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It is Holy Week, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. In this week Christians around the globe remember the last week of Jesus of Nazareths life, his death, and his resurrection. This week began with a pop-up parade where we see Jesus riding into the temple complex in Jerusalem, the seat of power for both the religious authorities and the Roman occupation. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of average, everyday people heralded his arrival shouting Hosanna! which means Save us!

The ones crying out were mostly those who society deemed unimportant for some reason or another: ability, illness, gender, occupation, ancestry, nationality, age, marital status. They were the ones who were told they didnt matter again and again. But they were also Jesus friends. They heard and believed his message: The way things are is not the way things have to be. A better way is possible. Lets discover it together.

On June 18, 2022, thousands of people who have been told they dont matter again and again will parade themselves by car, bike, coach bus, train, plane, and foot to the seat of power in this country. Their voices are the ones who just might save this nation from its deadly trajectory.

They will demand this country live up to the ideals enshrined, but never fully realized, in the Constitution. And through their courage, we will have to see the truth: Another way is not merely possible, it is absolutely necessary to secure a vital future for this country and the world we live in. Their message will threaten those who gain the most from the world as it currently is. It may even provoke violence. But like Jesus, they will meet any violence that tries to silence them with the power of love and a commitment to nonviolence, and they will not back down.

The Poor Peoples Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival is a nationwide grassroots movement calling our nation to a revolution of values at every level of our society. Using non-violent direct action like the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, it is continuing the work started by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 calling our nation to confront the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism. We understand that as a nation we are at a critical juncture that we need a movement that will shift the moral narrative, impact policies and elections at every level of government, and build lasting power for poor and impacted people.

The Poor Peoples Campaign is about engaging what the Wisconsin Council of Churches calls holy imagination. If a more just world cant be imagined, then it cant be realized, either. When you read through the policy priorities of the Poor Peoples Campaign, you can begin to see a picture of a different kind of world: one that criminalizes poverty, not poor people. One that privileges people and life over the accumulation and hoarding of money. One that does not abide massive levels of unjust incarceration. One in which our national and state governments can and will provide for the common welfare which includes access for all to clean water and nutritious food, quality education, meaningful work that pays a living wage, adequate and affordable housing, and healthcare for all. Not only does the movement call out for these seemingly dreamy things, it has real ideas and practical plans to make it happen!

One way that the Wisconsin Council of Churches is observing Holy Week is by raising funds for the Wisconsin Poor Peoples Campaign. (You can hear Pastor Ari Douglas discuss his work with the Wisconsin Poor Peoples Campaign at the WCCs Facebook page.)

Our goal is for $6,600 to Raise a Bus to offset travel costs of people who will travel from Wisconsin to Washington D.C. in just a little over two months from now for the June 18 Moral March on Washington and to the Polls. We will continue to raise money through the end of May.

There are some who may say that it is not the place of the Church to engage injustice in this way. They will claim that supporting this movement violates the separation of church and state. This is both a misunderstanding of the establishment clause of the First Amendment and a distortion of the Christian faith. As the Freedom Forum Institute states, The establishment clause prohibits all levels of government from either advancing or inhibiting religion. The establishment clause separates church from state, but not religion from politics or public life. Individual citizens are free to bring their religious convictions into the public arena.

Christians are not merely free to bring their religious convictions into the public arena, they are compelled to do so as followers of Jesus example. In the stories of Holy Week we see just how public Jesus ministry was. It was so public it built enough of a committed following that the state and religious authorities plotted to kill him! Then they carried out their plan. Violence and death won that day.

For too many people in this country, violence and death win the days. Poverty is violence. In the wealthiest nation on the planet, 140 million people are poor; 39 million of them are children.

Holy Week ends with Easter Sunday, the day Jesus was raised from the dead. This is the day Christians proclaim that in and with God, violence and death are forever and ultimately defeated.

The stories of this week are the central story of the Christian faith. They lead us to remember and hope and imagine Salvation, wholeness for all. The Poor Peoples Campaign does the same.

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Why Wisconsin churches are aligning with the Poor People's Campaign - Wisconsin Examiner