Lest you think it was just me, conversations with other advocates of Democratic faith outreach have told me they made similar pilgrimages to pitch the campaign and were rebuffed. I gave them six specific action items to consider and never heard back. Sadly, it was like I was speaking in Greek to them.
I felt deep in my soul that Clinton’s campaign came at the opportune time to shift this dynamic. I’d spent my entire life frustrated with how the religious right dominated our public conversation about faith and politics. I sat on the edge of my seat in a conference room with senior campaign staff and made my pitch for a robust religious outreach program for the campaign. And that made such an impression on me.” The lifelong Christian who spoke eloquently about her faith was running against a man who likely wouldn’t recognize Jesus even if he showed up on Page Six of the New York Post. “I sat on the edge of my seat as this preacher challenged us to participate in the cause of justice, not to slumber while the world changed around us. Martin Luther King speak,” Clinton said in 2014. “Probably my great privilege as a young woman was going to hear Dr. After all, the candidate had spoken regularly of her political awakening coming from a church youth group trip to see MLK speak.
I had high expectations for the Clinton campaign’s commitment to religious outreach. After months of trying to leverage every connection I had to get a meeting, the moment finally came in April 2016. I took the subway down from Union Theological Seminary-where I was a few weeks away from finishing my Master of Divinity degree-to Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn. Three years ago, I felt a kairos moment that turned out to be more chronos. William Barber took a leadership role at the Kairos Center at Union Theological Seminary in New York, from which he leads the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Jesus uses kairos for “time” when he declares in the Gospel of Mark: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near repent, and believe in the good news.” More recently, the Rev. Christian theology makes a big deal out of kairos moments. Ancient Greek had two words for time: kairos, meaning an opportune time, and chronos, meaning chronological or a set amount of time.