Leadership Quote by Al Sharpton

Sharpton frames the pulpit as a street-level institution, not a sanctuary from politics but an engine for it. The phrasing matters: "always been" reads like a preemptive rebuttal to critics who treat his activism as a detour from religion. He is claiming continuity and legitimacy, insisting this is not a stunt or a season but a vocation with a public mandate.

"Social activism" is doing double duty here. It signals a moral mission rooted in Black church tradition where clergy have historically been organizers, negotiators, and translators between oppressed communities and power. It also pushes back on the tidy American myth that faith is private and politics is profane. Sharpton isn't apologizing for mixing them; he's suggesting the separation itself is irresponsible.

The key phrase is "at some levels". It's strategic hedging. He doesn't say ministers must become politicians, but he refuses the idea that religious leadership can remain innocent of policy, policing, labor, housing, or voting rights. That qualifier makes the argument harder to dismiss as partisan: involvement is framed as ethical duty, calibrated to circumstance.

"Social order" is the sharp edge. It's not just "community" or "society" but the architecture of who gets protected, who gets blamed, who gets heard. In Sharpton's context - post-civil-rights America, media-saturated activism, constant accusations of opportunism - the line reads as a defense of agitation as pastoral care. The minister's job, he implies, isn't to bless the status quo but to interrogate it, publicly, where it hurts.