Man In His Domain The Reverend William J. Barber II

From His Pulpit in Goldsboro, North Carolina, This Progressive Preacher is Mustering an Army of Love— Comprising Saints, Sinners and Everyone in Between

- Amanda Petrusich

The precise origin of Watch Night — a New Year’s Eve prayer service, common in Southern black churches, in which a congregation assembles to recall the moment the calendar flipped from 1862 to 1863 and Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation became law — is murky, but the sentiment involved is consonant with the season: Let us gather to celebrate the thrill of change and the promise of renewal.

This past December 31, at the Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, parishioners had filled most of the pews by 6:30 P.M. Latecomers jockeyed for standing room near the back. A banner stretching from one end of the balcony to the other read POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN: A NATIONAL CALL FOR MORAL REVIVAL. A camera crew snaked power cords up and down the pulpit stairs, preparing for a live internet broadcast. The crowd was a mix of regular churchgoers, graying activists and young couples in expensive eyeglasses. Buttons broadcasting liberal causes and catchphrases (LOVE TRUMPS HATE, BLACK LIVES MATTER, NASTY WOMAN) were abundant.

The night’s headliner was the minister and activist William J. Barber II — newly minted MacArthur Fellow, former president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP and co-chair of the revived Poor People’s Campaign, a movement conceived by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967. Barber and I were scheduled to meet for a formal interview before the service, but his brother, Charles Barber, a minister in Georgia, had recently been diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer, and earlier that day the situation had grown grim. One of his colleagues called to say that Barber needed to spend the day with family.

My breath caught as I put my phone back on the hotel nightstand. How could anyone, faced with that kind of news, address a sprawling congregation, let alone send it into a new year armed with hope?

• • •