“Let your voice speak now. Let your vote speak now. Otherwise, forever hold your peace.”
Reverend William J. Barber speaks to protesters gathered during a protest organized by Kentucky Poor People’s Campaign in Frankfort, Ky., Monday, June 4, 2018.(Bryan Woolston / AP Photo)
Delivered Sunday, October 23, 2024, at the Riverside Church in New York City.
We are in more than a serious time. What I want to talk about this morning is: “If we ever needed a coice and a vote, we sure do need them now.”
Isaiah Chapter 58 reads like this:
Shout it aloud, do not hold back.Raise your voice like a trumpet.Declare to the nation its rebellion.For day after day they seek me out;they seem eager to know my ways,as if they were a nation that does what is rightand has not forsaken the commands of its God.They ask me for just decisionsand seem eager for God to come near them.“Why have we fasted,” they say,“And you have not seen it? Why have we humbled ourselves,and you have not noticed?”
Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers.Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,and in striking each other with wicked fists.You cannot fast as you do todayand expect your voice to be heard on high…Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injusticeand untie the cords of the yoke,to set the oppressed free?Is it not to share your food with the hungryand to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, If you do that, then your light will break forth like the dawn,and your healing will quickly appear.
In another text, in Ezekiel 37, it reads:
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!”
In Isaiah’s day, things were rough; faith had been hijacked and the people were going through ritualistic motion with no prophetic voice to the nation and leaders. Things were bad. The prophet is called by God to say, “Real piety and real religion is not just what you do in a worship service; real worship must cause you to lift up your voice like a trumpet and challenge the injustices of the nation.” Piety without principles of justice is not what God is looking for.
Our voice isn’t just for shouting in worship, but it must be lifted up like a trumpet for the nation.
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This word “kul” for voice is the same word used for “vote” in modern Hebrew. This text says, “Lift up your voice like a trumpet.” Lift your vote like a trumpet.
I didn’t come here this morning to endorse anybody, but I’m sure going to tell you what your measuring stick should be.
Over in Ezekiel, the prophet stands before a whole valley of dry bones—people consumed by injustice and not even buried properly. This is the residue of epidemic levels of injustice that are the result of false religious nationalists working in concert with oppressive political leaders. People end up discarded, dismissed, and destroyed when this happens.
But God takes Ekekiel that place and asks Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Can they still have a voice?
“God, only you know,” Ezekiel says. So God says, “Open your mouth and use the voice that God anointed to declare the Word of the Lord. Preach to those dry bones. And when he did, those bones came together. They became a mighty army of truth and justice and transformation. Because someone lifted their voice.
In Luke 4, Jesus goes to Nazareth—the ghetto—and on the Sabbath day he’s in the Lord’s house and he reads a text from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.”
Good news is evangel. But evangel doesn’t mean you’re against abortion and for guns and a whole lotta of crazy stuff. True evangelicalism starts with where you stand in relationship to the poor—where you stand in relation to the broken. If you try to use “evangelical” any other way, you’re actually misappropriating the term.
Jesus, John’s gospel tells us, is the Word that spoke the world into existence, made flesh. And when we pay attention to how Jesus used his voice, we can see that there is a thread that runs through Scripture that shows us our voice is our vote.
There is a thread that says there are moments in time—there are moments in the life of a nation—when, if we ever needed a voice and a vote, we sure do need them now.
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This isn’t only central to our Scriptures; the Constitution says we have a right to free speech and no one can deny or abridge our right to vote.
Down through the years, moral leaders have reminded us of the power of our voice.
Listen for a moment as I try to bring some of them into the room.
Haile Selassie said, “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”
Remember the confession of Martin Niemöller, who knew he’d spoken up too late against Naziism in Germany. He was on the side of Hilter for a while as a pastor, but he saw how ugly and sinful it was. He said:
Through us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries. That which we often testified to in our communities, we express now in the name of the whole church: We did fight for long years in the name of Jesus Christ against the mentality that found its awful expression in the National Socialist regime of violence; but we accuse ourselves for not standing to our beliefs more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously, and for not loving more ardently.
He’s the one who said, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
“Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Martin Luther King said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox said, “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, silent when you should speak you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Gaton Bachelard said, “What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us.”
Thurgood Marshall said, “See wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.”
Mahatma Gandhi said, “Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.”
Robert F. Kennedy said, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or speaks out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”
And George Orwell, “In a time of deceit, speaking and telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
If we ever needed a voice and a vote, we need it now because who would have ever thought we’d need to use the term “fascism” to talk about out politics? Now, it isn’t new. It didn’t just come up from any one person. But to hear it day after day…
Listen to this conversation about whether we should deport all human beings? Have we forgotten the Treaty of Guadalupe, where we took from Mexico the whole Southwestern part of this nation? We keep talking about them coming across the border when they’re just coming home.
Here we are in a time when we’re having conversations about changing the Constitution—changing the 14th Amendment so the standard is no longer equal protection under the law for all persons.
And we’re not talking about raising the minimum wage when Dr. King and Bayard Rustin and the unions said at the March on Washington that it needed to be $2 an hour, indexed with inflation, which would be almost $20 today. Work has gone up. Productivity has gone up. But the minimum wage hasn’t gone up since 2009. And we still have a subminimum wage of $2.13.
If we ever needed a voice and vote, we sure do need it now.
When years ago, the human rights community said healthcare shouldn’t be based on a job, but we let tens of millions of people live without access. And people call themselves Christian, when wherever he went, Jesus gave the lepers healthcare—and he never charged them a co-pay.
Three hundred and fifty thousand people died during Covid not from the disease, but from a lack of healthcare.
If we ever needed a voice and vote, we sure do need it now.
The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, and the Senate blocked a bill to restore these rights by a two-vote margin in 2022. We have less voting rights protections this morning that we did on August 6, 1965.
Since 2020, state lawmakers have introduced over 1,000 voter suppression bills, from racial gerrymandering to ending same-day and early voting, to unfair ID requirements. At least 80 have been enacted.
If we ever needed a voice and vote, we sure do need it now.
We talk about poverty: Neither presidential debate in 2024 devoted even 30 minutes to poverty, the fourth leading cause of death.
Long-term poverty claims 295,000 US lives every year. That’s more than homicide, gun violence, diabetes, or obesity. It would take you two and half years to go to every funeral of people who die today alone from poverty. And yet, not one debate.
If we ever needed to use our vote, use our voice, to ask whose policies will help the poor, we sure do need to now.
In 2021, all Republicans and 8 Senate Democrats blocked an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15, leaving it at $7.25 ($2.13 for tipped workers).
One in 5 families couldn’t afford to pay at least one energy bill in 2022.
Poor and low-income people are bearing the brunt of deaths and injuries due to extreme heat, storms, and drought.
This isn’t any one administration. This is a long-term issue. There’s a book by Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America. This isn’t just a problem we have here. It’s something we’ve created here.
If we ever needed to use our vote, we sure do need to now.
What do you do when everything the Lord hates has seeped into our politics…
Let me read what the Lord hates and try to make this plain:
There are six things the Lord hates,seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.
If we ever needed to use our vote, use our voice, to ask whose policies will help the poor, we sure do need to now.
As long as the Bible says in the Psalm:
Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness.
May he judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice.
May the mountains bring prosperity to the people, the hills the fruit of righteousness.
May he defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; may he crush the oppressor.
As long as that’s not the idea of what leadership is, if we ever needed to use our vote, use our voice, we sure do need to now.
As long, as Matthew says, “God judge nations and say to them: For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”
If we ever needed to use our vote, use our voice, we sure do need to now.
As long as Proverbs says:
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, or the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.
If we ever needed to use our vote, use our voice, we sure do need to now.
We can’t forfeit our voice, Riverside. Because if we do, our silence makes us accessories to the crime.
In Psalm 94, God asks a question: “Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?
People of faith, we know we are not using our vote to support perfection. We aren’t electing gods. We can ask, “Who is closest to our position?” And: “Who can we push?” But we can’t forfeit our voice.
One third of the electorate (85 million people) are poor or low-income.
In 2020, 58 million people in this group cast ballots, making up 34 to 46 percent of voters in nine battleground states and more than 20 percent in all but five states.
If just 20 percent of poor and low-income voters who didn’t vote in 2020 went to the polls in 2024, they would have the power to sway elections in every state.
Poor and low-income people are the stone that the builder rejected that can become the cornerstone of Third Reconstruction.
We have cried out against the immoral attack by Hamas on October 7, and we have cried out against Netanyahu’s immoral overreach in response. For a year, we have been crying out for a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of all hostages. But there’s something else we need to look at. Could it be that we have been too quiet and indifferent about death for too long—that we’ve not been able to lift our voice against unnecessary death because in many ways our conscience is weakened? We haven’t been loud enough about Yemen, and Somolia, and the Congo.
You remember when Dr King came to DC in 1957. You know what his message was? Give us the ballot.
“Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
“Give us the ballot, and we will no longer plead to the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law; we will by the power of our vote to write the law on the statute books of the South and bring an end to the dastardly acts.
“Give us the ballot, and we will transform the salient misdeeds of bloodthirsty mobs into the calculated good deeds of orderly citizens.
“Give us the ballot, and we will fill our legislative halls with people of goodwill and send to the sacred halls of Congress people who will not sign a “Southern Manifesto” because of their devotion to the manifesto of justice.
“Give us the ballot, and we will place judges on the benches who will do justly and love mercy.”
Well, if we’ve got the ballot, we better use it. Dr. King knew that voting is how we speak. Our vote is our voice and our voice must demand justice for all.
We must know it even more now; if we ever needed to use our voice and vote, we sure do need it now!
You know what happens if you don’t use it?
The elections of 2018, 2020, and 2022 were three of the highest-turnout US elections of their respective types in decades. But only two-thirds (66 percent) of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election—the highest rate for any national election since 1900. The 2018 election (49 percent turnout) had the highest rate for a midterm since 1914. Even the 2022 election’s turnout, with a slightly lower rate of 46 percent, exceeded that of all midterm elections since 1970.
This is part of the problem. We don’t know what states are read and what states are blue because we haven’t heard from the full electorate!
Regardless how you feel now about Trump’s presidency, he won in 2016 by just 80,000 votes across three states. That’s 80,000 voices.
In a contest with historic turnout, President-elect Joe Biden topped President Trump by nearly 7 million votes, and 74 votes in the Electoral College, but his victory really was stitched together with narrow margins in a handful of states. Just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College.
I’m not telling you who to vote for. I’m telling you what happens if we don’t vote!
If we ever needed to use our voice and our vote, we sure do need to now!
Did you know, for instance: in North Carolina: 1.1 million poor and low-income people didn’t vote in 2020. The margin of victory in the presidential race was only 74,000. In Georgia: 746,000 poor and low-income people didn’t vote. The margin: “11,779.”
In Arizona the margin was only 10,000, but 839,000 poor folks didn’t vote.
And the number-one reason they didn’t vote: Nobody talked to them. Don’t just beat up on people. As them why. Millions of eligible voters don’t or didn’t vote.
If we ever needed to use our voice and our vote, we sure do need to now!
William Lloyd Garrison, when he began to cry out against slavery, somebody asked him to moderate his voice.
He said:
On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD.
This should be our attitude today. We allow our voice or allow our vote to be muted. Our vote must be our demand. Our vote must mean we will stay engaged, keep pushing, keep crying out. We will not become disengaged. We will not just vote and go home. No.
Remember the song that says, “Make them hear you”?
Go out and tell our storyLet it echo far and wideMake them hear youMake them hear youHow justice was our battleAnd how justice was deniedMake them hear youMake them hear youAnd say to those who blame usFor the way we chose to fightThat sometimes there are battlesWhich are more than black or white….Make them hear youMake them hear youMy part may lead to Heaven or HellAnd God will say what’s bestBut one thing He will never sayIs that I went quietly to my restGo out and tell our story to your daughters and your sonsMake them hear youMake them hear youAnd tell them, in our struggleWe were not the only onesMake them hear youMake them hear you
We have to lift our voice voter by faith; make them hear you!
And especially now; make them hear you!
We can’t let our foreparents do more with less; make them hear you!
Pastor, I did a little study on that part of the wedding liturgy that we don’t like to talk about—the part where we have to ask if anyone objects. And I came across a true story—an occasion when the air hung heavy with the scent of lilies and a stir anticipation as the bride, Lily, stood at the altar, her eyes sparkling with tears as she gazed at her seemingly perfect groom, Alex. The officiant, a kind old man, paused at the traditional moment and asked the question.
A hush fell over the congregation. The guests exchanged nervous glances, their whispers barely audible. Then, from the back pew, a voice cut through the silence, clear and steady, “I object.”
All eyes turned to the source of the voice—a young woman named Sarah, who had been a close friend of Lily’s until a recent falling out. Sarah, her face pale but resolute, stepped forward, her gaze fixed on Lily.
Lily’s heart plummeted. She had thought she’d addressed her rift with Sarah, but now, on the most important day of her life, it seemed her past had come back to haunt her.
The officiant sad, “Miss Sarah, explain your objection.”
Sarah took a deep breath. “Lily is a wonderful woman, but she is being blinded by Alex’s charm. He is not who he appears to be. I know things about him that would destroy her life if she were to marry him.”
The officiant took her objection seriously. The service paused, the couple and Sarah went with the pastor to his study, and when they came out, Lilly said to the congregation. “I cannot marry Alex.” She thanked Sarah for speaking up and added, “You didn’t let disaster happen. You didn’t turn away and keep your voice to yourself.”
And I declare in this church today and to this nation that from now until Election Day, we need to speak up with our vote.
If you know a candidate’s policies are going to hurt rather than help, it’s time to speak up now or forever hold your peace.
Let your voice and your vote be heard! Speak now or forever hold your peace!
Speak now for love or forever hold your peace!
Speak now for Justice or forever hold your peace!
Speak now for mercy!
Speak now for voting rights!
Speak now for promoting the general welfare!
Speak now for the common defense!
Speak now for the poor!
Speak now for the least of these!
Speak now!
Speak now!
Speak now!
Our parents did more with less than we have today.With less they beat slavery,with less they beat Jim Crow,with less they beat lynching,with less they beat the KKK,with less Harriet Tubman got 500 slaves out of slavery—she didn’t have e-mail,she didn’t have texting,she didn’t even know what Snapchat was,she didn’t have a car,but she had faith in God,a .38 pistol on her side,moss on the north side of a tree,and a North Star in the middle of the night.
She did more with less.We must do more with more.
So from now until November,email everybody you know,tell ’em to show up,’cause if we ever needed to vote,we sure do need to vote now.Text everybody,tell ’em to show up,DM everybody,tell ’em to show up,call everybody you know,knock on everybody’s door.
Because God is not going to do for us what we can do for ourselves.
If we ever needed to vote, we sure need to vote now!
God will show up,God will bless our efforts,He always has,He always will,when we work our faith,miracles and movements.
Faith is what you believe about God,works is what you do because of what you believe about God,faith without works is destitute and devoid,but faith with works is dynamic and can change a destiny.Whenever we work our faith, God shows up
When Moses stretched out his rod,God showed up,he wind came down,the Red Sea opened up,Pharaoh was brought down.
When they marched around Jericho,God showed up,walls fell down.
When David threw the rock,God showed up,Goliath came down.
When Daniel went in the lions’ den,God showed up,the lions calmed down.
When Esther went to see the king,God showed up,evil plans were turned around.
When a woman touched the hem of His garment,God showed up,and a blood disease slowed down.
When a boy gave the Lord fish and five loaves,God showed up,and a buffet came down.
When Jesus went to the cross,God showed up,early Sunday morning resurrection happened,and the angels had a Holy Ghost throwdown
When Thurgood Marshall went to the Supreme Court, and Rosa Parks sat down,God showed up,Jim Crow had to step down.
If we vote,extremism will be voted down.
Every time we put our faith and our works together,evil is shut down,God shows up!
I got a question, church:,Do I have a witness?
Speak now.
Let your voice speak now.
Let you vote speak now.
Otherwise, forever hold your peace.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber IITwitterThe Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II is the Nation’s Civil Rights correspondent, and President and Senior Lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, Co-Chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival, and Professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and Founding Director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. His most recent book is White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy.