, it ought to be required reading in this center because, I mean, Wounded Healers is on the … I mean, God.

               I found that book in a bathroom. Somebody had left it. It got … it got –fell out of some guy’s pocket, and I stole it. I took it. I didn’t give it back to him. I didn’t try to find him because I because I was sitting there and I read the first two pages. I said, What in the world? And that– the last night, I read every page of Wounded Healers. And in my particular situation, it was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment, that I’m not a wounded problem. I’m a wounded healer, and that, that this faith calls us to embrace that, being wounded healers. 

H:           I tell you, we could have a whole segment on bathroom literature at this point. Can we maybe take the next question? 

Rev. B:   Sure.

(Question) Hi, professor. (garbled) My name is Esther. I’m also a 1st year student here, and I have a question about approaching interfaith, community and public theology work. Especially what do you do when people interpret Christianity and politics in a very “assert that you’re a Christian” way attack, or undermine how Christian the movement can be if there are people of other faiths or people who are not religious in the moral fusion movement, accusations of, like, diluting the faith foundation? 

Rev. B:   Well, we invite people to leave. I mean, what I mean by that is when we go in, we don’t you like, we go in to set up a moral fusion or what we call a coordinated committee in the Poor People’s Campaign or somebody invites us to come and do a training and people want to start a base of Repairers of the Breech. We do two days of training and lay out what it is.

We have principles, twelve principles, and one of those principles is about embracing faith and deliberately by design, reaching out to other traditions of faith. It is necessary to have those conversations. It is necessary to find those places of intersection. It is beyond arrogant to suggest that, you know–I am a Christian. I don’t bite my tongue about that, but I’m not a Christian to the dismissal of who you are. You know? I’m a Christian. I live in that, and, but I don’t feel like me being a Christian means I can’t hear or stand with you as a Muslim or stand with you as a Jewish person or stand with you in in that way. So what we say to folks after our two day, “If this is not for you …” because we tell them this is moral fusion organizing, and it may not be the place. Everybody may not do it.

               Remember, he said that tenth, that remnant. And sometimes we don’t have time, I don’t have time, we don’t have time to fight over every … just like for instance, when we started the Moral Monday movement, I mean, the Poor People’s Campaign, we went to Nashville and somebody came to the meeting and they said, “Too many white people in here. I don’t trust it. I don’t I don’t want to be white. I don’t think we should be talking about racism.” And they and they kept interrupting the session until finally one of the people who was there, one of the, her name is Erica, one of the people, she said, stood up and said, “You know what? We love you, but this may not be the place for you because we’ve told you what we’re about, and you’re not being forced to do this.” You know? It’d be … it’d be like somebody come into your church and tell you, “Well, I’m comfortable with everything but the cross. Now if y’all take that down,” then well, you know, we love you, but that’s not gonna happen. Right? And  we’re not even mad. There’s plenty of place. 

               Or somebody says, “Well, I think we should only be working on racist.”

Well, we love you, but that’s not what we do. We do interlocking injustices. And so if that’s not what you do, we’re not mad. We’d actually support your silo, but you can’t come over here and try to make this something that it isn’t. And I think you sometimes have to set boundaries, you know, in movement. I don’t fuss with everybody about everything. You know, I don’t because I’m not a purist, so I don’t believe that you gotta agree with me in everything. But there are some fundamentals that I think we have to agree on. Like, for instance, our movement, we do nonviolence stuff, so there’s no need for you to come here and said “This meeting we’re gonna talk about the use of violence.” We’re not gonna have that conversation. Not here. Now if you wanna have it, go over there, but that’s a done deal over here. We’re not gonna have that conversation. We’re not gonna spend time doing that and lose the movement. 

               You know, I had some people come up one time and say, oh, Reverend Barber, when we went to Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, now, if you will back up on the gay issue, and, if you … if you you will, you will not, you know, not have gay people speaking at that issue, then we’ll come in.

               And I said, I got two problems with that. You haven’t come in yet. Now they’re in. So how what you want me to dismiss the people that are in to receive you who had even made a step in the right direction? Not doing that.

And then they said and I said and then they got made me hot, and they started saying, well, black this, black this. I said, let me tell you something. First of all, just on a political standpoint, forget all the other stuff. The reason I am so pro not allowing people to un- to codify discrimination against gay people is because I know what codifying evil will do. We codified racism, and it took us 400 years, and we still haven’t gotten rid of.

               So even so before you even talk about how do I love people and agree with them and all that, just on that fact alone, I asked all black, How in the world can you be against, before this country or some people in this country codifying things against other people when you know what that will result in? You are the historical proof of once we do that, the road we’re going down. Then the second thing is I told them, them, the person was messing with me. I said, Well, you don’t like Gabriel? No. I don’t like Gabriel. I said, okay. I said, did you stay in a hotel last night when you came to up here to Raleigh? They said, Yeah. I got a hotel on it. I said, who who slept in the bed before you slept? Do you know if they were gay or not? You who made the bed up? Who cooked your food? Who– what what’s the pilot?

I said, dude, this this this crazy. You talking about you don’t want this person was really being, you know, I don’t wanna even be bothered. I said, every time I hear you quoting, you always loved to run up during black history month. “Mother of the sun, life for me ain’t been no crystal …” that you do know Hughes was gay. May’s mom Mabley, gay. I mean, you know, you do notice, and so, of course, at that point, the person got mad with me and said, you just always make things complicated. 

               But taking your question very seriously, interfaith conversations are very important, but they have to be in a space where people are allowed to be who they are, and they’re not gonna be beat up for who they, you know, and we can find where our faiths intersect. We did a service in Pennsylvania, of course, we had to have a whole lot of protection because folk didn’t like … well, we did a, what’s that wrong? We did a Jewish service with the Jews, Muslims, and Christians together. The Muslims agreed that night that every  –that we would have the time of prayer, but every place you didn’t have to take off your shoes. The Jewish people said we don’t we won’t have wine tonight in respect for other, and then I as a Pentecostal, you know, congregationalist was the, speaker, and we talked about what the Spirit calls us to. And we actually were able to do this service. Now the sad thing about it is we had to have all this security simply because the 3 faith traditions had decided that at a particular Jewish meeting, we were going to unite together, you know, and be one people. That is important for us to engage in.

(Question):          Circling back to what you were saying about the duality, and some unsavory aspects of Eisenhower, but one thing that I’ve always been very touched by, he used his farewell address in 1961, Eisenhower warned about where we were headed to construct a military industrial complex, which we’re currently living in. And so my question is, Would you agree that our military industrial complex and capitalism seek to kinda equally cross with empire? And we can’t worship empire as we continue to do and also worship Christ at the same time. I feel like that’s kind of our modern day golden calf struggle. So that’s an emerging thought, because he saw it coming. He was like, you know, we got into World War 2, and it’s so wonderful that we did, but this is what comes next if we create this machine that needs to fight continual wars to fund. And then I also wanted to just offer up a thanksgiving for, the fact that you opened up with the Triune. It can be sometimes very disheartening just as a person of deep faith, not just as a seminarian, to be in community with other Christians whose faith kind of begins and ends with we all hang out together and believe the same thing, rather than, In what way are we collectively organizing towards changing the hurt that we recognize as present.

Rev. B:   Ever since in the story of scripture, whether you receive it as actual, literal, or as a story, ever since the second chapter of Genesis, we have wrestled with violence in creation. And the first violence in creation was not even between two outsiders, but it was between two family members. And one family member kills the other family member over a sacrifice. Jealousy. And we, humanity, has been at itself ever since. Jesus clearly took on empire non-violently.

He was willing to take on empire non-violently, But Jesus also never gave up, even on the soldiers of the empire. In Mark’s gospel, the first person to name Jesus as truly the Son of God is the centurion that just finished killing him. I don’t know what he did after that. I don’t know how he dealt with putting down his sword because he would have been killed for it. I don’t have any answers to that. A lot of traditions–some say he helped to found the Coptic Church. I don’t know. But what I do know is that he was at the foot of that cross, and he’s the voice at the cross that declares that Jesus is the Son of God. 

               Jesus’ followers, Peter and all of those … some traditions say they came out of the Maccabees. The reason Peter had a sword was because he was a guerrilla warfare. And, you know, he cut the guy’s ear off in the story, and Jesus then said, you know, “If you live by the sword, you’re gonna die by the sword.” Paul, talked about saints in Caesar’s household. Oftentimes in the scriptures, God, the writers like John on the island of Patmos, used military imaging to describe Christian discipleship. He says that you wanna be a good soldier. In fact, the great the great text in, about the church in Sardis, you know, and he says, “and you’re a good soldier.” And he says, if you serve God unto death, not until death, but unto death. Until death means you serve it until things get deadly, then you quit. Until death means you go all the way through. 

               As an African American, our people have had some great struggle when it comes to how we embrace militarism. For many people who joined in the civil war, they saw being allowed to be a military person as, in fact, a part of their religious faith. I don’t do judgment on them. I think about what that means, that they said to be freed and allowed to fight was an expression of God’s love to them, to give them that opportunity. Black soldiers who went to war in World War 1 thought that if they went to war and gave second–first -class blood for second class citizenship, that the nation would in fact repay them with love. And instead, what they got was red summer; 20– in 1919, 1920, 1920-1, where soldiers were killed simply because they had on–they had come back from the war…  put them in their place. It was black soldiers out of World War 2, my father being one who grew to be very anti-war, but he also went to war in the World War 2, was a person of deep faith, came back to this country. And like many of them, they helped to lead the civil rights movement. It was … it was, it was those, it was those Mega Evas who was that strong voice in Alabama, Mississippi. Well, yeah. Mississippi was a veteran. You know? My father, my grandfather, who was a holiness preacher, was a veteran. My father believed that war sometime can produce what King called a negative good. Now King didn’t start out as a total against war. He grew into that. He taught in in his first book, he talked about war producing a negative good, but when at the end and he didn’t write that speech. I’m not … can’t remember the guy who wrote part of it, but he talked about war not even being a negative good, when you factor in nuclear. Nuclear age …  you’re talking about a whole different reality because you’re not talking about war and winning and bombing. You’re talking about annihilation. And he also was connecting that to the fact that every bomb that went off in Vietnam went off in America in depression and denial of—of  money for education, and it blew up the war on poverty because people pit the two against each other. 

               I think we certainly have to be deep critics of the war economy. Eisenhower actually said that he called it the congressional military industrial complex, and they took that word out, congressional. There was two. Because what he really was trying to say was that these congresspeople are using the military to bring economic stuff into their districts. And as long as that is the way they get certain things, they will always support it no matter what. And what we have seen now that– we are almost, what, over $1,000,000,000,000, a trillion dollars, now? We have … we have, if you cut our military budget in half, we would still have more money than Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea combined. We can now blow the world up a hundred times. Seem like once or twice is enough. If I mean, a hundred times, but we come up with crazy measurements like that. This concept that you get peace through strength, through military power and strength. 

               What I’m saying is it’s a struggle. We live in a violent world. We live in a vicious world. I’m not ready to go to say that my father, who was in World War 2, was not a deep person of faith because he also was a critic, you know, of the military industrial complex. I pastored in a military town where some of my … were members of the military. I was the only pastor in the city that had 3 master chief/ master sergeant. The president doesn’t even have a one. On air force 1. I had three. But every one of them who had been to war didn’t like it. And what they would say to Reverend Barber, “We’re not gonna go burn up our uniforms, but we don’t … we also don’t want you to stop preaching for peace.” 

               I remember one night, being on the plane, and when I got off, a general came over to me and said, thank you. And I said, “Who are you?” He told me who he was. He handed me a general’s coin. He said use this if you ever come on base. And he said “Thank you and thanks to people like you because without folk like you and the voices of church like you, there would be no restraint on what we might do.” He said, “I’m in the center of it. I I’m a general. I’m the general over Fort Bragg.” At that time, it was Fort Bragg. Now it’s Fort Liberty because Fort Bragg was a racist, and so they changed the name. But this man said it with tears and he’s saying, “I’m a Christian, but I know that we need a church and people of faith who resist domination, who resist the weapons of war, and resist every decision we make being ultimately controlled by how much we’re gonna spend militarily.”

               So I think your question is exactly right. I think that we do have to wrestle with the question of what it means to support empire. I think that there are gonna be people in Caesar’s household. There are gonna be people in the military. There are gonna be people of deep faith. They’re gonna be people who … because the reality is we all live a flawed life to some degree. None of us live imperfection, because that’s why we talk about grace so much. I’m thankful for those in the military who have a sense of moral because my hope is that if they ever have to make a decision, that they don’t … they won’t make … I don’t know if I’m ready to hope that all Christians would leave the military, with the power that we have. I hope that there are some that are there that can be touched by the spirit at some point who might just say, no, I’m not pressing that button. I’m not doing that. I’m not going that far. 

               While at the same time, I believe we have to be vehemently, morally against the pornographic sums of money that we’re spending on death and that we have to deeply question a society where you can always get a bipartisan, unified vote on military spending, but you can’t get a bipartisan, unified vote on health care. That’s –and the church ought to be clear on that matter. And I think that even before I -I’ll say this to start, even before I go to what the military is doing. Four—three, four years ago, the Pew Foundation did a study. I mention it everywhere I go because it troubles me so. And they studied 50,000 sermons because they wanted to ask this question. What is the American Christian hearing? I don’t like what they call American Christian, but for sake of conversation. And when the report came back, the number one issues that Jesus talked about didn’t even register. 1% of the sermons. Poverty didn’t even register. Dealing with health care– healing people, even though everywhere Jesus went, he healed and he never charged a co-pay or something. They …  nothing. But things like doctrine would register 30%. Well, what kind of doctrine are you preaching on and not relating that to these social realities? And I thought about it. If faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, and how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach lest they be sent? Whatever … sometimes whatever is going on in this society is as much the fault of the silence of the church, not first to the politicians, but to itself.

               I mean, if you can go to church 52 weeks out of the year and never even hear a sermon on the realities of poverty and folk dying from poverty and what we should be doing, that is a travesty of our own internal theology. And what the Center is trying to say, is we can’t– we gotta raise up folk that understand that where you stand on issues of policy and justice are not for a committee over here on the margins of church life. It needs to be at the center of church life. At least–we ought to wrestle with them. Even if we don’t fully agree, but what we can’t do is have to let continue to have the level of silence that we’re having today.

B:           Bishop Barber, you began with this, and we sang it together with this image of a tree that’s deeply rooted. And I feel like these moments that we were able to spend together help to water our roots. So that I hope and pray our branches might extend maybe just a little further out into the world. So, please join me in—

Rev. B:   Can I just say one thing real quick? I promise. Now I won’t– I promise you. It’s interesting you would say that, because we have a colleague in the movement, and she’s preaching right now on John 15, about–and I was looking at it the other day, because I had been reading about the branch. It’s this –and John Gardner Taylor first connected me to it. John 15 where it says, and the Lord, every branch that beareth fruit, he pruneeth that you might bear more. And so there is this expense you have to pay for being faithful and being fruitful because God wants more. And, Gardner Taylor tells us, used to tell the story before he died about–he had put up his preaching. He said, I’ve done this 47 years, and I’m gonna go do some vacationing and stuff, And he said something happened in his life. I won’t say what it was, but it was very tough, and it pruned him and reminded him. He told God he was finished, God didn’t tell him he was finished. Because God still needed some more fruit. 

               And I would say that from Berkeley to the Center For Public Policy, Yale, maybe some of what’s going on is pruning all of us. Maybe some of the uncomfortableness we feel in this moment is pruning all of us and saying, Your fruit bearing days are not over, and you still got more work to do. Maybe that’s why we can’t rest. Maybe that’s why we’re struggling. Maybe that’s why I retired for 30 years and then be crazy enough to start all over again way up here in the north. I mean, you think about how foolish that is. It really doesn’t make any sense, you know. And I mean, I’m at the very time in my life when the ankles are supposed to get worse rather than better, and and yet, you know, for the sake of–and what got me is the students. The first class got me and I said, got rolling and I said, this is what we’re supposed to be doing. And– but it’s, it costs, but, you know, we gotta bear fruit. The fruits of love, justice, mercy; we gotta bear fruit. So thank you all for allowing us. I apologize for being like a African guru when I get talking and just talk. Even Jonathan got up and that’s unusual.

B:           So would you join me in the foolishness and thanking Bishop Barber for his foolishness in being a friend, a colleague, and making a home here in New Haven? We’re so thankful. 

H:           Thanks for listening to the Leaders Way podcast. You can learn more about this episode at berkeleydivinity.yale.edu/podcast. Follow along with us on Instagram at theleadersway.podcast.

B:           And you can rate and review us on your podcast app and be sure to hit follow so you never miss an episode. And if you like this episode, please share it with a friend. Until next time. 

H:           Peace be with you.