Bob Schwartz

Tag: Moral Monday

June 15, 2026

Progressive Christians can save America and restore humane democracy

Thirteen years ago, a North Carolina minister, Bishop William Barber II, began the Moral Mondays movement. I posted about here.

Join us for Moral Mondays: A Southern Call to Conscience as we engage in a season of nonviolent moral resistance against extremism in government. Founded in 2013 in North Carolina by Bishop William J. Barber, II, Moral Mondays is a protest movement that centers impacted people, people of faith, and moral leaders who hold elected leaders and government accountable to enact a moral agenda that responds to the urgent needs of the poor.

We are calling on people of moral conscience to join us for Moral Mondays throughout the summer and fall as we work to enact a moral budget and moral public policies for the nation.

Though this was 2013, a few years before the Trump era, there has never been a time when regressive movements in America tried to take us back to a less humane, democratic and moral time. Fortunately, there has never been a time when progressive, humane and moral movements have not pushed back and forward. Moral Mondays was one of those.

Why do I emphasize that progressive Christians can save America now and restore humane and moral democracy? There are of course millions of non-Christians and non-religious citizens who have gotten behind that work in the past and millions are doing that today. Our efforts are worthy and necessary.

Progressive Christians are in a unique position. There have been and are a large number of Christians who believe as a matter of faith that America is a Christian nation and that their faith demands that much of our 21st century progress, like much of the 19th and 20th century progress, is not what God or Jesus wants. It is fine for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and those of other faiths or no faith to argue otherwise. But other Christians who believe differently are not so easily dismissed, although dismissed they have been and will be. We can look to the most prominent Christian in the world, Pope Leo (who happens to be American), as an example of what can be said and done.

This is a call that progressive Christians stand up and stand out together for an alternative vision of America—a humane, democratic and above all moral America. Moral Mondays was and is such a movement.

It wasn’t and isn’t easy. Christian churches supported slavery, using the Bible as proof text. Opposing Christians tried to explain that as a matter of Christian principle and as a matter of humane morality, they were wrong and it was wrong.

It is Monday. Moral Monday. We would like to think of every day of the week—including the sacred days for our various faiths—as Moral days. But if one day a week is all we can handle, it’s a start.

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June 3, 2013

Moral Mondays

Moral Mondays

Today, Monday, June 3, is another Moral Monday in North Carolina. A Mega Moral Monday. Small and local right now, Moral Mondays have the potential to be the kind of broad movement that in recent years progressives have wanted but so far been unable to achieve.

In May, the North Carolina NAACP began peaceful protests each Monday at the General Assembly. The civil disobedience is meant to bring attention to legislative curbs on Medicaid expansion, workers’ rights and voting rights, and to the lack of legislative progress on gun control and public education funding. There have been an increasing number of arrests of activists, 153 so far. This week, the protests are expanding across the state.

All movements are more likely to fall flat than catch fire. The Occupy movement reflected real dissatisfaction and outrage, but never sufficiently articulated the underlying principles that would galvanize people to commit and to connect with each other in big numbers.

Moral Monday is built on a foundation that is at the heart of what bothers so many Americans. As is apparent from many of our political controversies, some of those who claim the moral high ground sometimes seem to ignore possible moral shortcomings in their policies, e.g., a Christian imperative to lift the poor and heal the damaged may be at odds with extreme cuts in government support and programs. (In this regard, see questions about Ayn Rand that arose in the most recent election.)

Moral Monday simplifies what is admittedly a set of very complex issues to a very basic baseline: If you claim, by the light of faith or by a sense of enlightened humanity, to believe in moral action, then your idea of morality must be your primary guide. You are free to choose that morality; no constitution, no set of laws, nothing can or should move it. But once you have chosen, and especially after you say it loudly every Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, or on whatever days you proclaim your core beliefs, your duty is to act on it. If you don’t act morally, or if you try to rationalize around that morality for some supposed greater cause, you are only human, but should investigate and consider your action, and even your possible hypocrisy.

Moral Mondays may not make it beyond North Carolina. But it is possible that in a little while, all around the country, more and more people will start the week by taking a stand and, if necessary, getting arrested for it. There is a global and historic tradition for this sort of action, and great change has been made.

Thank you North Carolina NAACP. Mondays will never be the same.

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