Articles & Interviews
Sojourners
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
November 4, 2022
“Come on, come on, come on! Don’t you want to vote? … Yes, I’m gonna vote … for justice!” was the song that closed out a Zoom rally with hundreds of poor and low-income people, moral leaders, clergy, activists, and advocates who are part of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Yara Allen, co-director of theomusicology and movement arts for the Poor People’s Campaign, led the song as participants registered to text bank five million poor and low-propensity voters before the midterms in order to enliven and enlarge the electorate of low-income voters.
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Interview by Union Theological Seminary
November 2022
“We envision a world without poverty, without racism, without the destruction of the earth. This kind of common good is big, but it is completely possible,” Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis urged. “We have no real scarcity. We just have a scarcity of political will and moral consciousness to do the right thing.”
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis is a Union alumna and serves as Director of the Kairos Center for Religion, Rights, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, and Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
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Assessing the True Extent of Poverty in the Richest Nation on Earth
Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
October 27, 2022
Ours is an ever more unequal world, even if that subject is ever less attended to in this country. In his final book, Where Do We Go From Here?, Reverend Martin Luther King wrote tellingly, “The prescription for the cure rests with the accurate diagnosis of the disease. A people who began a national life inspired by a vision of a society of brotherhood can redeem itself. But redemption can come only through a humble acknowledgment of guilt and an honest knowledge of self.”
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Truthout
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
October 9, 2022
When the Biden administration announced its debt relief plan in late August, the timing was fitting. According to the Hebrew calendar, this last year, which ended on September 25, was the Shemitah year, a year where debts are forgiven. In the Bible, canceling debt is just one among a set of jubilee laws, which includes freeing the enslaved, feeding the poor, paying fair wages, and conserving and protecting overworked land.
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Mercy Makes Good Policy
Tom Dispatch
By Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
September 15, 2022
In the American ethos, sacrifice is often hailed as the chief ingredient for overcoming hardship and seizing opportunity. To be successful, we’re assured, college students must make personal sacrifices by going deep into debt for a future degree and the earnings that may come with it. Small business owners must sacrifice their paychecks so that their companies will continue to grow, while politicians must similarly sacrifice key policy promises to get something (almost anything!) done.
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Interview by Grace Ji-Sun Kim
Madang podcast
The Christian Century
August 22, 2022
”Here in the 20th episode of Madang, I converse with activist and scholar Liz Theoharis about her new book, We Cry Justice.
We discuss how she began to co-chair the Poor People’s Campaign, poverty, social justice, basileia, and jubilee. It is an informative discussion on how to read the Bible and get involved in social justice work. This book is challenging and provocative as it provides new ways of reading of the Bible from the perspectives of poor and marginalized people.”
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