Reverend William Barber on Fighting Poverty and Bigotry

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: You call yourself a theological conservative liberal evangelical Biblicist.

WILLIAM BARBER: Exactly.

AMANPOUR: How do you thread all those needles? How can you be conservative and liberal?

BARBER: First of all, to be a conservative is to hold onto the essence. Well, the essence of the bible, if you cut out all the scriptures in the bible, they talk about how you should treat the poor and the immigrant, the bible would fall apart. So, if you are anti the poor and anti-immigrants, you are not being conservative, you are not holding onto the essence of. In the constitution, it says we are first to establish justice and care for the — and provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. What we need to do is say to conserve means to hold on to, liberal means to give our, Biblicist means to focus on the bible. And I’m — and evangelical means to care first for the poor and to spread those things.

AMANPOUR: This past June, when there was that immense real catastrophe of the so-called zero tolerance policy, children being ripped away from their parents and there a lot who are still separated. The attorney general used a bible verse to defend that policy and he said that, you know, god supports the government in separating immigrant parents from their parents. That was the suggestion from this verse. I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and he’s clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government and because God has ordained the government for his purposes. How do you as an evangelical, because he is an evangelical or maybe he’s not? He’s —

BARBER: Well, he says he is an evangelical but he’s not using biblical evangelical terms, he’s using a group of — the so-called White evangelical terms that really is rooted more in opinions than the scripture. Paul challenged the government. Jesus challenged the government, he challenged the heretics of his day. Paul was thrown in jail for challenging the government. Paul was thrown in jail for saying there’s no Jew or gentile, there’s no bond or free but we’re all one. For Jeff Sessions to try to use that to justify an unjust policy is just like slave masters using scriptures to justify slavery or people using scriptures to try to justify being anti-women. It is just wrong and it doesn’t line up with Jesus. For Christians, evangelicals, Jesus is lord and Jesus said how you care for and welcome the stranger, the immigrant, the undocumented is how nations will be judged.

AMANPOUR: Well, and you can see that the stranger, the immigrant is a focal point of President Trump and the Republicans’ pre-midterm campaign policy. There’s a very ugly commercial out right now. I obviously know how you react to that. But how do you think the country recovers from that? Of course, it goes all the way back to echoes of the Willie Horton ad.

BARBER: Or further.

AMANPOUR: Of further.

BARBER: Because remember, this anti-immigrant piece runs through the American project. We have always struggled in America with what we say on paper and who we are in reality.