Kansas, we’re here!

Today and tomorrow the You Only Get What You’re Organized To Take book and organizing tour is coming to Wichita, and Kansas City, Kansas. We cannot wait to join you for convenings full of song, testimony, and organizing grounded in the lessons from the movement to end poverty. RSVP below!

Support Trans-Affirming Faith in These Perilous Times

Freedom Church of the Poor is collecting signatures for an open letter affirming the dignity and divinity of trans and nonbinary people. Please read and share with your faith communities before Aug 1st!

“The organizations, individuals, and congregations, who have signed onto this letter affirm the existence, livelihood, and leadership of transgender and nonbinary people. They reject the heretical and sacrilegious teachings and policies of any churches, religious leaders, or policy makers who seek to deny the rights of  transgender and nonbinary people. We commit to care for our people, celebrating the divine image in every queer and trans body, and commit to building a movement that transcends division and takes aim at the real forces of oppression. We declare liberation not just for ourselves, but for all!”

Freedom Church of the Poor Theme: “New Unsettling Force”

In November and December of 1967, Dr. King gave a 5-part lecture series for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Massey Lectures. He focused mainly on the violent summer of 1967 as it related to the deep contradictions facing society and the ongoing problems of poverty, systemic racism, and militarization. The “new and unsettling force” quote comes from the fourth lecture, “Nonviolence and Social Change,” where King puts forward a call for the leadership of the poor, across all lines that are used to divide us, to be a new and unsettling force: “There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life…” – MLK, Massey Lectures (1967) Today we are seeing these contradictions revealed as families are ripped apart but unjust immigration politics, as millions prepare to lose access to healthcare and food security, and as the death toll of war continue to climb. Yet in the wake of these crises, poor people and moral leaders have been rising up. This melody, created during a retreat of movement artists in Ossining NY last summer (2024) with  Charon Hribar, Steff Reed, and Jonathan Lykes, is an affirmation and a reminder that we, the poor and dispossessed people in this country, the Freedom Church of the Poor, are the force for change and we have nothing to lose – nothing to lose but our chains.

Jubilee Season

The season of Jubilee at the Freedom Church of the Poor continues in July.  This month will feature in depth Biblical reflection from key leaders in our movement family as well as the sharing of sacred stories about how we were drawn into the movement. Worship service, every Sunday at 6pm ET.  Bible Study, every Wednesday at 6pm ET.

We’re a bestseller–thank you!

In our newsletter two weeks ago, we announced the forthcoming book We Pray Freedom: Liturgies and Rituals from the Freedom Church of the Poor. Because so many readers shared in our excitement about the book, and preordered their own copies, the title was featured on the Bookshop.org Bestsellers of the Week list. We are so grateful for you!

Miss the book announcement? Don’t worry. The book will be released in early September, so you still have a chance to preorder copies for you and your organizing/faith communities.

Barnes & Noble members can get 25% off their preorders with code (PREORDER25) before 7/11.

Bonus Preview–A Ritual of Breath and Power

This ritual prayer was written and delivered by Cedar Monroe in Olympia, Washington, for the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival’s Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Simultaneous State House Assemblies.

A Prayer to End Poverty

“Here we are. We are homeless. We are denied health care. We experience police violence and state violence and incarceration. We can’t get decent jobs, and we can’t pay our rent, and our wages are not keeping up with inflation, and we don’t know how we are going to feed our families. Our people are dying from disease induced by pollution, and nothing is done to address the climate change that will damage each of our communities, some beyond repair. All of these realities are felt even in the poor white communities I am from, but Indigenous and Black and brown communities experience them at even higher rates, along with constant racism and hatred at every level of society. Queer people and trans people, we are also being targeted. We are in a particularly dangerous moment when white Christian nationalism gains power; they are trying to roll back all the gains of the civil rights Movement…

Just a few short years before the Civil War, Fredrick Douglass gave a speech, painting that moment as one of the darkest moments he and the movements against slavery had ever faced, just after the Dred Scott decision. He said,

“Oppression, organized as ours is, will appear invincible up to the very hour of its fall.”

Perhaps we are at a similar moment today. We are watching the powers that created these systems of oppression double down on the power they have left, which is Considerable. But empires never last. This land, right here, remembers a better way. The earth is fighting for life with you. All over the world, poor people are rising up and fighting back. You are part of a long fight against this system of greed that has overtaken our world, but it can’t last forever. You will do your part; we will do our part. Surrounded by each other, by the earth, by our good Ancestors.

So I want you to breathe a final time. Whatever your faith tradition, whoever the god or spirit or gods or ancestors or force you call on, if you do, call on them now.

As you breathe in, imagine that you are drawing power, power from them, from the earth, from each other, from your ances- tors. And as you breathe out, hold that power close to your heart.

Hold on to it when it seems like the oppressors are winning. Hold on to it when you feel despair. Hold on to it when you watch the news and when you are treated unfairly. Hold on to it. That power will win out in the end.

Let it be so.

Impolite Company with Shailly Barnes