The David and Goliath story reminds us that when we stand for what is right we can win, even if we’re up against adversaries who talk loud and boast about their strength. But David doesn’t win just because he’s on the side of truth and justice. David makes a plan. He prepares to use the tools at his disposal. And at the critical moment in the story, David doesn’t leave his power in his pocket. He matches faith with action.

This weekend, I’m crossing the state of North Carolina, from Elizabeth City in the East, to Wilson in the Sandhills, to Winston-Salem in the Piedmont, working with Repairers of the Breach and our partners to mobilize people who have the power not only to vote in the upcoming midterm elections, but also to help their communities match faith with action in this moment.

On Monday afternoon, Jonathan and I will be on Substack Live with Ezra Levin from Indivisble to talk about why the No Kings coalition is holding a national day of action for early voting October 17, preparing to use the power of the vote as Repairers of the Breach lifts up the particular smooth stone of a march to the polls in this effort.

And at 7pm ET on Monday evening, Jonathan and I will be back with Dr. Hanna R. Broome for another episode of The Repairer’s Brief. Join us for facts and focus to empower the organizing work you’re doing in your community.

We’re glad to be back this week for another episode of The Repairer’s Brief. We kicked off this week’s conversation by talking about why faith leaders are joining members of Congress at the National African-American History Museum today to say, “Hands Off Our History.”

In this episode, we also break down a new fact sheet on how communities are feeling policies passed by the current Congress and hear from guest Candace Baker, an Indiana food bank outreach specialist. From millions losing food assistance to historic cuts to Medicaid and healthcare, everyday Americans are paying the price for policies passed to serve the interest of the wealthy few. Candace brings both her experience working directly with families facing food insecurity and her own experience navigating programs like SNAP and WIC to the conversation.

As always, we are grateful for the Institute for Policy Studies & The Save America Movement for partnering with us on this project.

Thanks also to Our Moral Moment subscribers who not only help us produce content like this, but also encourage the Substack algorithm to promote this content to other readers. We encourage those of you on the app to share this post with the button below and reply in the comments with any issues you’d like to see us cover in future episodes.

In this second episode of The Repairer’s Brief, we tackle the disinformation drowning out the truth about your vote. Bishop Barber joins us from the road on a twelve-state tour to rally fusion coalitions to get out the vote, reporting in about rallies in the hills of Kentucky, in Atlanta, Georgia, where the AME Church is pledging to organize marches to the polls, and in a community in Delaware that is responding to the police killing of an unarmed young man, Kadir Skinner. Jonathan and Dr. Broome talk about the lies that are being used to try to suppress the vote and subvert the midterm elections, and we discuss what it takes to see through them. We also talk with Chuck and Andrew, local organizers in Maryland and Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, who are organizing marches to the polls in their communities.

You can download this episode’s fact sheet on voter suppression here.

Register here to host a march in your community, and receive a toolkit today to get started.

For anyone committed to resisting authoritarianism and building a movement to reclaim the tools of our government, The Repairer’s Brief is the place to come every other Monday for:

* a moral analysis of the headlines and the facts that aren’t being reported by mainstream news outlets.

* a deep-dive into the policy behind the pain that people are experiencing on the ground.

* a clear vision for how things could be different if we changed priorities in state and federal budgets.

* practical and actionable steps that everyday people are taking in their communities to bring about change.

In this first episode we look at facts about the cost of the war in Iran and discuss why a moral movement must connect the dots between rising prices, the costs of war, and the poverty that this nation has tolerated for far too long. While people continue to lose access to healthcare as a direct result of this Congress’s single largest legislative action, we hear from Elaina Hurley in West Virginia, who is organizing her community to take back what was stolen from her.

Learn more about The Repairer’s Brief at www.breachrepairers.org, click here to download a copy of the fact sheet for this episode, and register here if you are ready to lead a march to the polls in your community this fall.

We are grateful to the Institute for Policy Studies & The Save America Movement for partnering with us on this project.

This past Sunday, I was glad to be the guest preacher at the historic Union Chapel on Martha’s Vinyard. The local paper, The Vinyard Gazette, filed this report on the sermon and our conversation following worship. In times like these, we need spaces to gather and reflect on the deep wells we’ve been given for sustenance and wisdom in the struggle for justice.

I’m grateful that “Our Moral Moment” is a space where I can share this message with you.

If you are able to travel to Washington, DC, I invite you to join us for our final in-person gathering of this summer’s Moral Monday Public Pulpit series.

Moral Monday DC August 3, 2026: Calling the Nation to the Table of Democracy and Vision Voting

New York Avenue Presbyterian Church1313 New York Ave NWWashington, DC 20005

Time5:30PM-7:00PM

Hope to see you there.

This week marks 100 days until the 2026 midterm elections in the United States.

After 15 weeks of maintaining a public pulpit outside the White House in Washington, DC, Repairers of the Breach announced today that we are launching a campaign to support 1,000 marches to the polls, inviting infrequent voters to reclaim their power and mount an historic vision vote this fall.

You can sign up here to receive a toolkit from Repairers of the Breach and begin organizing a march in your community.

We also announced today that, beginning August 10th, Repairers of the Breach is partnering with the Institute for Policy Studies and the Save America Movement to provide a bi-monthly “Repairer’s Brief,” updating you with the latest information about how policies are impacting your community, what’s at stake in this election, and the power of your vote. Subscribe for free to “Our Moral Moment” to receive the Repairer’s Brief in your inbox.

To support the organizing and public education efforts of this campaign, you can make a secure donation directly to Repairers of the Breach.

Thank you for being a paid subscriber to “Our Moral Moment.” All proceeds from this publication go to Repairers of the Breach, but your paid subscription here on this platform helps other readers on Substack find our work. We’re grateful for you.

For fifteen weeks this summer, Repairers of the Breach has maintained a pulpit in the public square outside the White House in DC. In a time of lies, we’ve tried to fulfill our moral obligation to tell the truth. We’re grateful to all of you who’ve shown up in person and helped spread the word across the land.

Today, as we mark 100 days to the midterm elections, we are partnering with our friends at The Save America Movement to do a live event at 6pm ET, where we will lay out plans to organize 1,000 marches to the polls ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.

You can tune in live at “Our Moral Moment” on Substack or YouTube or across the SAM channels on social media.

Next Monday, August 3rd, will be our last in-person event in DC. When we look at US history, we know that change comes from Montgomery, up; from Greensboro, up. From Birmingham, up. We’re marching to polling places in the states where authoritarians are trying suppress votes to claim our power and declare our vision for a government that serves the people. Hope you’ll tune in at 6pm ET today and help us spread the word.

Trump’s return to false and debunked claims about election interference in a nationally televised address this week has returned national attention to the question of why politicians lie about voting when they fear they cannot win a fair election. Last night, I joined Jonathan Capehart on MS NOW’s “The Last Word” to talk about the voter suppression and election subversion efforts we’ve seen and how we have and can overcome them. This is why Repairers of the Breach has committed to grassroots organizing in the Eastern districts that the North Carolina legislature gerrymandered at Trump’s request, as well as 1,000 marches to the polls in communities across the country in the 100 days ahead of November 3.

Learn more and please consider supporting this work at Repairers of the Breach.

The Trump administration was not satisfied to produce of storybook version of the American myth for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. On July 4, the White House’s Domestic Policy Council also published a 162-page report attacking the Smithsonian museums and falsely claiming that the National Museum of African-American History has “failed to tell America’s story and adheres to a radical, activist ideology.”

Whenever people with power try to tell you the truth about history is radical, you can be sure that they want to control your future. This is why I joined Congressman Jonathan Jackson (IL) outside the museum today to declared, “Hands Off Our History.” We announced that a diverse group of faith leaders and concerned Americans will be at the museum on September 15th to re-consecrate this sacred space for the work of truth-telling and public memory that it was designed to be for all of us. Please help us spread the word and make plans to join us on September 15th.

I was back in Washington, D.C. yesterday with our Moral Monday family to continue the witness of a public pulpit for truth-telling amidst the lies and distortions of this season. We have been called to look at our nation through the lens of moral truth. We look at the deep, painful contradictions playing out in our state capitols and across this country, and we insist that we must have the courage to call out the dangers hidden behind grand spectacles.This past weekend, 850,000 fireworks were launched into the night sky by Donald Trump. It was a grand spectacle. A flash of light. A loud boom. And then, absolute darkness. How do you justify burning up thousands of dollars in smoke when our people are suffering in the streets?

It makes no moral sense to fire off fireworks when millions of Americans are working full-time jobs and still cannot afford a basic living wage.

It makes no moral sense to celebrate “freedom” with expensive explosions when families are choosing between buying groceries and buying life-saving medication because they lack healthcare.

It makes no moral sense to fund a temporary show while our schools are underfunded, our infrastructure is crumbling, and our communities are crying out for real systemic investments.

Fireworks do not pay the rent. Fireworks do not heal the sick. Fireworks do not feed the hungry. That display was a symbol of a leadership that prefers the illusion of greatness over the reality of justice. It is the definition of a moral distraction.

But we have to look deeper than just a fireworks show. We have to look at this obsession with “bigness”—the constant rhetoric of wanting things to be “huge,” “massive,” and “MAGA big.” History warns us that when a leader becomes obsessed with extreme size, grand spectacles, and projecting absolute dominance, it is a psychological and political red flag. Historians call this megalomania—a delusion of grandeur and omnipotence.

We have seen this spirit before, and we know where it leads. I spent a week in Germany to listen to the lessons of history there not because we are up against Nazis today, but because today’s authoritarians have learned from Hitler’s failures. And, like every authoritarian movement, our adversaries are subject to some of the same vulnerabilities. Adolf Hitler and his chief architect, Albert Speer, were consumed by an obsession with grandiosity. They didn’t build for the well-being of the people; they built to feed an ego and project totalitarian power.

They planned Germania—a grand design to completely flatten Berlin and rebuild it into a supreme global capital to outshine the world. They designed the Volkshalle, or the Great Hall—a monstrous, domed building meant to hold 180,000 people. It was designed to be so unnaturally gigantic that engineers estimated the breath of the crowd would literally create indoor rain clouds. They built the Prachtstraße, the Boulevard of Splendors—a massive, 120-meter-wide avenue designed purely for military parades to showcase raw, unchecked force.

Nazi architecture was explicitly designed to dwarf the individual. Hitler wanted any human being standing in those spaces to feel completely insignificant, powerless, and crushed compared to the absolute power of the State. They built for what they called “Ruin Value” (Ruinenwert). Hitler didn’t care about the living conditions of the citizens of his day. He ordered buildings to be constructed out of stone and granite so that when his empire eventually fell thousands of years later, its ruins would still look majestic. He prioritized the legacy of his name over the lives of his people.When we look at Donald Trump’s obsession with crowd size, his constant demands for massive military parades, and his rhetoric of absolute power, we are seeing that same dangerous spirit. When a leader cares more about the size of a spectacle than the size of your paycheck, we should be concerned.

When a leader cares more about projecting an image of total dominance than ensuring you have access to a doctor, we should be concerned.

When a leader uses massive spectacles to make the individual citizen feel small, dependent, and powerless, that is not democracy—that is the groundwork for authoritarianism.

The distraction in the sky and the rhetoric of bigness are meant to keep us from seeing what is happening to our rights on the ground.

While they preach “bigness,” they are trying to make our rights smaller. We must look closely at the political agenda being pushed in the voting booth.

They are pushing voting restrictions that seek to restrict, rewrite, and roll back our hard-won progress. They are making it harder to cast a ballot. They are attacking mail-in voting. They are purging voter rolls. They are gerrymandering our districts so our voices are diluted.

We cannot just get angry. We have to get organized. We must form a fusion coalition that rolls up its sleeves and fights back. Right now, we must focus 100% of our energy, our resources, and our time into three critical areas at the state level:Voter EducationA society is destroyed for lack of knowledge. We must educate our communities and our neighbors. People need to know the new rules. They need to know what ID is required, where their polling places have moved, and who is on the ballot. We must turn our community centers and union halls into classrooms of civic literacy.Voter MobilizationMoral conviction without action is dead. We cannot just talk about justice on Monday; we have to get people to the polls on election day. We need to organize phone banks, community transport, and block-by-block outreach. We must activate every single eligible voter in our radius.The March to the PollsWe must take this fight straight to the state level. The laws that affect your daily life—your wages, your healthcare, your voting access—are decided in state legislatures and the US Capitol. We must mobilize a unified, diverse, unstoppable march to the polls. We must show up in numbers so large that no bureaucratic hurdle or authoritarian distraction can stop us.

850,000 fireworks may light up the sky for an hour, and dictators may try to build massive monuments to their own egos, but the ground eventually rejects them. Hitler’s massive structures literally sank into the mud because the earth could not support the weight of his ego.

We know that history is not finished. It is unfolding. And so we have choices to make. We get to decide whether the fires of spectacle will overwhelm us or whether the fire of justice burning in the hearts of a moral movement will light our way. Those who’ve chosen to subvert democracy and abuse power have made their decision. We must make ours - and find the remnant that will stand with us as we trust the power of truth and justice to outlast every lie.

In light of all of this, I wish somebody’s soul would catch fire, burning with the Holy Ghost and with a fire for justice. I pray each of us can let our little light shine until we burn so bright that all flesh can see together the way to a more perfect union.