Tag: pastor

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Pastor William Barber says Christian nationalism is ‘a form of heresy’

Pastor William Barber says Christian nationalism is ‘a form of heresy’



CNN
 — 

Left vs. right. Woke vs. the unwoke. Red State Jesus vs. Blue State Jesus.

There are some leaders who see faith and politics strictly as an either/or competition: You win by turning out your side and crushing the opposition.

But the Rev. William J. Barber II, who has been called “the closest person we have to MLK” in contemporary America, has refined a third mode of activism called “fusion politics.” It creates political coalitions that often transcend the conservative vs. progressive binary.

Barber, a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient, says a coalition of the “rejected stones” of America—the poor, immigrants, working-class whites, religious minorities, people of color and members of the LGBTQ community can transform the country because they share a common enemy.

“The same forces demonizing immigrants are also attacking low-wage workers,” the North Carolina pastor said in an interview several years ago. “The same politicians denying living wages are also suppressing the vote; the same people who want less of us to vote are also denying the evidence of the climate crisis and refusing to act now; the same people who are willing to destroy the Earth are willing to deny tens of millions of Americans access to health care.”

Barber’s fusion politics has helped transform the 59-year-old pastor into one of the country’s most prominent activist and speakers. As co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, he has helped lead one of the nation’s most sustained and visible anti-poverty efforts.

He electrified the crowd at the 2016 Democratic National Convention with a speech that one commentator called a “drop the mic” moment. And at a time when both political parties have been accused of ignoring the working class, Barber routinely organizes and marches with groups such as fast-food workers and union members.

“There is a sleeping giant in America,” Barber told CNN. “Poor and low-wealth folks now make up 30{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} of the electorate in every state and over 40{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} of the electorate in every state where the margin of victory for the presidency was less than 3{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502}. If you could just get that many poor and low-wealth people to vote, they could fundamentally shift every election in the country.”

Starting this month, Barber will take his fusion politics to the Ivy League. Yale Divinity School has announced he’ll be the founding director of its new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. In that role, Barber says he hopes to train a new generation of leaders who will be comfortable “creating a just society both in the academy and in the streets.”

The Rev. William Barber II addresses the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on July 28, 2016.

Though he’s stepping down as pastor of the North Carolina church where he has served for 30 years, Barber says he is not retiring from activism. He remains president of Repairers of the Breach, a nonprofit that promotes moral fusion politics.

Barber recently spoke to CNN about his faith and activism and why he opposes White Christian nationalism, a movement that insists the US was founded as a Christian nation and seeks to erase the separation of church and state.

Barber’s answers were edited for brevity and clarity.

You’ve talked about poverty as a moral issue and said the US cannot tolerate record levels of inequality. But some extreme levels of poverty have always existed in this country. Why is it so urgent to face those problems now, and why should someone who isn’t poor care?

Doctor King used to say America has a high blood pressure of creeds, but an anemia of deeds. In every generation we’ve had to have a moment to focus on the urgency of the right now. We will never be able to fix our democracy until we fully face these issues. We will constantly ebb and flow out of recessions because inequality hurts us all.

Joseph Stiglitz (the Nobel Prize-winning economist) talks about this in his book “The Price of Inequality,” and says that it costs us more as a nation for these inequalities to exist than it would for us to fix them.

Look at how much it costs us to not have a living (minimum) wage. There was a group of Nobel Peace Prize-winning economists two years ago that debunked the notion that paying people a living wage (the federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25 an hour) would hurt business. They said it’s not true.

Homeless veterans are housed in 30 tents on a sidewalk along busy San Vicente Boulevard outside the Veteran's Administration campus in Los Angeles on April 22, 2021.

Well, President Roosevelt said that in the 1930s. He said that any corporation that didn’t pay people a living wage didn’t deserve to be an American corporation.

I don’t think that American society as a democracy can stand much more. We’re moving toward 50{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} of all Americans being poor and low wealth. It’s unnecessary.

We say in our founding documents that every politician swears to promote the general welfare of all people. You’re not promoting the general welfare of all people when you can get elected and go to Congress and get free health care but then sit in Congress and block the people who elected you from having the same thing.

We say equal protection under the law is fundamental. Well, there’s nothing equal about corporations getting all kinds of tax breaks and all kinds of ways to make more and more money, while the average worker makes 300{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} less than the CEOs.

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06: Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump pray outside the U.S. Capitol January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC. Congress will hold a joint session today to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump. A group of Republican senators have said they will reject the Electoral College votes of several states unless Congress appoints a commission to audit the election results. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Marjorie Taylor Greene calls herself a ‘nationalist.’ This is what that means

Some people cite the scripture where Jesus says, “The poor you always have with you” to argue that poverty is inevitable, and that trying to end it is a hopeless cause.

Every time they say that, they are misquoting Jesus. Because that’s not what Jesus meant or said. He was saying, yeah, the poor are going to be with you always, because he was quoting from Deuteronomy [15:11]. The rest of that scripture says the poor will always be with you because of your greed — I’m paraphrasing it, but that’s the meaning of it. The poor will always be with you is a critique of our unwillingness to address poverty.

To have this level of inequality existing is a violation of our deepest moral, constitutional and religious values. It’s morally inconsistent, morally indefensible, and economically insane. Why would you not want to lift 55 to 60 million people out of poverty if you could by paying them a basic living wage? Why would you not want that amount of resources coming to people and then coming back into the economy?

Thousands of people march through through downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, in what organizers describe as a

I want to ask you about Christian nationalism. What’s wrong with saying God loves America and that the country should be built on Christian values?

God doesn’t say it. That’s what’s wrong with it. The scriptures says God loves all people and that if a nation is going to embrace Christian values, then we got to know what those values are. And those values certainly aren’t anti-gay, against people who may have had an abortion, pro-tax cut, pro one party and pro-gun. There’s nowhere in the scriptures where you see Jesus lifting that up.

Jesus said the Gospel is about good news to the poor, healing to the brokenhearted, welcoming all people, caring for the least of these: the immigrant, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned. Christian nationalism attempts to sanctify oppression and not liberation. It attempts to sanctify lies and not truth. At best, it’s a form of theological malpractice. At worst, it’s a form of heresy.

When you have some people calling themselves Christian nationalists, you never hear them say, “Jesus said this.” They say, “I’m a Christian, and I say it.” But that’s not good enough. If it doesn’t line up with the founder, then it’s flawed.

Are you an evangelical?

I’m very much an evangelical. I tell folks that I’m a conservative, liberal, evangelical Christian. And what that means is I believe in Jesus, not to the exclusion of other faith traditions because my founder said that “I have others who are not of this fold.” I believe that love, truth, mercy, grace and justice are fundamental to a life of faith. And for me to be evangelical means to start where Jesus started.

The word “evangel” is good news. When Jesus used that phase it was in his first sermon, which was a public policy sermon. He said it in the face of Caesar, where Caesar had hurt and exploited the poor. He said it right in the ghetto of Nazareth, where people said, “nothing good could come out of Nazareth.” He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news” — evangel —”to the poor.” That’s what evangelicalism is to Jesus. That’s the kind of evangelicalism that I embrace.

You’ve had health challenges over the years. How do you keep going year after year and keep yourself from being burned out?

I read the Bible one time, specifically looking to see if I could find any person in scripture that God used in a major way that did not have some physical challenge. And I couldn’t find it. That helped me get over any pity party.

You know, Moses couldn’t talk. Ezekiel had strange post-traumatic syndrome types of emotional issues. Jeremiah was crying all the time from his struggles with depression. Paul had a physical thorn in the flesh. Jesus was acquainted with sorrow.

Police keep watch as The Rev. William Barber and other activists demonstrate during a rally in support of voting rights legislation in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington on June 23, 2021.

Then then I looked down through history, and I couldn’t find anybody. Harriet Tubman had epileptic-type fits. Martin Luther King was stabbed before he did the March on Washington and had a breathing disorder after that.

During covid, I thought deeply about death and mortality. I have some immune deficiencies and challenges. I’ve battled this ankylosing spondylitis for now 40-plus years. At any time, it could shut my body down.

During covid, as I kept meeting people, I sat down one day and I said, Lord, why am I still here? I’m not better than these people. I know I’ve been around covid. My doctor said to me if I caught covid I probably would not fare well.

As I was musing one day, it dawned on me. That’s the wrong question. The question is never, why are you still alive? Why are you still breathing? The question is what are you going to do with the breath you have?

Because at any given moment, the scripture says we’re a step from death. And so I’ve decided that whatever breath I have, it is too precious to waste on hate, on oppression and on being mean to people. It’s only to be used for the cause of justice.

John Blake is the author of “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”

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A health insurance alternative left a pastor with a big hospital bill : Shots

A health insurance alternative left a pastor with a big hospital bill : Shots

Jeff and Kareen King received a hospital bill for $160,000 a few weeks after Jeff had a procedure to restore his heart rhythm.

Bram Sable-Smith/KHN


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Bram Sable-Smith/KHN

Jeff and Kareen King received a hospital bill for $160,000 a few weeks after Jeff had a procedure to restore his heart rhythm.

Bram Sable-Smith/KHN

Kareen King calls it “the ultimate paradox”: The hospital that saved her husband Jeff’s heart also broke it.

What Happened Jeff King, of Lawrence, Kan., needed his heart rhythm restored to normal with a procedure called an ablation — sooner rather than later, his doctor said. Jeff asked the hospital for a cost estimate, but said he didn’t hear back before his scheduled surgery in January 2021 at Stormont Vail Health in Topeka, Kan.

The real pain came when the bill arrived in the mail a few weeks later. The Kings, who were uninsured at the time, were on the hook for nearly all of the cost.

Jeff King, 63, Lawrence, Kan.

Approximate Medical Debt: $160,000

Medical Issue: Heart ablation

Jeff and Kareen King received the bill for $160,000 a few weeks after Jeff had the procedure to restore his heart rhythm. The Kings were initially on the hook for almost all of it.

Instead of signing up for traditional health insurance, the Kings had joined what’s called a “medical cost-sharing plan” with a company called Sedera, which describes its service as a “refreshing non-insurance approach to managing large and unexpected health care costs.” With this alternative to health insurance, members agree to share one another’s expenses. The plans are often faith-based and have surged in popularity in recent years because they can be cheaper than traditional insurance — the Kings said their plan cost $534 a month, plus an additional $118 a month to join a direct primary care medical practice.

But the sharing plans offer fewer protections than insurance and come with provisos. The Kings said their plan did not fully cover preexisting conditions like Jeff’s heart condition for the first two years of coverage — and he needed the surgery after 16 months.

In a statement a Sedera spokesperson said it’s important that members understand the cost-sharing model and membership guidelines. “Sedera members read and agree to these prior to joining,” the statement read.

The Kings have dabbled in all sorts of health coverage in their 42 years of marriage. Jeff’s work as an evangelical pastor in his hometown of Osage City, Kan., almost never provided insurance for the couple or their five children, all of whom are now grown. The exception came during Jeff’s most recent stint leading a congregation, starting in 2015. Kareen remembered feeling “unworthy” of the $1,800 a month the congregation paid for their insurance.

“We certainly had never come up with those kinds of premiums ourselves,” she recalled.

But Jeff decided he had to leave that job in 2018. He said he felt forced out over differences with some of his congregants on eternal damnation (“As a loving parent, I could never punish my child forever”) and gay marriage (“Maybe God is a whole lot more inclusive than we are”).

After Jeff resigned, the Kings briefly bought insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, but later dropped it because they weren’t eligible for subsidies and felt they couldn’t afford it.

That’s when they joined the Sedera plan. They knew the preexisting condition clause was a gamble, but medication had managed Jeff’s heart condition for years, and they didn’t expect he’d need medical procedures to address it.

What’s Broken: Without employer-sponsored insurance or federal subsidies to help fund their coverage, the Kings felt priced out of traditional insurance. But being uninsured left them exposed to hospital charges that ordinary patients typically never see.

Hospital charges are generally understood by health economists to bear little resemblance to the actual prices that are typically paid. Instead, they are more of an opening salvo in the high-stakes negotiations between hospitals trying to get as much money as they can for providing care and insurance companies trying to pay as little as possible.

But patients lack the bargaining power of large insurers, which may cover hundreds of thousands of patients in any given hospital’s catchment area. For patients like Jeff, the main recourse is to go through a hospital’s financial assistance program, although even with that help many patients can’t afford the bills hospitals send them.

Stormont Vail’s assistance program eventually knocked about $107,000 off Jeff’s original bill a few months later. Sedera provided a negotiator to help him haggle over costs.

Stormont Vail provided $19.5 million in financial assistance in tax year 2020 and wrote off about $13 million in bad debt, according to tax filings. Its net revenue from patient services was $838.7 million.

An $80,000 surprise bill points to a loophole in a new law to protect patients

Bill Lane, a Stormont Vail administrator, said that in addition to providing financial assistance, the hospital works with patients facing high bills and offers payment plans with zero interest. Payments are often in the range of 10{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} of a person’s monthly income,” Lane said. For some patients the hospital has a “catastrophic discount” program that caps their balance at 30{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} of their gross household income. The hospital also works with a local bank to provide loans to patients to pay their bills. And the hospital sometimes sends patient balances to debt collection agencies.

Lane said he generally recommends that patients carry traditional insurance. He also said the hospital offers a “patient estimates module” and suggests patients wait to schedule surgery, if possible, if they want an estimate “to make an informed decision.”

What’s Left: Despite Sedera’s two-year waiting period to cover preexisting conditions, the plan did give Jeff $15,000 to help with his bills. After Jeff paid that to the hospital and then negotiated for several months, his final balance was reduced to $37,859.34 in November 2021.

For his payment plan, Jeff said he was told the hospital would accept no less than $500 per month — the equivalent of an additional mortgage payment for the Kings. Jeff estimates it will take the family more than six years to pay it off.

“I never expected this to not cost me anything,” Jeff said, “but I wasn’t expecting what it turned out to be either.”

The Kings are piecing together the funds to pay what they owe the hospital. A few months after Jeff’s ablation, they sold their home in Osage City — where they raised five children and where Jeff grew up — and bought a smaller house in Lawrence. They had hoped to use that money to build their retirement account, since Jeff’s decades of pastoral work didn’t include a pension or 401(k).

Instead, the home sale is helping pay Jeff’s medical debt. Kareen has part-time jobs, and the couple leveraged their life insurance policy, as well.

Jeff began work as a hospice chaplain — for the extra income, but especially to qualify the couple for health insurance. That meant less time for his passion project, running a nonprofit called Transmuto through which he provides spiritual guidance.

In February, Kareen checked again on whether the couple could afford Affordable Care Act insurance so Jeff could get back to Transmuto full time. Her Google searches for the federal government’s health insurance marketplace (HealthCare.gov) instead unwittingly landed her on websites that sell consumer information to insurance brokers. Speaking to one of those brokers on the phone, she bought what she said she was told was an Aetna plan. But it turned out to be a membership in a cost-sharing plan with a company called Jericho Share, which has received over 160 complaints on the Better Business Bureau website in the past year.

Jericho Share spokesperson Mark Hubbard said in a statement that the organization is “issuing full refunds when there is consumer confusion” and is continuing to “evaluate and update our marketing efforts to increase transparency and awareness.”

Hubbard also said Jericho Share is cooperating with regulators in California and New Hampshire that have questioned whether the organization meets state requirements of a health care sharing ministry. California is also questioning whether Jericho Share has indeed received 501(c)(3) nonprofit status from the IRS.

After canceling that plan and getting their money back, the Kings eventually did sign up for an ACA marketplace plan. Jeff has reduced his hours as a chaplain, freeing up more time for Transmuto. All in all, the couple feels pretty fortunate.

“It’s just so tragic the way our system is,” Jeff said. “It puts so many people into impossible financial straits.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national, editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation).