Overview:
Religious leaders across the country are reframing the U.S.-Iran conflict as more than foreign policy — calling it a moral crisis tied to poverty, racism and economic inequality, and urging a shift from military spending to investments in people and communities.
The chant came steady, rising through speakers and screens alike:
“Books, not bombs. Schools, not jails.”
At pulpits, in Zoom rooms and on street corners, faith leaders nationwide leaned into a familiar role of moral witnesses as they pushed back against the U.S. war with Iran. At demonstrations, they warned that even a fragile ceasefire between the two nations can’t quiet what they see as a deeper crisis of national values.
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The calls came during a livestreamed “Moral Mondays: Stop the War” gathering earlier this week, organized by Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign, twin faith-based anti-poverty, social justice nonprofits. The series of events brings together clergy, peace advocates, and community organizers intent on reframing the war as a moral failure with roots in poverty, racism, and economic injustice at home.
War Over Well-Being
“We cannot normalize war and call it peace,” said Bishop William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. Barber, who is also the founding director of Yale University’s Center for Public Theology and Public Policy, has long argued that American militarism is one of the nation’s “interlocking injustices.”
“A budget that prioritizes bombs over bread is a violation of our deepest moral values,” he said.
We are spending billions on war while families struggle to afford healthcare, housing and food. That is not just a policy failure. It is a moral failure.
rev. Dr. Hanna Broome, Repairers of the Breach
The gathering unfolded as a U.S.-brokered ceasefire paused weeks of escalating strikes between the U.S. and Iran — a break that officials described as necessary for stability, but that faith leaders warned masks the human and moral cost of the conflict.
For Barber and others, the issue is what the war reveals about the nation’s priorities. According to some experts, the war is costing U.S. taxpayers as much as $2 billion a day.
“The question is not whether we have the resources to lift people out of poverty,” Barber said. “The question is why we keep choosing war over the well-being of the people.”
Redirecting War Budgets
That tension — between military spending abroad and unmet needs at home — was the event’s throughline.
“We are spending billions on war while families struggle to afford healthcare, housing and food,” said Rev. Dr. Hanna Broome, national director of religious affairs at Repairers of the Breach. “That is not just a policy failure. It is a moral failure.”
Broome pointed to the scale of federal war spending — billions of dollars per day, according to some estimates — and what it could mean if redirected.
“That kind of money could mean nurses in hospitals, teachers in classrooms, housing for families, Medicaid for children and adults, Head Start for our babies,” she said. “We are here to say people are worth more than war.”
Speakers also pushed beyond policy arguments, framing the conflict in deeply personal and spiritual terms.
‘Books, Not Bombs’
At one point, Elder Cortly C.D. Witherspoon leaned into the cadence of a sermon, naming what he called the real-world consequences of political choices.
“We need to have a real living wage. We need to ensure that our children go to schools that have books,” he said. “We say books, not bombs. Schools, not jails.”
Rev. Stephen Erich of Takoma Park Seventh-day Adventist Church urged participants to think about the unseen toll of war — the devastation of communities and of consciences.
“Name the person you know who lost access to medication this year from policy violence,” he said. “Name the new family standing in line at the food pantry. Name the lies that have become commonplace.”
Faith-Led Resistance
For many gathered, the moment echoed a long tradition of faith-led resistance, from the civil rights movement to modern fights over voting rights, wages, and healthcare. In those instances, clergy stepped into political debates as moral arbiters, not partisans.
Barber made that lineage explicit.
“We are standing in a tradition that refuses to bow to injustice,” he said. “From civil rights to today, people of faith have always been called to challenge policies that harm the most vulnerable.”
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Even as the ceasefire holds, for now, faith leaders say their work is far from over.
Organizers pledged to continue prayer vigils, teach-ins, and demonstrations aimed at pressuring policymakers to pursue diplomacy over escalation. They are also determined to confront what they see as a deeper question beneath the headlines: What does it say about a nation when it invests more in war than in its people?