Two weeks ago, Bill Owens resigned as the executive producer of “60 Minutes.” “Having defended this show—and what we stand for—from every angle, over time with everything I could,” he wrote in a memo to his staff, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward.”
“The Moral Monday movement transformed my view of what the fight was and what it was capable of,” Marc told clergy and moral leaders in New Haven, CT last year at the inaugural conference of our Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. We wanted to share his reflection on how he learned to fight for voting rights from our struggle in North Carolina because it’s a reminder that Moral Mondays are never just about preachers doing our part. They are, as Marc says so well in this video, about each of us finding the courage to do what only we can do.
Today, moral leaders were back at the US Capitol to challenge the immoral budget Congress is writing. We wrote about why Moral Mondays are at the Capitol for MSNBC.
As pastors who preach Jesus’ good news to the poor, on April 28, we joined moral leaders from religious denominations and civic organizations to launch “Moral Mondays” at the U.S. Capitol. We spent the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency studying his administration’s proposals to dismantle the federal government, and we issued a report with the Institute for Policy Studies to help the public understand what the consequences of a Trump budget would be.
Lifting the cries of people whose lives could be destroyed, we bowed our heads in prayer in the Capitol Rotunda. After several minutes, officers were dispatched to ask us to stop praying. But our conscience would not allow us to stop. Though we were arrested and carried away, we have not stopped praying. Moral Monday is back at the Capitol today to continue to lift a collective prayer that we all might be saved from this immoral budget.
Photo by Jack Jenkins of the Religion News Service.
While Rev. Dr. Alvin Jackson, Rev. Dr. Hanna Broome, Shane Claiborne, Ariel Gold, and Rev. Joel Simpson were arrested for refusing to stop praying inside the Capitol rotunda, scores of other clergy and moral leaders hand-delivered a letter asking Congressional leaders to pray with us and people who will be directly impacted by this budget before they cast their vote. You can sign onto the open letter and share it with your members of Congress here.
We hope you’ll take 10 minutes to listen to the moral vision that drives Marc’s courageous legal work. And we invite you to share in the comments the one thing you know you can do with your gifts and talents in this moral moment.
