op‑ed contributor the politically progressive … · 4/3/2018 · op‑ed contributor ... yet the...

4/4/2018 Opinion | The Politically Progressive Faith of Martin Luther King - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/opinion/the-politically-progressive-faith-of-martin-luther-king.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-contributors

OP‑ED CONTRIBUTOR

Martin Luther King Jr. at the pulpit in 1966 in Eutaw, Ala. while on the People to People speaking tour.

Bob Fitch, via Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries

By Gregory E. Sterling

Dr. Sterling is dean of Yale Divinity School.

April 3, 2018

My brother and I shared a bedroom during our youth, and our mornings

typically began with my mother’s voice signaling the start of a new day. Except

for one morning in April 1968, when she sat at the edge of my bed and gently

shook me out of my slumber.

“I have some really bad news,” she whispered. “Martin Luther King Jr. has

been murdered.”

The jarring word of Dr. King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, is one of those

rare life‑changing moments that is chiseled in stone for millions of Americans.

Yet the memory I have of this great man diverges from how Dr. King is often

The Politically Progressive Faithof Martin Luther King



presented today. Most Americans typically think of words such as “civil rights,”

“justice,” “freedom” and “love” — all accurate, but incomplete.

The title “reverend” — and Dr. King’s prominent vocation as a Baptist preacher

— is too often assigned as a footnote of history rather than a preamble to all

that he was and is. As the nation prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of Dr.

King’s assassination that day in Memphis, it is my hope that we can recognize

and celebrate the religious underpinnings of his work. To do so, it’s imperative

that Christians, in particular, divorce themselves from party purity and find

new ways to bring Dr. King’s moral vision and his eloquent intonations of faith

to bear on current issues.

The civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s was derived from religion, after

all. Dr. King invoked Scripture, God and divine power to make theological

arguments for equality and freedom. So many of his words reverberate today

and are as relevant now as at the height of the civil rights movement. In Dr.

King’s 1963 book, “Strength to Love

(http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/strength‑love#57),” which

is a collection of his sermons and thinking on racial segregation, the reverend’s

insights and wisdom delivered from America’s pulpits can be both prescient

and haunting.

In a chapter titled “Loving Your Enemy,” he wrote: “Darkness cannot drive out

darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do

that.”

In a sermon

(http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_loving_your_enemies.1.h

delivered years earlier from the pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in

Montgomery, Ala., on Nov. 17, 1957, during the frostiest days of the Cold War, Dr.

King noted that communism was succeeding “due to the failure of democracy

to live up to the noble ideals and principles inherent in its system.”

Today, many heads would nod at the notion even now, that our democracy is

failing too many people. The unemployment rate among blacks, though

improved at about 7 percent, (https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000006)

is significantly higher than the national rate of about 4 percent

(https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000). Repeated and unjustifiable

police shootings in recent years — many recorded by bystanders — only

confirm what minority communities have witnessed and experienced for a

century and a half. Any sober analysis of economic opportunity and race will

conclude that racial justice and economic justice are inextricably linked,

something Dr. King realized early on and preached to all who would listen. And

it was because of this that he was in Memphis that day — fighting for fair

wages for sanitation workers, most of whom were black.

However, the beauty and the power of the civil rights movement are that it

truly was a rainbow coalition, bringing together people of different

backgrounds, colors and creeds. Christians from across denominational lines



and those belonging to no denomination breached the lines of segregation as

one. Jews were centrally involved and on the front lines, from Selma to

Montgomery and beyond. Churches were often the staging grounds for some of

the most important civil rights engagements of this era. Progressive politics

was informed and elevated by America’s faith communities, not distanced from

them, as is now the case.

The modern civil rights movement, and with it the more recent Black Lives

Matters coalition, is more secular. Religion and the inherent power of faith

communities are instead being perverted, used as a cudgel against the

disenfranchised, whether immigrants, the L.G.B.T.Q. community, or other

underrepresented groups. This is not our historical norm. In Washington, the

social safety nets that were woven during the civil rights era are being

devoured by the moths of the Religious Right. Christians who stand at the altar

of political power would be well served to read through the sermons of Dr. King

and find the echoes of Jesus Christ in his words. Dr. King’s repeated

exhortation to love your enemies — incidentally the thrust of that 1957 sermon

— might seem Pollyannaish and quaint, but it is very much a core value of

Christianity.

This is not a time for progressive Christians — whether liberal or conservative

in theology — to bow out. Instead, the proper celebration of Dr. King’s legacy

and all he stood for would be to see our nation’s churches, synagogues,

mosques and temples unite behind a common mission: to protect the innocent,

to lift the needy, to love the immigrant and to feed the poor. I exhort fellow

Christians, in particular, not to unite behind a party, but instead to unite behind

Scripture and the Lord who speaks through it.

Dr. King understood how religion and the voice of Jesus Christ could power his

cause. He preached it. He lived it. He gave his life for it. In honor of this great

man, and as I celebrate his life and accomplishments, I will pray that his

ultimate vision, his dream, will become a reality for all.

Gregory E. Sterling is dean and the Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale DivinitySchool.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook

(https://www.facebook.com/nytopinion) and Twitter (@NYTopinion)

(http://twitter.com/NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter

(http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/opiniontoday/).

(https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?app_id=9869919170&link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F04%2F03%2Fopolitically‑progressive‑faith‑of‑martin‑luther‑king.html&smid=fb‑share&name=The%20Politically%20Progressive%20Faith%20of%20Martin%20Luther%20King

(https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2018%2F04%2F03%2Fopinion%2Fthe‑politically‑progressive‑faith‑of‑martin‑luther‑king.html&text=The%20Politically%20Progressive%20Faith%20of%20Martin%20Luther%20Ki

(mailto:?



(/)Go to Home Page » (/)

NEWS

OPINION

ARTS

LIVING

LISTINGS & MORE

© 2018 The New York Times Company (https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/rights/copyright/copyright‑notice.html)

Contact Us (https://myaccount.nytimes.com/membercenter/feedback.html) Work with us (http://www.nytco.com/careers)

Advertise (http://nytmediakit.com/) Your Ad Choices (https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/rights/privacy/policy/privacy‑policy.html#pp)

Privacy (https://www.nytimes.com/privacy) Terms of Service (https://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/agree.html)

Terms of Sale (https://www.nytimes.com/content/help/rights/sale/terms‑of‑sale.html) Site Map (http://spiderbites.nytimes.com)

Help (https://mobile.nytimes.com/help) Subscriptions (https://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp5558.html?campaignId=37WXW)

subject=NYTimes.com%3A%20The%20Politically%20Progressive%20Faith%20of%20Martin%politically‑progressive‑faith‑of‑martin‑luther‑king.html)

Related Coverage

Opinion

How Memphis Gave Up on Dr. King’s Dream

March 30, 2018

(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/30/opinion/sunday/martin-luther-king-memphis.html)

Opinion

We Forgot What Dr. King Believed In

March 31, 2018

(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/opinion/sunday/martin-luther-king-faith.html)

VIDEO

How Dr. King Changed a Sanitation Worker’s

Life

April 2, 2018

(https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000005803216/how-dr-king-changed-sanitation-workers-life.html)

The Day King Was Shot: 26 Times Articles

That Told the Story

April 3, 2018

(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/us/martin-luther-king-assassination-archives.html)

40

Wendi C. Thomas

Michael Eric Dyson

op‑ed contributor the politically progressive … · 4/3/2018 · op‑ed contributor ... yet the...

Documents