Bishop Barber to Join Sen. Sanders on Three-City Tour to Make Moral Case for Living Wages

Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy

For Immediate Release: May 30, 2023

Contact: Steph.Derstine@berlinrosen.com 512-820-7903

New Haven – Bishop William J Barber II, DMin., founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, will join Sen. Bernie Sanders on a three-city tour this week to make a moral case for living wages. This follows the Center’s powerful launch last month that brought impacted people, theologians, economists, and labor activists together to examine the moral crises of living wages and healthcare and to articulate the need for moral transformation in our country. 

It has been nearly 14 years since the last increase in the federal minimum wage, which stands stagnant today at $7.25. Researchers at the University of California-Irvine last month released a study showing that poverty is the fourth leading cause of death in the country. Despite this stark reality, the federal government and many corporations refuse to guarantee living wages, and policymakers continue to operate with an extremely low and outdated threshold for poverty. 

Bishop Barber will join Sen. Sanders at rallies in Durham, Nashville and Charleston to articulate the moral concerns of the denial of living wages and to make a moral demand on government and businesses.

“A demand for living wages is a moral demand,” Bishop Barber said. “The gospel is clear that anything less than living wages is sinful and oppressive. It is a moral travesty that as a nation we continue to expand the military budget in surplus, but refuse to guarantee basic necessities like healthcare and living wages. Raising pay is a matter of life or death, and the refusal to guarantee living wages in a nation with abundant resources is policy murder.”

At the rallies, Bishop Barber will build on a long history of framing living wages as a moral issue. Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted the moral argument of the Social Gospel when he declared that “no business which depends for its existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”

At this moment in our history, America is yet to live up to it’s promise to promote the general welfare. Congress established a minimum wage in the midst of the Great Depression not because they reasoned that the workers’ demands outweighed the concerns of businesses, but because there was a consensus that it was wrong for anyone to work full time and not be able to feed their family. We must meet the needs of the people where they are today. Raising the minimum wage to a level that is responsive to the varying needs of communities across the county will put food on people’s tables, help families with utilities, and help relieve the burden and anxiety caused by extreme poverty. Raising wages isn’t about the needs of workers versus employers or about  left versus right. It’s about whether we will become a nation where all people’s dignity is recognized by just pay for honest work.

Bishop Barber’s work at the new Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School is built on the fundamental idea that theology is not an isolated practice, but must necessarily challenge the things that adversely impact people’s lives.

“Poverty is a death sentence and lack of a living wage is an accessory to crime,” Bishop Barber said. 

Thursday,  June 1

7:00p ET Rally to Raise the Wage in Durham

Hayti Heritage Center 804 Old Fayetteville St, Durham, N.C. 27701

Friday, June  2

7:00p CT Rally to Raise the Wage in Nashville, TN with State Rep. Justin Jones

Henderson Johnson Gymnasium at Fisk University, 910 Dr DB Todd Jr Blvd, Nashville, Tenn. 37208

Saturday, June  3

4:00p ET Rally to Raise the Wage in Charleston, S.C. with State Rep. Wendell Gilliard

International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1422 Union Hall, 1142 Morrison Dr, Charleston, S.C. 29403