Rhetoric Race and Religion
Over the last two months, hundreds of protesters have walked out of North Carolina’s capitol in handcuffs to show their opposition to policies by the GOP-controlled Legislature.
While a broader coalition of supporters is building around the “Moral Mondays” started by the state chapter of the NAACP, the inspiration behind the protests is a throwback to the biblical message of civil rights leaders fighting segregation in the Jim Crow era.
They argue that cutting benefit programs and cutting tax breaks for low- and middle-income families violates Jesus Christ’s teaching to care for those with the least. It’s running into another school of Christian thought followed by many Southern conservatives: The best way to help the poor is through private charity, providing jobs and promoting self-reliance, rather than government programs.
The NAACP, and other groups that are joining them in larger numbers, oppose a range of Republican policies, from refusing to expand Medicaid to about 500,000 more people to restricting eligibility for the state’s pre-kindergarten program. Republicans, who control both chambers of the Legislature for the first time in more than a century, have also cut unemployment benefits and abolished the earned-income tax credit, which serves low to middle-income people.
State bishops and church leaders from five major Christian denominations issued a statement supporting the NAACP’s actions ahead of a clergy-led protest on Monday.
Robert Daniels, senior pastor at St. John’s Missionary Baptist Church in Durham, said Monday that he chose to get arrested to let legislators know that disproportionately hurting the poor wouldn’t go unnoticed by voters or God.
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