by Cash Michaels
About a week ago or so, I’m in my home gleefully enjoying the air conditioning, when my cellphone rings, and when I look at it to answer, I see it’s a familiar name I haven’t heard from in quite some time.
"Hey there, Rev. Long time."
“Hey, Doc” bellowed the friendly voice on the other end of the line (readers of this column will recall I once told you a lot of us older Black men refer to one another as “Doc” or “Doctor” as a sign of noble respect, even if there isn’t a medical bag or academic doctorate within fifty miles of us. In this case, the voice on the other end of the incoming call was Bishop William J. Barber II, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, and professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale University Divinity School).
Bishop Barber, who I have been proud to know, consider a friend, and cover for many years, told me that he was literally just off the plane coming back from Germany after eight days, was on the road home to get some rest, and would call me back when he could because he wanted to tell me all about his trip for a story.
Hey, I’m always down for a good story from someone I know and trust, and makes news like I make great corned beef and pastrami sandwich wraps. So the next day, “Rev” (a lot of us still call him “Rev” even though he’s an ordained bishop) called me back, and shared with me the most compelling “How I Spent My Brief Summer Vacation” story I’ve ever heard.
Except this was no vacation. It was a revelation.
Rev told me his deeply emotional trip to Germany left him tired, yet in some strange way, “renewed” about continuing to fight for the rights of poor people in this country, after visiting a place with “so much history and death.”
Bishop Barber and his wife, Pastor Della Owens-Barber, were invited to Germany for eight days to meet with German Christian clerics and theologians there, led by Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, Moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC). Many may not know that because of the success of the Moral Monday demonstrations that Bishop Barber launched here in North Carolina in 2013 to challenge the repressive policies of NC General Assembly, he's become famous around the world as a leading Christian minister and social activist.
When he left the NC NAACP in 2017 and started his own organizations, Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign, Bishop Barber was able to take his ministry and movement across the country, launching Moral Monday movements in about 19 other states.
His notoriety has resulted in over 25 impressive international trips, including to the Vatican to preach and meet the Pope, and become among the most renowned Christian clerics in the world. So it’s no surprise that other prominent Christian leaders would want to consult with Bishop Barber on the important global issues and challenges of the day.
In this case, Bishop Bedford-Strohm of the WCC wanted to share “serious conversations” with Bishop Barber about having a world conference, possibly in Geneva, Switzerland by next year, to discuss important issues facing the church, and how it must come together to deal with them.
But that wasn’t all. The following from my story:
Bishop Barber also met with other religious leaders who told him how much they respected his history of social activism against repressive authority in the United States, and shared with him stories of Germany’s dark Nazi past, told about what happened when Christianity there was used to prop up an authoritarian regime, how the mainstream German Christian Church surrendered its moral authority, and how Germans today wish there were more Christians then who stood up to authoritarian Nazi leader Adolf Hitler before he ushered in his shameful extermination of millions of Jews in his quest for world power.
Though I didn’t put this in the story, Bishop Barber shared with me how, among the many stories he was told, he learned about six hundred German women who repeatedly and successfully stood up nonviolently to Hitler and the Nazi regime, even in the face of submachine guns and certain death, demanding that their husbands be returned to them when they were taken to be killed. Those German Christian and Jewish women are the only ones known on record to actually challenge Hitler en masse, and live to talk about it.
According to Bishop Barber, there is lament today that those women couldn’t have been joined by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands more in standing up to Hitler during his reign of hate in the 1930's.
More from my story:
German Christian leaders told Barber they deeply believe Hitler could have been stopped, and fear that history is repeating itself now, especially in America with ICE agents detaining at least 2,000 undocumented immigrants a day.
“We met with people in Germany about why can’t we have a worldwide Moral Monday for a month where churches come together and challenge authoritarianism and neofascism across the world,” Bishop Barber said, noting that much of the same type of “strong man mentality to dismiss, push away and push down" many observers say is happening here in the United States under President Donald Trump, is also happening across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, among other regions."
Trump is on record as saying he admires the “strong man” dictator model of leadership of figures like Hitler and former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The church has a significant role in standing up, and standing strong for the rights of the poor, for immigrants fleeing persecution, and for those who seek freedom, Bishop Barber said. In fact, that was his message during his “Sermon from Berlin” delivered from the Holy Cross Church there ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc_BYetpF04 ).
During his sermon, Bishop Barber quoted famous German theologian Jurgen Moltmann who said, “Resistance is the protest of those who hope, and hope is the feast of people who resist.”
Based on what Bishop Barber shared with me, I, of course, did some followup research on the history of the German Christian Church and the Nazi regime. What fascinated me, as it did Bishop Barber, is how that history tracks with what has, and what is happening now in this country under Trump.
From what I’ve picked up, the German Christian Church initially went along with Hitler and the rise of the Third Reich because of deep-seated anti-semitism. Hitler, in turn, did what he could to rid Christian worship of any respect for the faith’s Jewish roots. Indeed, that was part of his scheme to create a new political order, which included getting rid of his political enemies, and remaking the church in his image so that Jews would be hated, and blamed for killing Jesus Christ.
There were some in what’s known as the German “Confessing Church” movement who did resist Hitler, like theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was eventually assassinated, but that movement never caught fire against the immense power of the Nazi regime. It took the allied forces, led by the United States, to ultimately defeat Hitler during World War II.
So what does Trump have to do with any of this?
First of all, there’s no question he’s using much of Hitler’s “big, bad, tyrant “ playbook to build his power, even on the world stage. He sees himself as the greatest, ultimate ruler, and he doesn’t miss a chance to use our tax dollars to build tributes to himself.
Like Hitler, Trump has so compromised the rule of law in this country and the various power structures to do his bidding, that he’s made it almost impossible to stop him as he builds enormous wealth, power, and seeks control of the very citizenship of average Americans..
Proud to be a racist like Hitler, Trump also has a stranglehold on the great military power of this nation, is invading other sovereign nations for their oil resources and is attempting to wrest control of our national election system, which is constitutionally run by our states.
And when it comes to the church, Trump has already openly challenged the leader of the Catholic Church (the Pope), and commands respect from American White Christian protestants, who are going down the same rabbit hole the German Christian church found itself in with Hitler.
To make a long story short, Bishop Barber didn’t need German Christian clerics today to warn him about Trump. He knew that subject only too well. But given their history with Hitler and the Nazi regime, they’ve seen and lived this movie before, and they wanted Bishop to know that if Trump’s regime isn’t democratically stopped by the people soon, there’s no telling where, or even when it will end.
“I’m a son of the South,” Bishop Barber told me, “…and the German people I’ve met taught me that you have to battle at home if you intend to make a difference anywhere [else].”
Bishop has vowed to focus like a laser beam on the South from now on to unleash the immense voting power of poor Black, White, and Hispanic communities at the polls here in North Carolina and elsewhere below the Mason-Dixon, especially for the upcoming November midterm elections.
Take away Trump’s Congress, and you take away most of his power.
Bishop told me the Germans made it clear that we can't wait and just hope that Trump's authoritarianism will go away. There has to be a "deep moral challenge to it." Bishop would like to see massive micro-based organized (neighborhoods, cities, counties, states) moral challenges to Trump at the polls, led by at least 500 churches at the beginning of early voting, where people exercise their right to vote as a "moral resistance" to Trump and his lawlessness.
Who would have thought that even Germans clerics and theologians with their tragic history of authoritarianism, would want to see our American president, who has family roots in their land, nonviolently and democratically overthrown by the people, led by the church, and a great man of GOD and my friend, who I proudly call “Rev.”
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