Barber’s Loneliness RX: Start With Poverty

How do you reconcile a moral crisis of loneliness with the economic toll of a stagnant minimum wage, and then reach ​“a more perfect union?”

Bishop William J. Barber II charted that path in a Dixwell sermon Tuesday that touched on biblical scripture, the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., the good deeds of his grandmother, the precariousness of swing-state voter turnout, and the fatal cruelty of poverty.

Then he landed — with the full force of his revived social gospel — on the imperative of movement building among this country’s dispossessed, among the ​“stones that the builder has rejected.”

Barber delivered that galvanizing address as the keynote speaker at an inaugural Creating Communities Summit at the NXTHVN art gallery at 169 Henry St.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy organized the morning-long gathering as part of his sustained public push to draw attention to what he sees as one of the most urgent problems facing our nation: that of loneliness, isolation and despair.

Such a fraying of connections and relationships all too often leads to real problems, personal and public alike, Murphy told the NXTHVN crowd of roughly 100 politicians, nonprofit leaders, and community organizers from across New Haven and Connecticut. 

Addiction, self-harm, violence towards others, political apathy and extremism seem to follow in the wake of ​“this crisis of connection, this crisis of identity and meaning that we see all across the country,” Murphy said.

Finding a way to ​“help people come out of this cycle of withdrawal and isolation” might prove to be even more effective than just ​“economic empowerment” at addressing some of the most deeply embedded problems in America today, he proposed. 

The rest of Murphy’s opening address and subsequent panels he moderated during the summit touched on how Americans don’t belong to churches and unions in the ways that they used to; how smart phones pull young people’s eyes downward and stunt their development of social skills; how parents who need to work multiple jobs to make ends meet simply don’t have time to take their kids to sports practices and other extracurricular activities; how communities needs to cultivate ​“third spaces” outside of work and home that foster human connection. 

Murphy said the search for solutions led him to invite Barber to kick off the summit.

Barber — the founder of the Yale Divinity School’s Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, the co-chair of the nationwide Poor People’s Campaign, and ​“one of America’s great moral leaders” — did not disappoint.

Approaching the podium in a billowing black suit and beaded necklace, Barber handed off both of his two canes as he leaned over the microphone, grasped the wooden lectern for support, and proceeded to hold the audience’s attention rapt for the next half hour.

With every personal anecdote, theological reflection, scriptural exegesis, and political analysis, Barber appeared to build on top of — and even challenge — a core premise laid out in Murphy’s opening remarks.

He noted that the federal minimum wage has stayed at $7.25 since ​“Twenty Oh-Nine.”

Poverty sits at the center of this crisis of isolation, Barber contended. It must be addressed first and foremost in order to build a better nation. ​“So much of loneliness comes out of social injustice,” he intoned. Facing head on the latter is the best route to solving for the former.

To bolster his argument, he leaned into an encyclopedic array of rhetorical, historical, political, and spiritual examples.

Those included memories of his grandmother, who would fill her apron pockets with cleaning rags, ​“anointing oil,” and what money she could spare every Saturday to go join ​“the sisters” and tend to the needs of her community’s poor, with the goal of ​“going to hope somebody.”

He spoke about the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s speech on the steps of the Alabama state house on Bloody Sunday, where he provided a history of the first Reconstruction and emphasized that voting rights are not just a ​“Black issue,” but are ​“fundamentally about democracy.” Voter suppression, Barber summarized King as arguing, ​“is a tool of isolation,” a way of dividing and diluting the power of the polyglot American public.

He turned to a host of biblical passages — Ezekiel 22 and 37, Isaiah 10 and 58, Psalm 118, Jesus’s first speech in Nazareth — to make his case that their is a moral imperative to stand in solidarity with the poor, to care for and elevate the voices of those at the margins of society, to vote in support of politicians and policies that relieve the needless suffering of material deprivation, and that therein lies the route to social connection and an individual sense of meaning.

“Woe unto those who legislate evil,” Barber said, quoting from Isaiah, ​“and rob the poor of their rights.” A few minutes later, he continued: ​“Bring the poor among us … If you do, you will be a repairer of the breach.”

He said that the ​“whole reconstruction project” led by Jesus, ​“this brown-skinned Palestinian Jew that I follow,” ​“begins with good news to the poor.”

“From the Prophets to Jesus,” Barber said as he barreled towards his conclusion, ​“social injustice is the key tool that produces isolation.”

What to do about it?

Barber zeroed in on raising the federal minimum wage. On going out to actually talk to people to hear their stories, to understand what underfunded education and inadequate healthcare and poor wages actually do to their lives. And then on building a broad-based social movement of the poor to advocate and enact legislation that lifts people out of such poverty and into a life of flourishing.

Poverty is ​“preventable, avoidable, unnecessary,” he decried. And so look to the Psalm that says, ​“the stone that the builder rejected will now become the chief cornerstone” to find a way out.