Bishop Barber to become Founding Director of the
Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale University
Dear Poor People’s Campaign Family,
This coming year, I will retire as pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, North Carolina, where I have served as senior pastor since 1993. I will join the faculty at Yale Divinity School as a Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. The Center will focus its work on the intersection of theology, social justice, and public policy. This endeavor is a continuation and institutionalization of decades-long moral movement-building work that grows out of a deep understanding of theology and practice of public ministry.
The Center will teach and train students to examine the relationship between conventional religious study and practice and their theologically-based moral requirement to care for “the least of these” who face poverty, injustices, and oppression in their everyday lives. Through the Center, students will have the opportunity to participate in social justice movements and to study and learn directly from clergy and pastors who do social justice work as an integral part of their pastoral obligations.
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We must continue our work to shift the narrative, build power, and implement a Third Reconstruction Agenda that fully addresses the needs of poor and low-wealth people in this nation.
Forward Together, Not One Step Back!
Bishop William J. Barber, II DMin.
[Bishop Barber will continue to serve as founding president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.]