Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is NOT an American hero.
The public schools will close in his honor, but they won’t teach your children that the impossibility of understanding the man outside of his commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ.
The corporations will give you a lower price in his name, but they won’t take seriously his concern that western capitalism has become a force of injustice.
The u.s.american government will declare a national holiday, and the president will pay him lip service while accepting the Peace Prize, but they won’t be playing this sermon to the men and women they have put on the warplanes to Afghanistan.
He was not an American hero. He was a prophet of the kingdom of God.
“There’s something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say be non-violent toward Jim Clark but will curse and damn you when you say be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children.
“I have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those men who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men? For communists and capitalist? For their children and ours? For black and white? For revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemy so fully that he died for them? What, then, can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten them with death? Or must I not share with them my life? There will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.
“And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It’s a man by the name of General Kỳ, who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we are supporting in Vietnam today.
“Oh, our government and the press generally won’t tell us these things, but God told me to tell you this morning. The truth must be told.
“All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food.
“We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops.
“This is the role our nation has taken: the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible by refusing to give up the priviliges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.
“Now I’m convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.
“When macines and computers, profit-motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies.
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West invest in huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say, ‘This is not just.’ It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, ‘This is not just.’
“The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
i totally agree. america is the empire-the new rome. and usually through this lens there is oppression, entitlement, expectation and destructive decision-making all in the name of worldview. i think nationalism has clearly become the new god that makes decisions, even, unfortunately, within many church dynamics. i would ask, if MLKJ never said anything about God, would that make his message any less valuable? if he condoned the message of Christ in the words he chose without ever saying the name Jesus would that change the gravity of his words? i have huge respect for this man.
Traveler…thanks for making this place a part of your travels :)
This is a good question:
“if MLKJ never said anything about God, would that make his message any less valuable? if he condoned the message of Christ in the words he chose without ever saying the name Jesus would that change the gravity of his words?”
Another way to state it: Is Dr. King’s contribution any less if his faith in Jesus is overlooked or left out? How much does it matter?
Listen to his speech. How much does it matter to Dr. King?
Does this sound like a man who has chosen his words carefully? Does this sound like a man who thinks his faith is a step-ladder to integrated schools? Does this man think about non-violence Christologically? Does this man critique capitalism because of Marx or because of Moses (or both)? Is it his contribution to society or his hope in God’s future that gives him courage in the face of death?
The trick that liberal democracy has played on us (and that is evident in your question) is that the language of religion is subordinate to…what? Human rights? Freedom? Liberal democracy? Personal choice?
To ask if the religious bits of his message is essential to his mission to assume that Dr. King’s contribution is something like a consumer good that we can use rather than a prophetic vision that places demands on us. If Dr. King’s faith is only incidental to the common good then who is it that gets to define the common good? Inevitably that right falls to the powers and authorities of this world. In particular: liberal democracy and global capitalism. “See, we can have a black president! See, we can have a black leader in the GOP! See, we can have black CEOs! Dr. King is our hero!”
But what if we have the humility to accept Dr. King on his own terms? What if we trust Dr. King’s version of faith as an apocalyptic in-breaking of the Kingdom of God? Then it is Christ and his future that defines the common good. The liberal-democratic state only becomes good insofar as it leans towards God’s future. In this model capitalism, liberalism and democracy are viewed as waystations rather than destinations. In this model, the fact that a Black man can command wars across the planet or exploit workers in third-world countries for profit isn’t the sign of a great contribution but rather, in King’s own words, ’spiritual death’.
What is it about us that wants to imagine, even for a lark, a universe where MLKJ never said anything about God? Why the division between faith and politics? Between justice and righteousness? I see a trend in Dr. King’s speeches from a more favorable view of u.s.american democracy and its ideals to a more critical standpoint, but never do I see him trying to “imagine there’s no heaven”.
If King were alive Obama wouldn’t dare call him a hero…because he would criticize Obama as a war president. If he were alive, corporations wouldn’t dare have MLK day sales in his honor…because he would speak out against the system that enriches them. If he were alive schools wouldn’t dare hold him up as a model…because he refused to keep his faith separate from his politics.
King’s contribution isn’t diminished by any fault of his own. Whatever is done for Christ will last. But I would gladly assert that his influence IS diminished for us as long as we fail to understand his theo-political imagination.
If the country’s first black President namechecks King in a speech justifying an unjust war, then do we have the right to boast of his influence? If we have a day off to honor Dr. King and more people rejoice in a two-hour episode of 24, is his contribution a gift received or unwrapped?
We don’t want living prophets. We don’t want to listen to what Moses, Jesus or Dr. King actually have to say. We want those guys dead so we can do whatever the fuck we want.
And as long as we refuse to hear them on any terms but our own, they may as well be dead.
i do agree that King was extremely influenced by his understanding of God. Not necessarily his faith. i know we’re playing semantics here. i would define faith as an action, irrespective of how James defines it, which is his opinion on what faith is and how he explained it to his audience. i would definitely agree with that his worldview and life were jesus-centered in the most traditional of senses. i would also agree on the prophets remark, i think we need them. a great book on this is by a hero of mine Jewish Rabbi Abraham Herschel, called The Prophets and he explains that to be a prophet in the bible narrative was to be synonymous with being a government adviser, it was a job as well as a lifestyle. i would also say that he would have never needed to say the name of jesus to actually proclaim the methodologies and ideologies of the Kingdom of God. If God knows everything, then the labels and words are more us than anyone or anything else. we are revising history here, because he did use christian rhetoric in some of his speeches. which isn’t bad, but sometimes people opt for the jesus-card rather than simply living their faith out. not that i am accusing MLKJ of this perpetration. i think it is also how people (typically the traditional conservative view of a prophet) have defined a prophet. which is more of a ‘telling it like it is, no holds barred truth teller’, which i think at times could be anyone not just a prophet. we tend to equate them the open mouths, but what of the silent prophets? what of ghandi? what of mother teresa? what of you or i? i think the definition of prophet (traditionally speaking) needs to be revised and reframed in light of the rhetoric that has been used and abused. i would also add that if a gift is unwrapped or received, it is still being received, but maybe not realized?
There’s a tendency in late modernism to respond to the tyranny of words by a rejection of words. This is an overreaction. At best it’s futile, and at worst it’s another form of the will to power.
By calling faith something else or by using words like ‘worldview’ or ‘jesus-centered’ do we get closer or further from Dr. King? Do we under-stand him or do we stand-over him? Sure, it’s weird to me that he keeps using the word ‘negro’, but still…do we have the patience and humility to learn from the past without fitting it into our own rubric?
And while prophetic witness can be wordless, I wouldn’t describe either Ghandi or Blessed Teresa that way.
i would agree that there can be a benefit of learning from the past, what about learning from the future? (this essentially is what a futurist is committed to) but too many times people assert their opinions or worldviews on the past as if those opinions were the exacted mindframe that the said historical character proclaimed. for example, many people use the terminology “jesus believed this” or “jesus supported that”, really? how do they know? we can only assume at best, what they might have believed or how they perceived what they perceived by what was said or not said. it makes me nervous when we assert the worldviews of those we call hero’s without having their brains infused in ours. i mean Hitler thought what he was doing was gods’ work according to his interpretation of scripture (mein kampf). i would say the only way we could learn from the past is to apply to our own rubric. essentially this is what the bible does, one word and idea that shows up in scripture and extra-biblical works is the word ‘remember’, not simply to remember, but to learn from then how to live now. i would think it would detrimentally irresponsible to just live in the past.
i use the word silent generously in speaking of the two world contributors. i say it in such a way because they weren’t necessarily at the forefront of prophetic celebrity (mostly for their time in history; for example, Ghandi has gotten more celebrity post-life).
‘By calling faith something else or by using words like ‘worldview’ or ‘jesus-centered’ do we get closer or further from Dr. King? Do we under-stand him or do we stand-over him?’
i would ask if that is important in light of the gravity of his
message (minus our own interpretations of it).
[...] what of the silent prophets… 2010 January 19 tags: american, anyone, conservative, god, hebrew, hero, hitler, jesus, jew, jr, martin luther king, more, people, prophet, silent, telling, teresa, think, times, Truth by travelersnote for context: http://charismanglican.com/2010/01/18/martin-luther-king-jr-is-not-an-american-hero/ [...]
thank you for this.
Amen, brother.
Why must King be either/or? Certainly he was a Christian preacher first, and an American activist second, but surely these two things related. It may be an offense to you that he is considered an “American Hero,” but that does not alter the fact that the the context to which King was called was the scene of national politics.
How can you expect anyone to take you seriously with categories as broad and undefined as “the corporations?”
I am growing increasingly convinced that self-consciously “radical” Christians are no more than college leftists who discovered a stack of theology textbooks. You speak of King as if he is exclusively Church property – and yet he was so effective because his ministry reached out from the church and pulpit to the streets of Washington and Birmingham and touched the soul of an entire nation. Seriously, other than your own theological biases, why can’t be be an American hero who was a Christian prophet?
And I can’t help but notice that most of the sophisticated critics of liberal democracies…still live in them.
Must be nice to have your cake and eat it too.
Mack,
Welcome. Thank you for visiting my blog.
A certain amount of provocation is necessary in the blogiverse. Would you have commented if I had a different title?
Similarly, I didn’t flesh out my thoughts much, here. But if you listen to his speech or read the excerpts I thought he made the point a lot better than I did.
The main point is this: Christianity is a form of alienation. We become ‘aliens and strangers’ in this world. This means that MLK should be seen primarily as he saw himself…a citizen of another kingdom. He was a citizen of the city of God, and only incidentally a citizen of the u.s.america.
There is an arc in his thinking, however. This speech comes later in his public ministry when he’s willing to identify less and less with the ideals of global capitalism and liberal democracy.
While the Apostle Paul used his Roman citizenship to further the kingdom of God, I don’t think anyone would argue that Paul was a hero of the Roman empire. He was, above all, an apostle of Jesus Christ.
King’s project was a critique of the u.s., but gradually became something much stronger…something more akin to a prophetic denouncing of the powers and principalities at work in the u.s.
“How can you expect anyone to take you seriously with categories as broad and undefined as “the corporations?””
We take the Supreme Court seriously when they give unprecedented rights to “the corporations”, why not take me seriously?
Mostly this was a reference to the impersonal forces of global capitalism. I don’t think this is too misleading a synecdoche. By “the corporations” I’m not referring to WorldVision or Partners in Health, if that’s what you’re afraid of.
“You speak of King as if he is exclusively Church property – and yet he was so effective because his ministry reached out from the church and pulpit to the streets of Washington and Birmingham and touched the soul of an entire nation. Seriously, other than your own theological biases, why can’t be be an American hero who was a Christian prophet?”
This is exactly where I disagree. You say his ministry was effective…why? Because blacks can drink from the same water fountain? That’s wonderful. But you don’t praise your 30-year old child for brushing his teeth.
The narrative that we’re fed in the u.s. uses King as some sort of happy, black Santa. As long as he’s here to support our rights as individuals to choose whatever we want, then he supports the liberal democratic project and is ‘celebrated’. The fact that he called us to public goods that were pricklier and even at odds with the powers of western-style democracy and capitalism, this isn’t touched.
His sincere religious devotion, his call for economic justice and his condemnation of violence are almost entirely ignored because they don’t fit the narrative. Like King himself notices, his non-violence is only a good thing when he preaches to the blacks in the ghetto. When he starts preaching it to the Defense Dept he’s out of line. There’s something wrong with this.
You can’t understand King without listening to him. And its his own words that demonstrate where his allegiance lies. If you read my previous comments I think they already said what I can on the subject.
“And I can’t help but notice that most of the sophisticated critics of liberal democracies…still live in them. Must be nice to have your cake and eat it too.”
It is nice. It’s nice to be richer than nearly anyone in the world. It’s nice to have this computer that I’m typing on. It’s nice that my kids have full bellies and gymnastics class. It’s nice that I can go and see a movie. It’s nice that I have nearly unlimited choices in how I want to live my life…and what I consume.
It’s nice. But it’s deadly. Because enthroned at the center of liberal democracy is personal choice. And that way lies nihilism.
It’s deadly because the habits that it forms in me and my church are to serve self above all.
It’s deadly because we let our nation and our corporations do our sinning for us while we reap the benefits.
It’s deadly because it’s harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
So, yes. It is nice. But the kingdom of God isn’t nice, and I recognize where my failure to live as a citizen of that kingdom.
But Dr. King was not, contrary to the myth I’m trying to deconstruct, nice. He was a pain in the u.s.american ass. It is not nice that he was assassinated. It is not nice that we ignore him.
So I would place King in your category of ’sophisticated critics of liberal democracies’, but I would say he’s a much better citizen of the kingdom of God than I am.
Thanks for your thoughts!
I think you’ve taken the “resident” out of “resident aliens.” There is more tension in Christian existence than you recognize; as Augustine said, our primary citizenship is in the City of God, but, as your laundry-list of benefits indicates, we make use of the peace of the earthly city, too. King was not *only* a member of God’s Kingdom. If he cared so little for the world that you loathe, it is doubtful he would have taken his prophetic protestations to the streets.
“This is exactly where I disagree. You say his ministry was effective…why? Because blacks can drink from the same water fountain? That’s wonderful. But you don’t praise your 30-year old child for brushing his teeth.
The narrative that we’re fed in the u.s. uses King as some sort of happy, black Santa. As long as he’s here to support our rights as individuals to choose whatever we want, then he supports the liberal democratic project and is ‘celebrated’. The fact that he called us to public goods that were pricklier and even at odds with the powers of western-style democracy and capitalism, this isn’t touched.”
If King was so at odds with “western-style democracy” – whatever that is – why did he and his followers work so tirelessly to get the vote (which is denigrated by so many ‘radical’ Christians nowadays)?
And of course we are going to remember him for “having a dream” rather than condemning our entire system – surely you aren’t as shocked about this as you seem to be.
It seems to me that he was both a friend and enemy of liberal democracy. The black church tradition in which he was nurtured is very much “liberal” theology insofar as it is liberation-oriented and people-oriented. He was a critic of liberal democracy, at least in part, because it wasn’t living up to its own (basic) purported program: and one could argue that he wasn’t so much working for broad, sweeping changes in the system, as for his people to be fully included in the system. Certainly his project flowed from his roots as black Baptist preacher – see Lischer’s ‘The Preacher King’ for more – but he’s not in the same mold as the Hauerwas/Radical Orthodoxy crowd you appear so fond of. I think you’re conflating their projects in a manner that doesn’t really work.
Nevertheless, thank you for listening to my little musings. Peace.
Oh, and you do praise your 2-year old child for brushing his teeth. I don’t understand the ‘30-year old’ analogy because all of this was new for America during his time. To suggest that America did not make some read and important strides under King’s leadership is both insulting and insane. Certainly we have a ways to go – but remember, there was a time when drinking from the same waterfountain was a real concern for many, rather than a throwaway line on a blog. My father was raised in Greensboro, NC, where some of the first sit-ins took place. Back then, getting a hamburger at Woolworth’s was an achievement. Sad, but true – and not to be marginalized.
@ pastormack: i think the tension is in calling it christian. it seems your aggressive views are clouding your own judgement on the assessment of MLKJ. One, we tend to talk of people as if we know there souls, we don’t. so these are assumptions at best, and assumptions always hold some sort of truth and some sort of prefabricated reality. i think MLKJ, yes, being spurred on by his faith, did the next best thing. if my semantics offend you, then i am sorry. but i know what i mean. and yes his contributions to history and to the global landscape. i do agree with the possibility of it not being an either or. that is very postmodern of you. but maybe, the point is what he did and how what he did inspires us to do something that we feel moved to. i am all for looking towards inspirational figures, but if they are inspirational, then they should ‘inspire’ us on to do something. maybe thats what this could be about, not subjective aggressive worldviews on one figure you didn’t live in the same apartment with.
Eh? I mean really…eh? Whatever it was you were trying to communicate here, it was not clear.
Mack…we agree on something ;)
“I think youve taken the ‘resident’ out of ‘resident aliens.’”
Nope. I was quoting Peter’s epistle. Although one loose translation says ’strangers and temporary residents.’ Not much difference there.
“There is more tension in Christian existence than you recognize.” If by tension you mean that the struggle between two kingdoms, then I think I’m recognizing that tension just fine. If by tension you mean the type of Christian realism that thinks it’s sophisticated and open-minded enough not to take the gospel too seriously when it contrasts with western culture, then I accept.
“If he cared so little for the world that you loathe, it is doubtful he would have taken his prophetic protestations to the streets.”
You wrongly understand me if you think I loathe the world or think that King cared little for it. It is precisely this world that Christ died for. It is that love that compels us to speak the truth. I think you’re mistaking me (and Hauerwas and R.O.) for some straw man that wants to withdraw from the world into a holy huddle safe from the dangers of this world. Au contraire.
You’re being too kind to North Carolina. People of differing nationalities, skin colors and tribes have lived in self-giving love under the gospel since the beginning. Love demands that King and the rest of us work for this peace, to draw attention to the idea that God has torn down the wall of hostility (as Paul called it). Black people and white people were living together in peace at Koinonia Farm against enormous opposition before King marched.
You are right that his call was to a very public ministry. But his drive to hold the u.s. to its better promises was not because of their intrinsic worth but rather his apocalyptic vision (‘dream’). He saw democracy as being worth held accountable to the politics of heaven, not the pplitics of heaven being useful to the democratic project.
I’m not some anti-american. I talk about how to love this country appropriately in a previous post (look for the Obi-Wan Kenobi with an anarchy pin)
Peter’s epistle? The same one that says “Fear God, honor the emperor”?
I have sympathies with Niebuhr, but I’m not a strict Christian realist. That said, it is sad that “taking the gospel seriously” is assumed to be the property only of the non-violent part of the Christian tradition (which is a very small sliver). Furthermore, Christian realism was (and is) counter-cultural – remember, Niebuhr wrote all that stuff when much of the world was still enamored with the social gospel, and convinced that God’s Kingdom could come through better policy. Christian realism is still counter-cultural in insisting on the sinfulness and finitude of humans and all their projects…which, in the age where the liberal faith in progress is still alive and well (they just call it “change we can believe in”), falls on deaf ears to many American Christians.
The dividing wall that Jesus tore down was between Jews and Gentiles, not between all the aspects of fractured humanity. This was the Lord, after all, who declared the he came not to bring peace, but a sword.
I am all for speaking the truth in love. But the self-professed “prophetic” voices among radical American Christians seems much more involved with its own notion of truth than with love for the state. I’m not sure I love America. But I do know that many of those you cite – Hauerwas, Cavanaugh, and the like – have no love for any liberal democracy, much less America. They may love a Wendell Berry agrarian fantasty community, but not an actual state that I know of.
I don’t care about this, other than the fact that their distaste for America seems to make them blind to the conditions in other countries. This leads to profound moral confusion. America has its issues, but don’t conflate it with the Roman Empire, Nazi Germany, or, in Cavanaugh’s case, Pinochet’s Chile.
Anarchy as an answer? I was going to go to a meeting about that once, but nobody showed up.