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Is American Healing Even Possible? In an extended interview, the Reverend William J. Barber II expl
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Is American Healing Even Possible?
In an extended interview, the Reverend William J. Barber II explains why healing the soul of the nation will take more than returning to normal.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/william-barber-biden-trump/617235/
Adam Harris November 29, 2020
On November 7, after four days of counting votes, Democrats celebrated the end of a long national nightmare. And when former Vice President Joe Biden took the stage in Wilmington, Delaware, to deliver his victory speech that Saturday night, he quickly extended a hand to President Donald Trumps supporters, who may have felt demoralized by the loss.
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I understand the disappointment tonight, Biden said. Ive lost a couple of times myself. But now lets give each other a chance... This is a time to heal in America. Prior to the November election, Trump and Biden supporters alike argued that if the other candidate were to be elected, it would result in lasting harm to the country, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center.
A week after Bidens victory address, as the Trump campaign worked to challenge and discredit the election results while trying to get hundreds of legally cast votes thrown out on outlandish claims of fraud, the Reverend William J. Barber II took a different tack.
Read: The evangelical reckoning begins
On November 15, Barbera co-chair of the Poor Peoples Campaign, a movement based on the idea that America is in need of a moral revivalstood in the pulpit at Greenleaf Christian Church, in Goldsboro, North Carolina, preaching to a live-stream audience about unity. But his idea of healing looks different from Bidens. Dont think Ive come to make life cozy for you, he preached, reading from the Book of Matthew. Ive come to cutmake a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-lawcut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. It seems a strange place to start, but thats the point, he said. There has to be division for healing.
I called Barber five days later to chat about that sermon, and the way he emphasized the difference between a cure and healing. We spoke about why its not always a good thing that when Christians are asked how theyre doing, many simply say, Blessed and highly favored. He said America cannot afford to go back to the normal it knew before Trump. If we dont have a politics that can have earnest conversation and debate on how your policies are going to impact the least of these, then we are in trouble, he told me. We were scheduled to speak for 30 minutes; we ended up speaking for more than an hour.
After our initial conversation, he called me back. He had just watched Vice President Mike Pence deliver a speech in Canton, Georgia. We are gonna keep fighting until every legal vote is counted. We are gonna keep fighting until every illegal vote is thrown out, Pence told a cheering crowd. Barbers vision is one of racial and economic progress, and he has risen to national prominence during the Trump administration because of his push to restore morality to the public sphere. But, I asked, how did those people cheering Pence factor into that vision? They have been sold a bill of goods that their way of life is being threatened by the others, he replied....................................................
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Is American Healing Even Possible? In an extended interview, the Reverend William J. Barber II expl (Original Post)
riversedge
Dec 2020
OP
Response to riversedge (Original post)
DanieRains This message was self-deleted by its author.