Category: Interviews

Truthout
By Sarah Jaffe
July 20, 2017

Today we bring you a conversation with Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, the co-director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, and co-chair, with Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, of the Poor People’s Campaign: A Call for Moral Revival.

Continue reading →

The Dawn News
Interview by María Torrellas
September 30, 2016

In the framework of the International Seminar of the Crisis of Capitalism in Sao Paulo, Brazil, The Dawn News interviewed Liz Theoharis and Willie Baptist from the Poor People’s Campaign, which is an effort of the poor in the United States. This movement is based on the campaign with the same name that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. announced on December 4, 1967.

Continue reading →

Caring Magazine
Interviewed by Chadwick Phillips
January 24, 2015

To eradicate the issue, The Poverty Initiative focuses on the who and why.

Roughly 48.8 million people—or 15.8 percent of the U.S. population—lived below the poverty level in 2013, according to the United States Census Bureau.

To eliminate poverty, Liz Theoharis knew she needed to first understand who it impacts and why, rather than simply acknowledging its existence. So, she went straight to the source: those living below the poverty line.

Continue reading →

Emory University Youth Theological Initiative
March 21, 2013

Liz Theoharis ’93 knew that her call to anti-poverty activism was a religious one.  It took the Church a while to catch up.

In December, Theoharis was ordained by the New York City Presbytery as Coordinator of the Poverty Initiative, a program affiliated with Union Theological Seminary.   In many ways, her ordination simply formalized a role Liz had taken on in 2003, when she co-founded the Poverty Initiative, whose mission is “to raise up generations of religious and community leaders dedicated to building a social movement to end poverty, led by the poor.”

Inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a “Freedom Church of the Poor,” the Poverty Initiative seeks to empower poor leaders and their organizations by offering training programs, building a grassroots anti-poverty network, and sponsoring educational events, “truth commissions,” and a host of other programs that help congregations and activists act strategically and think theologically about poverty.

Continue reading →