Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Volume 6 Number 2 Sound and Secularity Article 7

2020

Higher Ground: Rev. Dr. William Barber II and the Political Content of Prophetic Form

Braxton D. Shelley Harvard University

Follow this and additional works at: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/yjmr

Part of the Ethnomusicology Commons, and the Musicology Commons

Recommended Citation Shelley, Braxton D. (2020) "Higher Ground: Rev. Dr. William Barber II and the Political Content of Prophetic Form," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 6: No. 2, Article 7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1176

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Music & Religion by an authorized editor of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Higher Ground” Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and the Political Content of Prophetic Form Braxton D. Shelley

“We are being called like our foremothers song, an act of musical reorganization that and forefathers to be the moral defibrillators breathes new life into this public oration. of our time.”1 This poetic proclamation, In the final moments of this address, from Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II’s Barber uses the combination of rhythm, address to the 2016 Democratic National timbre, and pitch characteristic of his Convention (DNC), likens social injustice Sunday morning sermons to transmute to an irregular heartbeat. With these the DNC’s convention hall into a public words, Barber, then president of the North sanctuary, supplementing that meeting’s Carolina Conference of the NAACP and communal affect with the specific sonic leader of the Forward Together Moral charge of Black sacred rhetoric. As he Movement, opens a revealing window into injects this other logic into his oration, he the musical mechanics of his prophetic renders in song the moral defibrillation he preaching. Although he began his remarks describes in speech. Preaching about new with the statement “I come to you tonight life, Barber recites the lyrics of a canonical as a preacher,” wearing clerical attire whose revival hymn: “revive us again, fill each purple color signified religious authority, heart with thy love, may each soul be the closing moments of Barber’s convention rekindled with fire from above.”2 Having speech marshal sound itself as an agent summoned this heightened musical of moral influence. As the adverbnow space, in an instant, Barber calls down announces the preacher’s shift into the final these flames of revival, performing a frame of his message, Barber muses: sudden semitonal modulation just before Now, my friends, they tell me that when exclaiming the first words of the hymn’s the heart is in danger, somebody has to refrain: “hallelujah, thine the glory!” call an emergency code. And somebody What do Barber’s messages gain with a good heart will bring a defibrillator from the type of rhetorico-musical to work on a bad heart. Because it is transformations described above? What possible to shock a bad heart and revive benefits do his causes and audiences derive the pulse. In this season, when some from these recurring turns toward religious want to harden and stop the heart of our ecstasy? This essay listens to the political democracy, we are being called like our and theological thought conveyed through foremothers and forefathers to be the Barber’s messages—not just in their content, moral defibrillators of our time. but also in their form. Barber’s performance After describing this need to revive “the on the aforementioned July evening heart of our democracy” in the face of crystallizes the angular juxtapositions those who would weaponize race, religion, that animate his public ministry. From and sexuality as modes of division, he its inception, the North Carolina–based exchanges the varied sonic profile of speech Moral Mondays movement, now a part for the focused tonal energy of homiletic of the broader Poor People’s Campaign,

104 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) has been self-consciously characterized legislative branches of North Carolina’s by “fusion.” Yet the movement’s so-called state government under Republican control. fusion politics—that is, its aggregation As New York Times writer Kim Severson of a diverse array of individuals and observed, “it has been more than 28 years advocacy groups—exists in a productive since North Carolina elected a Republican tension with the oddly specific sound of governor and more than 100 years since its most prominent signifier: the orations both that office and the legislature were of its leader, Rev. Dr. William Barber II. controlled by Republicans.”3 Presciently, Using a message from a 2014 protest as a Severson mused that “as a result [of these synecdoche for Barber’s project, this article elections], North Carolina is preparing shows that, as Barber’s jeremiads make for an ideological shift whose effects could their routine turn from speech toward be felt for decades.”4 For the many who song, their situation at the intersection wondered how McCrory, who had been of political speech and ecstatic sermon, a “moderate” mayor of the state’s largest sacred inspiration and public influence, city, would work with the Tea Party–fueled becomes urgent. Through this conjunction, legislature, what followed might have Barber taps into the sonic resonance of been an unwelcome surprise. Rather than the Black prophetic tradition, renewing maintaining the neoliberal status quo, this its connection to the prophetic writings new state government set about enacting recorded in the Hebrew Bible and repeating “broad-scale conservative changes in taxes, their audacious claims about what the world education, voting, health and social policy might be. In so doing, Barber’s prophetic . . .shift[ing] North Carolina policy to the utterances critique the oppression wrought right.”5 Just a few months into this new by contemporary social orders, announcing regime, on Monday, April 29, 2013, Barber the reality of life-giving and just forms of and other ministers were arrested at the being-together. In place of the world that North Carolina statehouse for protesting is called “natural,” Barber’s incantatory these new edicts.6 The actions of this day preaching pursues moral authority and a gave birth to thirteen consecutive protests at more ethical world, building an immersive the capitol, events that would stretch across sonic environment whose audible force the summer of 2013, giving birth to the argues for the proximity and availability of movement now known as Moral Mondays. this higher ground. While state House Speaker Thom Tillis (who would be elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014) argued that the body of legislation North Carolina’s “Revolutionary” Politics at issue in the Moral Mondays protests The Moral Mondays movement emerged in represented a “conservative revolution,”7 response to dramatic public policy changes understanding the contemporary dynamics that occurred in North Carolina beginning of North Carolina’s political landscape in the winter of 2013. After both houses of requires some attention to a previous the state legislature were swept into GOP “revolutionary” moment, spearheaded not hands during the 2010 general election, Pat by Republicans but by Democrats. McCrory’s victory in the 2012 gubernatorial In the first years of the twentieth century, election placed both the executive and the “redemption movement” thrust Charles

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) 105 Aycock into the governorship and Furnifold [who transplanted] the old conservative Simmons into a thirty-year tenure in the Democratic tradition into the Republican U.S. Senate. As veteran North Carolina Party—making sure that Robert E. Lee was political journalist Rob Christensen explains, honored at GOP Lincoln Day dinners.”11 Aycock’s The political reclassification of many white was no ordinary inauguration, but the North Carolinians modeled Helms’s own: fruits of what Aycock called a “revolution.” Helms, who was a Democrat until age North Carolina had been “redeemed” for forty-nine, made it so acceptable for the Democratic Party and for whites— conservative Democrats like himself to just as it had been in 1877 when federal vote Republican that state Republican troops withdrew, ending the period of Party chairman Frank Rouse coined Reconstruction. The populists were a name for them: “Jessecrats.” Helms for all practical purposes dead. The became North Carolina’s most famous Republicans were to be vanquished from national political figure of the twentieth power for generations. Blacks were no century. He helped transform the longer a factor. And white Democrats state into a Republican stronghold were beginning seventy-two years of instrumental in the elevation of Ronald uninterrupted rule in North Carolina. Reagan to the presidency, shifted the GOP The political mold was cast for most of to the political right, and contributed to the twentieth century.8 the polarization of the nation’s politics.12 The redemption movement was fueled by Helms used his perch as a TV and radio racial demagoguery, which accrued power commentator to curry favor with a broad that was then used to suppress African swath of North Carolina’s white electorate. Americans. As Christensen notes, “the While he was in strong agreement with literacy test [for voters] radically changed segregationists, as evidenced by his the political equation in North Carolina. correspondence with white Citizens’ In 1896 there were 126,000 black North Councils and meetings with their de facto Carolinians registered to vote. By 1902 leader, William J. Simmons, he worked to there were 6,100.”9 In the state’s eastern ensure that “his contact with a variety of Black belt, this decimated voting strength segregationist groups was off the record, and produced stark electoral changes: “In 1896, he was also careful not to become identified 58 percent of the New Hanover County with extreme segregationism, rejecting voters cast their ballots for the Republican violence and methods that would alienate candidate for governor. By 1904 the GOP the white middle class.”13 The historian vote was 4.2 percent. In Warren Country, William Link proposes that Helms’s the Republican vote went from 64 percent signature political innovation was wedding to 10 percent.”10 The strategy that enabled his “opposition to segregation to a large this period of Democratic dominance would conservative appeal that criticized federal also precipitate the rise of a new Republican intervention . . . a fusion of anti-statism Party in North Carolina. No figure would be and segregationism [that] would reap big more central to this than Jesse Helms, who political benefits.” This pernicious fusion was was born in 1921, in the early decades of manifest in what Rob Christensen called “an the redemption movement. Christensen unvarnished libertarian conservatism [that] describes Helms as “a political surgeon called Social Security ‘nothing more than

106 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) doles and handouts’. . . rural electrification this year, after an avalanche of cruel and cooperatives . . . ‘socialistic electric power,’ extremist Tea-Party policies passed by and Medicare . . . a ‘step over into the swampy [House] Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate field of socialized medicine.’”14 Whenever leader [Phil] Berger and signed by Governor Pat McCrory and advised by necessary, Helms would rehabilitate the financier Budget Director Art Pope and racial demagoguery that was implicit in their ultra-extreme followers, this year many of his policy prescriptions. Nowhere after the last session, this year after more was this tendency in clearer relief than in his than thirty Moral Monday rallies around 1990 Senate race against Charlotte mayor the state, this year after nearly a thousand Harvey Gantt, an African American man. people were arrested for refusing to In the final days of that campaign, while give up their constitutional rights to nonviolent peaceful assembly, we return seeking to overcome a sizable polling deficit, to Raleigh with a renewed strength and a Helms’s campaign produced an ad titled renewed sense of urgency.16 “White Hands.” The political scientist Tony Leon Powell—and many others—observed As he repeatedly emphasizes the phrase that by “display[ing] plaid-shirted arms “this year,” Barber’s preoccupation with and white hands being rejected for a job . . temporality asserts that their gathering, on . this final ad had a major impact on swing that day and in the months that preceded it, voters.”15 Helms was reelected. When constitutes a thick moment of resistance, understood against this backdrop, the akin to what the performance theorist Tavia electoral backlash to the election of President Nyong’o has called “the precarious time of 17 Barack Obama, epitomized by what Tillis occupation.” According to Nyong’o, at called “the conservative revolution,” appears these junctures, time becomes precarious to be a kind of grand payoff on Helm’s long- as it is bound up with the occupation of 18 term investment, achieving, in 2012, a space “by and for the commonweal.” In potent concentration of political power in these liminal moments, precarity becomes the hands of the GOP. temporal when its effects yield a “movement vocabulary and a set of principles for the navigation of a terrain.”19 While neither Moral Movement the 2014 HKonJ march nor the many Roughly one year after this new regime Moral Monday marches that heralded it took power, more than 85,000 people constituted an uninterrupted occupation, gathered in Raleigh, North Carolina, on this movement’s iterative consistency still a cold February morning for the 2014 resulted in more than 1,000 arrests. As observance of the Historic Thousands on they refused to vacate purportedly private Jones Street (HKonJ) march. That morning, zones of the public space that is the Barber began his address to the assembled North Carolina State Capitol, and as they counterpublic by talking about the moment chose to sing and pray even while being in which they stood: handcuffed, these activists staged a debate Standing on deep, historic, constitutional that blurred imagined boundaries between principles and sound moral values of the private and the public, the sacred and faith, we have challenged Democrats; we the secular, legality and criminality, public have challenged Republicans alike. But policy and morality.

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) 107 Although these embodied debates started to sketch a list of fourteen justice refused the aforementioned lines of tribes in North Carolina. We had folks division, Barber secured moral authority who cared about education, folks who in an explicitly confessional form. In the cared about living wages, and others same speech from the 2014 march, Barber who were passionate about the 1.2 addresses in strikingly scriptural terms million North Carolinians who didn’t have access to health care. We also both the holders of state power and their had groups petitioning for redress for attempts to quash this season of protest. Black and poor women who’d been He thunders: forcibly sterilized in state institutions, Your actions have worked in reverse: organizations advocating for public you may have thought you were gonna financing in elections, and historically discourage us, but instead you have Black colleges and universities petitioning encouraged us. And the more you push for better state funding.20 us back, the more we will fight to go forward. The more you try to depress Added to this list were organizations us, the more you will inspire us. Maybe “concerned about discrimination in you don’t know what the Word says in hiring, others concerned about affordable Psalm 118. But I’ll tell you what it says: housing, and people opposed to the death “the stones that the builders have rejected penalty and other glaring injustices in our have become the chief cornerstone.” And criminal justice system.” And there were a new movement is happening. And it is also “the movements for environmental the Lord’s doing. justice, immigrant justice, civil rights Barber’s rhetorical focus on Governor enforcement, and an end to America’s so- McCrory, Speaker Tillis, and Majority called ‘War on Terror.’”21 Leader Berger also reveals his theory of In order to consolidate the efforts that day’s gathering. Encouraged by efforts and resources of these groups, the first to erase it, this new movement assembled assembly was held in February 2007. The in one of the state’s most public spaces to event, which came to be known as the challenge the ends to which governmental Historic Thousands on Jones Street People’s power had been put. Assembly, has continued on the second While I earlier referred to the Saturday of every February since 2007. crowd at the 2014 HKonJ march as a What brand of power is manifest in “counterpublic,” we would do well to think these acts of assembly? I want to tarry with a bit more about this cross-coalitional the name Historic Thousands on Jones Street collective and their act of coming together, because it highlights another important a practice of protest which was an fact, which is that, before any words outgrowth of organizational efforts that were spoken, and before any songs were began well before both this 2014 event intoned, the presence of so many together and the 2012 general election. In 2005, in this significant location, within earshot after Barber’s election to the presidency of the state capitol, constituted an affective of the North Carolina Conference of the intervention. Following Judith Butler, we NAACP, he embarked on a statewide tour might understand such gathering, such during which he congregation, as “an embodied form of

108 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) calling into question the inchoate and moral terms, Barber aims to invalidate the powerful dimensions of reigning notions injustices that are naturalized by market of the political,” notions that preceded, capitalism, the persistent inequity that is but were intensified by, the events of the explained away as evidence of personal North Carolina General Assembly’s 2013 irresponsibility, asserting that there is also legislative session.22 Indeed, the event a public responsibility. If neoliberalism is is called a Moral March to communicate a political theology, then it is differently the moral critique of present modes of vulnerable to theological critique. governance that is performed by the Bereft of its justifying invisibility and aggregation of these bodies. HKonJ and alleged secularity, what is gets called into the Moral Mondays rituals are invested question by what might be. The reigning in the idea of morality, as evidenced in convergence of the political and theological the titles of these protest events and in is challenged by an embodied and sonic the texts of Barber’s many speeches, and convergence, through which Barber’s symbolized in the clerical attire that prophetic speech and the movement’s pervades these public acts. It is a morality direct actions indict the contemporary that uses sacred language to interrogate nexus that locates morality in markets and allegedly secular affairs—a political in the subjectivities they foment. These theology that grounds Barber in the Black acts of assembly rebuff the arrogated prophetic tradition, while linking him to legitimacy—and near-inevitability—of the the visions of prophets canonized in the present arrangement of social, political, and Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. economic affairs by invoking an alternative. While Barber’s ministry is clearly shaped As these iterative Moral Marches on by Black liberation theology, his ongoing Raleigh ritualize protest, they inaugurate confrontation with neoliberal inequality an alternative temporality, interrupting the calls attention to a broader convergence seemingly inexorable flow of commodified of the theological and the political in time, producing Nyong’o’s aforementioned contemporary public policy. Adam Kostko “precarious time of occupation.” The thick illuminates this overlap, using these moment of resistance they then inhabit two contentious terms—neoliberalism is akin to the Italian philosopher Antoni and political theology—to interpret each Negri’s understanding of kairós, ideas other. Defining political theology as “a upon which stands Nyong’o’s notion of holistic, genealogical inquiry into the precarious temporality.24 Negri describes structures and sources of legitimacy in a kairós as “an installation in eternity,” particular historical moment,”23 Kostko neither future nor past, both spatial and claims that neoliberalism is “the political temporal, a point of access that supplants theology of late capital.” By claiming that linear time with another frame of reference, various features of a governing program temporarily lifting a contemporary event are immoral, Barber seeks to deny the onto higher ground. system the legitimacy on which it depends, suggesting that this interruption is Claiming the High Ground the most effective affront to the extant Barber’s remarks at the 2014 Historic structure. As he names protest in these Thousands on Jones Street march use the

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) 109 title of Johnson Oatman, Jr.’s treasured John said, “How can you say you love hymn Higher Ground to presence a moment God, whom you’ve never seen, and hate and place characterized by this elevated your brother, whom you see every day?” sociopolitical arrangement. In this address, That’s a high standard. Not only the Word of God, the Barber repeatedly turns to the high American Constitution sets a high standards expressed in the North Carolina standard for how we should conduct State Constitution, the United States ourselves. It says: “We the People of the Constitution, and Christian scripture to United States, in order to form a more assail the new set of policies enacted by perfect union, establish justice, ensure the state’s ruling regime. Throughout the domestic tranquility, provide for the message, Barber returns to the notion common defense, promote the general of higher ground. Over the course of the welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty . . . .” roughly thirty-minute proclamation, those That’s a high standard. two words become a metonym for a range One hundred and forty-six years ago, of policies that the speaker describes as the North Carolina State Constitution moral—programs including increased set a high standard. It said of every funding for public schools, expanded political leader that would dare operate access to health care, and renewed respect on our behalf, Be reminded of this: “All for voting rights.25 political power is vested in and derived from the people; all government of right We have come today to raise our originates from the people, is founded moral dissent because of the road down upon their will only, and is instituted which our elected leaders are pushing the solely for the good of the whole.” people of North Carolina. And, my friends, when we look at Let us be reminded that we are called these high standards for North Carolina, to high standards in our civic and public high standards for America, high life. The Word of God, for instance, sets standards from the Word of God, we a high standard for how we should live must declare that there are those who as people and conduct ourselves when have chosen to live, govern, and act we use public power. Micah 6:8 says, mighty low. “What doth the Lord require but to do In policy and politics, we face two justice, love mercy, and walk humbly choices: one is the low road to destruction before God?” and the other is the pathway to higher That’s a high standard. ground. And so, in this kairós moment of Isaiah 6:10 says, “Woe unto those history, right here in North Carolina, we who legislate evil and write oppressive have been called together to fight against decrees and rob the poor of their rights.” a dangerous agenda of extremist laws That’s a high standard. by the ultraconservative right wing that Jesus said to nations and is choosing the low road—policies that governments, “When I was hungry, did are constitutionally inconsistent, morally you feed me? When I was naked, did indefensible, and economically insane. you clothe me? When I was thirsty, did It’s extreme and it’s mighty low to cut you give me drink? When I was sick, Medicaid for 500,000 people in a state did you heal me? Because inasmuch as of 1.7 million poor people and knowing you’ve done it unto the least of these, that 2,800 will die. you’ve done it unto me.” It’s mighty low to raise taxes on That’s a high standard. 900,000 poor people and working

110 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) citizens in order to cut taxes for twenty- commit crimes against democracy and three of the wealthiest families. try to suppress and undermine the right It’s mighty low to end unemployment to vote. benefits for 170,000 people who have But “higher ground” is not just a motif lost jobs through no fault of their own or set piece for Barber: the invocation of but give your political appointees salaries that don’t even fit their resumes. higher ground is Barber’s entire project. This It’s mighty low to resegregate our invective derives its power by confronting schools and to eliminate preschool for reigning notions of the possible, asserting many poor children and to cut so much that the alternative both speaker and money from public education that we are audience seek is attainable. In this address, now forty-eighth in the country, lower Barber declares that “our politics can be than Mississippi. merciful. Can be kind. Can be loving. Can And then, on top of that, to fire be just. Can be fair. Can be equal.” Barber’s thousands of teachers and teachers’ assistants and then remove 10 million characteristic unwillingness to “absolutize 26 dollars of our public money and give it to the present,” here and elsewhere, is one a private vouchers school program. of the ways he practices prophetic speech, That’s mighty low! grounding his public ministry in the It’s mighty low to raise taxes on Black prophetic preaching tradition, while 89 percent of North Carolinians so deriving direction from the prophets of you can give 11 percent of the richest Hebrew scripture. The fundament of this North Carolinians a tax break, knowing tradition, which Walter Brueggemann that this transfer to the top will never theorizes as “a prophetic imagination,” is a trickle down, but [will] drain, over ten years, 650 million [dollars] kind of emphatic contrariness, a refusal of from our budget, sorely needed for unjust arrangements of human power in education, infrastructure, and economic view of divine principles.27 As a synecdoche development. for Barber’s project, “higher ground” clarifies It’s mighty low for us to sing the genealogy from which his messages “America, America, God shed his grace on derive meaning. The homiletician Kenyatta you” with one breath and then with the R. Gilbert rightly notes that, “due to racism, other breath to deny workers the grace of the prophetic principle has been virtually labor rights and collective bargaining; to cut the grace of safety nets to the needy institutionalized in Black churches since and raise taxes on the poor and the the independent Black church movement working poor; to deny immigrants the of the early nineteenth century.”28 Although grace of fair immigration policy; and to their contributions are extolled far less than undermine the grace due to the rights of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “word that moved women and the LGBT community. America,”29 Gilbert notes that Adam Clayton It’s mighty low! Powell, Sr., Reverdy C. Ransom, and It’s mighty low to wave banners and Florence S. Randolph “rose up to name the place bumper stickers on our cars saying “God Bless America” but fail to realize dehumanizing political and socioeconomic our obligation to bless God by how we realities (e.g., substandard housing, racial treat our brothers and sisters. and gender discrimination, unstable It’s mighty low after you’ve employment) stirred by the Great Migration, committed all of these low acts to then and simultaneously offered a word of

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) 111 hope which possessed the power to topple reference to Black preaching, “higher esteem despair.”30 Tracing the divine’s movement is given to how things are said (style) over through the world points out the failure of what is actually being said (content),”34 I human societies to “do justice, love mercy, also share Martha Nussbaum’s conviction and walk humbly.”31 What Brueggemann that “style itself makes its claims, expresses describes as “a sustained effort to imagine its own sense of what matters.”35 Barber the world as though YHWH were a real gives a sense of what matters to him near character and the defining agent in the life the end of his 2014 address when he makes of the world” is certainly at work in Barber’s a solicitous request: “Can I be a preacher public ministry.32 for a minute?” His rhetorical petition to the In Barber’s words, assembled thousands both precedes and [t]he job of a pastor is to touch people announces an emphatic shift in his manner where they are hurting and to do what of presentation, a characteristic move from is possible to bind up their wounds. You the domain of speech toward song. On that can only do this sort of work locally— chilly Saturday morning, standing mere feet among people whose names you know away from the seat of the state government’s and who, likewise, know you. But you power, and while speaking in antiphony cannot do it honestly without at some with the assembled counterpublic, Barber point becoming a prophet. Something inside the human spirit cries out summons a holy power, concluding that against the injustice of inequality day’s address with a sonic form that would when you know people who have to have made for a fitting culmination of a choose between food and medicine in a sermon delivered in his church’s pulpit on country where CEOs make more in an any given Sunday. hour than their lowest-paid employees Can I be a preacher for a minute? O help make in month.33 me, Lord! Yeah! Every now and then, As I noted earlier, on the day in question, when I’m blessed to be in the vision, in Barber’s prophetic contrariness took shape the stratosphere of the Spirit, every in the idea of higher ground, refashioned as now and then, when God lets my mind an indictment of what is and an invocation and my soul go a little bit higher in the of what can be. HKonJ as an event, as a troubles of this world, when I’m up there in the Spirit, I’m reminded that the ritual, evidences what Barber often calls moral arc of the universe is long, but it “fusion politics.” The assembly of so many bends toward justice. When I’m up there, individuals and organizations with allied, I’m reminded that if we help the poor but not identical, interests is the purpose and stop exploitation, Isaiah said the of these massive events. Indeed, their Lord will hear our prayer, the light will unfolding typically includes readings and shine on us, and we’ll be preparers of the prayers from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim breach. When I’m up there in the Spirit, clerics. But Barber’s characteristically Black, in my spirit I hear the Lord say, “They that wait on the Lord shall renew their musical, and intensive mode of address is strength, mount up on wings as eagles.” always the keynote. Given such calling- When I’m up there, I’m reminded that if together, how does Barber’s improbably God be for you, it does not matter if the specific utterance function? While I am whole world is against you. When I’m up mindful of Gilbert’s concern that, with there, in my spirit I’m reminded greater

112 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) is He that is in us than he that is in the even more explicit, resuscitating the world. When I’m up there, somebody language and focus of King’s 1968 Poor say, “Up there,” I’m reminded the Lord People’s Campaign in the second decade is my light, my salvation. God can pick of the twenty-first. Amid the growing you up. He can turn you around. He can national and international prominence plant your feet on higher ground. When I’m up there, I’m reminded weeping may evidenced by the movement from the endure for a night, but joy comes in the HKonJ event through Moral Mondays into morning. Every battle for justice has the Poor People’s Campaign, the form and gone through the night, but joy always content of Barber’s public orations have came in the morning. After slavery, joy remained remarkably consistent. What do came in the morning. When women these messages do? What is conveyed by didn’t have the right to vote, joy came their very structure, by their very shape? in the morning. After segregation, joy came in the morning. So don’t get weary. Since, speaking in this manner, enacting Don’t get weary. Don’t get weary. We’ve this conventional musical inflection is not just begun to fight. There’s a nonviolent Barber’s only aesthetic choice, one would army and it’s rising and it’s rising. There’s ask, what claim is made through enacting an army rising to break every chain of this style? What thought is expressed, not injustice, to occupy the high ground. just through the content of his address, As he settles on D-flat as a reciting tone, but through its form? Ashon Crawley’s and as the keyboardist enters to amplify his work on a host of Black aesthetic practices musical inflection, Barber sonifies the hoped- offers an illuminating way to grapple with for while standing among the thousands on these questions, focusing on religiomusical Jones Street. No longer simply a referent for enunciations of “Blackpentecostal breath,” public policy and the morals from which which, more than an invocation of they spring, “Higher Ground” becomes characteristic Black religiosity, expresses “a the name for the sonic environment into collective possibility for belief in otherwise which this assembly is suddenly thrust. This worlds, one that is a creative critique of the resonant alteration has argumentative value. one(s) in which we exist.”36 This is not belief Enveloped in a new sonic world, grounded in some illusory utopia, but an assertion by musical systems of key and meter, the “that otherwise is possible and . . . [that] we grip of the material world is slackened by are charged with producing otherwise in the the invisible, but audible, materiality of cause of justice.”37 “Producing otherwise” is musical sound. Through this movement, a valuable phrase for this article’s analytical Barber’s claim about what else is possible endeavor; it illuminates what results from achieves a phenomenal corroboration. As Barber’s serial invocations of Black sacred such, Barber’s shift from speech to song, and rhetoric in protest, events and messages that the cross-coalitional assembly’s antiphonal serve as conjunctions between policy and escalation, produce another politics, a morality, temporality and transcendence, theopolitics distilled in the declaration that intersections that Barber best understood there is another world. as a kind of higher ground. While Barber’s Since the 2014 sermon with which this solicitous request of permission to “be article is concerned, Barber’s investment in a preacher” indexes a vocal conversion, the Black prophetic tradition has become this shift in phonation is symptomatic of

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) 113 something broader. As the pioneering Black buttressed by a conventional interpretive liberation theologian James Cone observes thread that traces divine movement across about other elements of Black Christian space and time. No longer simply a referent aesthetic practice, “[t]he truth of black for just public policies and the virtues from religion is not limited to the literal meaning which they spring, “higher ground” now of the words. Truth is also disclosed in the discloses a transcendent plane from which movement of the language and the passion to recall God’s intervention in human created when a song is sung in the right history. This recollection is a remarkably pitch and tonal quality. Truth is found in consistent feature of Barber’s public shout, hum, and moan as these expressions presentations. His emphatic turn toward move the people closer to the source of their musicality is always tethered to swift motion being.”38 Truth, Cone clarifies, is located not across divergent scenes of human events. just in content, but also in form, such that Barber’s combination of remembrance we might refer to the consistently intensive and imagination refuses spatiotemporal character of Barber’s protest messages as boundaries, inhabiting kairós, drawing articulations of “prophetic form,” a sonic together unlikely collectives of communities arrangement whose arresting character which, though separated by thousands of advances moral critique. I contend that, as years, become one in the struggle during the Barber raises his voice, he shifts the debate ecstatic phase of a protest sermon. At the into political theological territory, using 2014 HKonJ march, the notion of higher vocal inflection to make the prophetic claim, ground was the rhetorical lever that enabled a formulation that Walter Bruggeman Barber to hold these places, moments, and defines in this fashion: publics in a fleeting communion. When The powers of modernity want not to defined as higher ground, the ecstasy notice human suffering; they want to engendered by the musicality of preaching define suffering as a legitimate and becomes the moment when Barber sounds necessary cost of well-being or as an the prophetic, remembering societal inexplicable given of human history. victories like abolition, women’s suffrage, Prophetic speech demystifies pain and and integration as articulations of the sees clearly that much pain is principally divine’s liberating presence. Each of these caused by the manipulation of economic and political access whereby the strong moments constitutes a picture of joy coming regularly destroy the weak. Such suffering in the morning. is not a legitimate, bearable cost; and it is When I’m up there, I’m reminded not inexplicable. Instead, social pain is a weeping may endure for a night, but product of social relationships that can joy comes in the morning. Every battle be transformed.39 for justice has gone through the night, By making a sound that cannot easily be but joy always came in the morning. ignored, Barber’s prophetic form reorganizes After slavery, joy came in the morning. collective attention on what matters: the When women didn’t have the right to vote, joy came in the morning. After human cost of immoral public policy. segregation, joy came in the morning. While Barber’s “higher ground” cannot be located in any single human event, the The teleology of Barber’s prophetic form political content of his prophetic form is is revealed by the message’s penultimate

114 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) move. Having used the theme of higher Plant every state all over the South ground to critique policy, interpret history, on higher ground. and imagine another world, Barber finally Plant Washington, D.C. recites the lyrics of the hymn itself. on higher ground. Plant the legislature Did not the hymn writer say, “I’m on higher ground. pressing on the upward way. New heights Plant the Congress I’m gaining every day, still praying as I’m on higher ground. freedom bound. Lord, plant my feet on Plant this nation on higher ground. higher ground. (Sister Coleman,) my Plant America on higher ground. heart has no desire to stay where doubts Lord, Lord, plant our minds arise and fear dismay. Though some may on higher ground. dwell where these abound, my prayer, Plant our hearts on higher ground. my aim, is higher ground. Lord, lift us Plant our souls on higher ground. up and help us stand by faith, by faith, by faith, on Canaan’s land. A higher plain In this final move we literally see Barber that I have found. Lord, plant my feet on summoning spiritual power as a remedy higher ground. to societal problems. While exclaiming The turn to this hymn feels just as “Lord, lift us up,” he performs the lifting of consummative as does the homiletic which he speaks, planting his audience— inflection of his voice near the end of an and, proleptically, his nation—on higher event for which he dressed in clerical attire. ground. In this way, gospel sound makes its These concomitant moments of arrival, own prophetic statement, asserting that an both of which are amplified by the solicitous otherwise politics is at hand. request of permission to be a preacher—the The prayer derived from what might be vocation for which he is known—reflect the called “Barber’s theme song” is uttered in performativity of the HKonJ gathering, a earshot of others whose political behavior transformative capacity that is clarified in is indexed by the label “Christian.” As this Barber’s final move. Before he leaves the demonstration of moral power is woven podium, at the apotheosis of volume and into the public assembly of embodied affect, the preacher turns the message’s authority, a claim is made about the theme and the hymn’s title into an extensive essence of the Good News, about the side chanted prayer. As he oscillates between the divine takes in human affairs, and the tonic and flattened third, a sonic about what matters most in social life. materialization of the hymn’s elevated Barber’s movement between genres of topography, Barber supplicates: address—from speech to sermon to prayer, transitions marked by inflected words Lord, plant our feet and modes of vocalization—braids sacred on higher ground. rhetoric together with his slate of policy Plant North Carolina prescriptions. When read against the on higher ground. Plant the governor’s office on diversity of the listeners it attracts, this higher ground. aesthetic alchemy leads me to ask, what are Plant the legislature the audiences that gather around Barber on higher ground. responding to? What meaning emerges

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) 115 when, at their rhetorical apotheoses, his that there is room for multiple forms of speeches veer toward one of the most engagement within a single performance. recognizable sonic expressions of Black That Barber chooses to preach in this religious ecstasy? What is the relationship peculiar way in the midst of a group whose between the hyperlegibility of Barber’s diversity is so obvious suggests that a kind inflection and his recurring use of “we are” of pleasure is taken in the heteroglossic in the following passage? character of these events. We are Black. We are white. We are What are these unlikely collectives Latino. We are Native American. We are bodying forth? I see an imagination of Democrat. We are Republican. We are another mode of being-together, another independent. We are people of faith. We politics, a shared intention to inhabit are people not of faith, but who, though higher ground. While much about this they are secular, they still believe in scene seems familiar, articulating the a moral universe. We are natives and immigrants. We are business leaders, practice that homileticians like Henry and workers, and unemployed. We are Mitchell, Frank Thomas, and William doctors and the uninsured. We are gay. Turner have described as “celebration,” I We are straight. We are students. We want to suggest that there is more going are parents. We are retirees. We are on here than simply “the musicality of a North Carolina. We are America. Black preacher.”40 Something unfamiliar is By attending to the actions of the also afoot. While Barber is indeed a Black assembled crowds during the climactic preacher, iterating a characteristic brand moments of Barber’s speeches, their of preacherly musicality, his presentation heterogeneity becomes apparent through resists easy categorizations. Somewhere the multiple ways in which the attendees between political speech and ecstatic respond to the preacher’s sonic specificity. sermon, Barber sounds a reclamation of As the speaker becomes the preacher, public space, public discourse, and public instruments join in to “back him up” as they policy. In these performances, sounds that might at his church on Sunday morning. In are highly characteristic of Black sacred this same vein, videos reveal the sight and rhetoric are recruited to question the self- sound of congregants whose familiarity legitimating systems of oppression. As with Black church traditions leads them Barber asks for permission to be a preacher, to engage in an antiphonal dialogue with he offers his immediate audience—and all to the preacher. These interactions wed their whom his sound might travel—permission affirmation of the spoken message with to imagine being otherwise. Not new, but expressions of praise. Other responses otherwise. To imagine existence before and have more in common with a secular rally, above what is allegedly natural. To imagine venting strong agreement with Barber’s belonging, not to Black Pentecostalism, assertions, while showing some distance Black Christianity, or any other confessional from the confessional investment of fellow system, but to an otherwise world where congregants. In this way the improbable such lines of distinction lose some of their specificity of Barber’s rhetorical style makes alienating power. We might think of such a the argument of fusion politics, showing world as “Higher Ground.”

116 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) In this essay, I have argued that Rev. of current social order, yielding a power Dr. William Barber’s protest messages of subversive imagination that converses advance political and theological thought— with the power of the state. In its public not just in their content, but also in their form, Barber’s ecstatic musicality brings form. The improbable collectives that take near a world that is more just than what part in these gatherings perform a critical seems to be inescapably natural, turning form of sociality. As Barber’s sacred rhetoric sound into a technology of transcendence, makes available a realm that attendees the sonic path into higher ground. cannot see, it contradicts the inevitability

NOTES

1 Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, “Address to 11 Ibid. 2016 Democratic National Convention,” July 28, 12 Ibid., 203. 2016, Democratic National Convention, Wells Fargo 13 William A. Link, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Center, Philadelphia, PA, YouTube, 11:09, https:// Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (New www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAFZKcYn8qI. York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 55. 2 William P. Mackay, Revive Us Again; 14 Christensen, The Paradox of Tar Heel see, for example, https://www.youtube.com/ Politics, 211; see also Rob Christensen, “Helms watch?v=RuMrQt4l6qE. Spawns Passions among Supporters, Detractors,” 3 Kim Severson, “G.O.P.’s Full Control in News and Observer, Sept. 23, 1984. Long-Moderate North Carolina May Leave Lasting 15 Tony Leon Powell, North Carolina: Race of Stamp,” New York Times, Dec. 11, 2012, http:// the Century (Minneapolis, MN: Ambassador Press, www.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/us/politics/gop- 2006), 79. to-take-control-in-long-moderate-north-carolina. 16 Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, “Post- html (accessed Feb. 1, 2017). March Speech,” Feb. 8, 2014, Moral March on 4 Ibid. Raleigh, NC, YouTube, 1:16:14, https://youtu.be/ 5 Rob Christensen, “Will NC’s ‘Conservative DmNKKIDSdRE?t=2378. Revolution’ Continue?” News and Observer, Jan. 17 Tavia Nyong’o, “The Scene of Occupation,” 10, 2015, http://www.newsobserver.com/news/ TDR: The Drama Review 56/4 (Winter 2012): politics-government/politics-columns-blogs/rob- 136–49. christensen/article10218335.html (accessed Feb. 18 Ibid., 139. 2, 2017). 19 Ibid., 142. 6 Kim Severson, “Protests in North Carolina 20 William J. Barber with Jonathan Wilson- Challenge Conservative Shift in State Politics,” New Hartgrove, The Third Reconstruction: Moral Mondays, York Times, June 11, 2013, https://www.nytimes. Fusion Politics, and the Rise of a New Justice Movement com/2013/06/12/us/weekly-protests-in-north- (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016), 49. carolina-challenge-conservative-shift-in-state- 21 Ibid. politics.html (accessed Nov. 30, 2019). 22 Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative 7 Christensen, “Will NC’s ‘Conservative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Revolution’ Continue?” University Press, 2015), 9. 8 Rob Christensen, The Paradox of Tar Heel 23 Adam Kostko, Neoliberalism’s Demons: On Politics: The Personalities, Elections, and Events the Political Theology of Late Capital (Stanford, CA: That Shaped Modern North Carolina (Chapel Hill: Stanford University Press, 2018), 128. University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 34. 24 Antoni Negri, Time for Revolution (London: 9 Ibid., 9–10. Continuum, 2003). 10 Ibid., 39. 25 Barber, “Post-March Speech,” Feb. 8, 2014.

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020) 117 26 Walter Brueggemann, “The Prophetic 34 Ibid. Word of God and History,” in Texts that Linger, 35 Martha Nussbaum, Love’s Knowledge: Words that Explode: Listening to Prophetic Voices, ed. Essays on Philosophy and Literature (London and Patrick D. Miller (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 3. Fortress, 2000), 35–44. 36 Ashon Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath: 27 Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic The Aesthetics of Possibility (New York: Fordham Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, University Press, 2017), 27. 2001). 37 Ibid. 28 Kenyatta R. Gilbert, The Journey and 38 James Cone, God of the Oppressed Promise of African American Preaching (Minneapolis, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), 21. MN: Fortress Press, 2011), 29. 39 Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 29 This is a central formulation in Richard 80. Lischer, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. 40 Henry Mitchell, Celebration and Experience and the Word that Moved America (Oxford and New in Preaching (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1990); York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Frank Thomas, They Like to Never Quit Praising God: 30 Kenyatta Gilbert, “Making the Unseen The Role of Celebration in Preaching (Cleveland, OH: Seen: Pedagogy and Aesthetics in African American United Church Press, 1997); William Turner, “The Prophetic Preaching,” Homiletic 34/2 (2009): 21. Musicality of Black Preaching: A Phenomenology,” 31 Micah 6:8. in Performance in Preaching: Bringing the Sermon to 32 Walter Brueggemann, The Practice of Life, ed. Jana Childers and Clayton Schmit (Grand Prophetic Imagination: Preaching an Emancipating Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008). Word (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 132. 33 Barber and Wilson-Hartgrove, The Third Reconstruction, xiii.

118 Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 6, No. 2 (2020)