Page 3 - Florida Sentinel 10-26-18

Feature
Poor People’s Campaign Is A Call For Moral Revival
BY KENYA WOODARD Sentinel Feature Writer
ST. PETERSBURG – Today in America, voting rights protections are weaker than they were 50 years ago, 140 million people are poor or low-income, and 53 cents of every federal discretionary dollar goes to military spend- ing and only 15 cents is spent on anti-poverty programs.
Despite the current bleak status of American society, change is afoot, said Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, a min- ister and co-chair of the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Re- vival.”
“Life doesn’t have to be this way,” she told a captive audience gathered Tuesday at Eckerd College’s Fox Hall. “There is a moral revival un- derway with poor people in the lead.”
Three years ago, Theo- haris teamed with the Rev. William Barber – the
REV. DR. LIZ THEOHARIS ...Vice Chair, Poor People’s Campaign
charismatic and statuesque pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, N. C. – to form their grassroots or- ganization in the spirit of the Poor People’s Campaign founded by Rev. Dr. Mar- tin Luther King, Jr.
Launched just before his death on April 4, 1968, Dr. King had sought to organize the country’s poor in pursuit of economic justice and to eradicate poverty and mili- tarism.
REV. DR. WILLIAM
BARBER, II ...Chair, Poor People’s Campaign
Today’s current condi- tions – when “overt racists are emboldened, there are massive outbreaks of vio- lence, and elected officials who send a message of hate” – make the timing right for the revival campaign, said Theoharis, director of the Kairos Center at Union The- ological Seminary in New York City.
And with poor people leading the way, “that is when change happens,” she
said. “That is when our coun- try gets better for everyone not just a select few.”
Theoharis challenged the audience to question faith leaders who defend cut- ting healthcare to children and amass wealth “on the backs of the poor.”
“Ask them what Bible are you adhering to?,” she said. “What sermon in the mount did you hear?”
Jesus is a Savior who preached liberation, set up free health care clinics, and “never asking a leper for co- pay,” she said.
In the Bible, Jesus re- minds the disciples at the Last Supper that they are commanded to eradicate poverty. But Christians’ mis- interpretation of Jesus’s statement that “the poor will always be among us” has pre- vented fulfillment of this command, Theoharis said.
At the Supper, the disci- ples criticized a woman for pouring an expensive oil over
Jesus’s head, saying that it would have been better to sell the oil and give some of the money to charity.
“The (disciples’) idea fol- lows how we think we’re sup- posed to address the poor, but never questioning how poverty was created in the first place,” she said. “Jesus responds by saying that there will be no poor person among you if you follow the commandments. Because you don’t, the poor will be with you always.”
Whatever your faith, these are in times when more people should be “compelled to step up and stand in the gap and say not us, not now, not here,” Theoharis said.
“We need people to come together and build a move- ment,” she said.
For more information about the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival” go to www.poorpeoplescam- paign.org.
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