If anyone alive today merits Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights mantle, it’s the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II. Cornel West, the theologian and independent presidential candidate, calls Barber the “closest person we have to Dr. King.”
Barber’s national stature has been steadily rising. He preached at President Biden’s 2020 inaugural prayer service and spoke at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival.
And now Barber has taken a dramatic — and some might say surprising — turn toward connecting with whites in poverty.
In June, the minister addressed thousands on the U.S. Capitol steps for the Poor People’s Campaign, dressed in his trademark purple and black robe. “Like the Prophet Moses, honored by Jews, Muslims and Christians, led the people out of bondage of Egypt, it’s time to rise,” he thundered. “Like the dry bones in the valley of Ezekiel’s vision, we’ve got to rise. Like the ancient vision of the prophet, when the stones that the builders rejected became the chief cornerstone of a new reality, we have got to rise.”
A former president of the North Carolina state NAACP, and former senior pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, N.C., Barber is founding director of Yale’s recently established Center for Public Theology and Public Policy.
Barber’s broader moral authority and prophetic vision first gained national attention in 2013, inspiring thousands in North Carolina, especially during his “Moral Mondays” marches.
On the front steps, and sometimes in the hallways, of the state’s General........