This MLK Day, white evangelicals again have a choice to make on racial justice
Those who wish to learn from MLK’s legacy must also ask if they are willing to listen to the modern-day prophets of racial justice.
My latest at the Religion News Service…
As we have remembered Martin Luther King Jr. and his contributions to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s each January, our memory of him has blurred to the point it obscures much of his actual thought. In a seminal 2005 essay, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall wrote that King has been “endlessly reproduced and selectively quoted, his speeches retain their majesty yet lose their political bite.”
Specifically omitted from popular memory are some of the more “radical” elements of King’s message — democratic socialism, ending the war in Vietnam, nuclear de-escalation, a Poor People’s Campaign to force the federal government to address systemic poverty, and support of a sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis when he was killed.
For many, he has become the “quotable King,” his entire message reduced to his dream that his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
In the same way, we have softened in our social memory how strongly many white evangelical Christians — even those deemed socially and politically “moderate” — opposed King.
King saw an indissoluble link between the Christian faith and the responsibility to change unjust laws and policies. But his emphasis on the social dimensions of Christianity, especially regarding race relations, angered many white evangelicals at the time. They considered race relations a purely social issue, not a spiritual one, and tended to believe the government should not force people of different races to integrate. Some, of course, thought racial segregation was a divine declaration and defended the practice using the Bible.
Decades after his death, white evangelicals finally came to recognize King’s contribution to American democracy and biblical justice. But during his lifetime, a large segment of the American church derided King and other activists and even resisted the aims of the civil rights movement.
Read the rest HERE.
When I learned he was voted the most hated man in America, I was floored. Then I looked into why & it became apparent: Dr. King threatened the status quo, the unequivocal bias toward the wealthy, & calling out injustice in prophetic strength. May his dream become a reality one day & may I do my part to help it become realized.
Thanks for this, Jemar! This is a painful reminder that we have a long way to go...