“THE RELIGION OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.”
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday,
All
Many of you are aware that I give a periodic sermon series on “the Religion of….” well known people, and try to get some insight into how their religion influenced their life. I have done this with about a dozen people so far – from Benjamin Franklin to Susan B. Anthony. Two years ago, I even spoke on “The Religion of Santa Claus.” I have only a few regrets abot that one!
In most cases, these people were known for specific contributions they made to the world, and religion was an influence, either major or minor, on their worldview. In the case of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., religion was at the very center of his life.
In other sermons I gave brief narratives of the highlights of their lives. With King, such highlights are probably already well known. In this case, I don’t need to talk much about his work and accomplishments, just some key words that trigger reminders of what you already know:
He was the son of a Baptist preacher in Atlanta, he received a Ph.D. in religion before beginning his own ministry in Atlanta, he led the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama begun by Rosa Parks, led major marches in Selma and Birmingham, inspired millions with his oratory, was jailed and beaten, his home was bombed, he received daily death threats, he practiced nonviolence, received Nobel Peace Prize, he was assassinated, but he left us the gift of a dream. He became the conscience of a guilty nation.
The highlights of his life are, or should be, familiar to all of us. In his case, I don’t need to detail the facts of his life, and I can devote my time more to the development of his religious views.
When Martin
Luther King’s religion is considered, it is often portrayed in the general
context of African American identity with the Exodus story. The Exodus story was the narrative that most
informed the religious sentiment of black
This was a story that sustained African American slaves for many generations. And even when slavery was legally abolished, there remained vast echoes of oppression, tyranny, and cruelty. The story was still needed, 100 years later, especially in the Southern states, where the grand-children of slaves were coerced by segregation to a second class citizenship and a third class existence, were denied liberties, exploited, oppressed, and lynched.
It is generally believed that this Exodus religious metaphor that sustained African Americans for so long is the core of the religion that motivated Martin Luther King, too. There is a lot of truth to that. King’s views were entirely consistent with this Exodus paradigm, and he used the language of Exodus often when he preached. But it is only part of the story. There were lots of paths that led King to his religious vision, including some of bitter personal experience, but also paths of academic scholarship. I intend to look at some of those paths.
As I will say more about later, Martin Luther King was extraordinary among modern leaders because of the extent of his formal education, especially in the subject of religion. In his religious studies, he found his thought and convictions fitting neatly into a long-standing tradition within Christianity. It is called the “Social Gospel.”
What is the “Social Gospel?” There are some who look at scripture and interpret it as a guidebook about theological belief. What does it tell us about the nature of the Godhead? What personal habits does it forbid or permit? What must I believe to be saved?
But there are others who look at scripture and see in it a guideline for how we can treat others fairly and with justice, how to show compassion and caring. That love and compassion and justice are far more important to the message of Jesus than theological belief. This is the “Social Gospel.”
The first voice of the Christian Social Gospel, its advocates would argue, was Jesus himself. The Gospel of Luke speaks of Jesus’ call to ministry, that he spent many days and nights in the wilderness contemplating his future, and having made up his mind, returns to the city and goes straight to the synagogue. He picks up the scriptures and before the congregation reads a passage from the book of Isaiah. So here are the first words spoken by Jesus as be began his ministry, quoting Isaiah:
The Spirit
of the Lord is upon me,
because he
has anointed me to preach
good news to
the poor.
He has set
before me to proclaim
release of
the captives,
and
recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at
liberty
those who
are oppressed,
to proclaim
the acceptable
word of the
Lord.
Jesus’ ministry, these words suggest, was not about complicated metaphysical concepts of how to worship God, or about what creeds to believe or what heresies to avoid. The Social Gospel says Jesus meant what he said – his ministry was about comfort and compassion for those who are poor, or sick, and seeking freedom for the captive and the oppressed.
Martin Luther King’s religion was solidly in the social gospel tradition. He brought to that tradition, though, the unique circumstances of African Americans, especially in the South, who were afflicted with by layers of legal and cultural oppression.
King’s religious development began early, of course, in a childhood spent at the parsonage across from his father’s and his grandfather’s church. Church life came naturally to him, for it was the most important part of his growing up world.
Some years later, he reported that he had a happy childhood, because it was surrounded by a loving family. That background, he said, led him to become optimistic about human nature. When he was 20 years old, and a student in seminary, he was asked to write a paper on his “Autobiography of Religious Development.” The opening paragraphs spoke of his early childhood about the loving and caring family he was raised in. Then he tied those memories to his religious development:
“It is quite easy for me to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where love was central and where lovely relationships were ever present. It is quite easy for me to think of the universe as basically friendly, mainly because of my uplifting hereditary and environmental circumstances. It is quite easy for me to lean more toward optimism than pessimism about human nature mainly because of my childhood experiences.”
It might be easy to imagine that Martin Luther King came to his views very naturally, with a smooth transition from his forefathers. It didn’t happen that way. King went through substantial intellectual struggles, and doubts, and came out on the other end with a theology that was quite different from his father’s, but a religious passion of the same pattern.
In high school and much of college, he had profound doubts about the religious views he was taught, especially about interpreting the Bible literally. Here is how he remembered that part of his religious development:
“The lessons which I was taught in Sunday School were quite in the fundamentalist line. None of my teachers ever doubted the infallibility of the Scriptures. Most of them were unlettered and had never heard of Biblical criticism. Naturally I accepted the teachings as they were being given to me. I never felt any need to doubt them, at least at that time I didn’t. I guess I accepted Biblical studies uncritically until I was about twelve years old.
But this uncritical attitude could not last long, for it was contrary to the very nature of my being. I had always been the questioning and precocious type. At the age of 13 I shocked my Sunday School class by denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus. From the age of thirteen on doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly. At the age of fifteen I entered college and more and more I could see a gap between what I had learned in Sunday School and what I was learning in college. This conflict continued until I studied a course in Bible in which I came to see that behind the legends and myths of the Book were many profound truths which one could not escape.”
He entered
King was torn in two directions – on one hand he was attracted to an intellectual understanding of religion that denied many of the basic teachings he was taught, but on the other hand he couldn’t deny his deep respect for the values and ideals expressed by his father and others he’d known growing up. He couldn’t shake off the African American church tradition that was part of his very identity.
In whatever issues he had with the teachings of his childhood Sunday School, he never seemed to deny his own identity as a Christian. But that, too, was problematic, because he was taught that you became a Christian through a dramatic conversion experience in your life, and that never happened. King put it this way:
“Conversion for me was never an abrupt something. I have never experienced the so-called ‘crisis moment.’ Religion has just been something that I grew up in. Conversion for me has been the gradual intaking of the noble (ideals) set forth in my family and my environment, and I must admit that this intaking has been largely unconscious.”
By the time he
finished college, he decided the best way to reconcile these two
life-directions was in seminary, which is where he went. He attended Crozer Theological Seminary in
After seminary,
King continued the academic route in his life, and enrolled in the doctoral
program for religion at
It was there that King wrestled academically as well as existentially with his religious identity. There are times when King described his theology as “eclectic.” In the end, he blended the two paths that seemed to be tugging at him.
On one hand, he already rejected the more conservative theology of his father’s preaching, and the general biblical literalism expressed commonly in many African American Baptist churches. One of the reasons he so strongly resisted the ministry is that even though he deeply respected his father and his work, Martin knew he didn’t share his father’s theological beliefs. His formal education in seminary and his doctoral studies gave him an appreciation and affirmation of the more liberal and intellectual approach to Christianity.
On the other hand, Martin admired the passion he experienced in the black churches of the South. He wanted to affirm the passionate dimension of religion, even if he was suspicious of emotionalism that can smother reason, just as he was suspicious of the rationalism that can smother passion. So his eclecticism consisted, in part, by trying to synthesize the intellectual theologies of the academy with the passionate religion of his African American Christian roots.
He found his
synthesis through his theological studies at
By the mid-twentieth century, theological scholarship was roughly divided into two schools of thought, and given the labels “liberal” and “orthodox.” Unlike a lot of academic jargon, in this case those labels mean almost precisely what you think they mean: “liberal” and “orthodox.”
King had long rejected what was considered “orthodox” theology – that the Bible was to be read literally, that the purpose of Christianity was belief in Jesus as personal savior, and that everyone is born a sinner until they undergo a personal conversion experience and give their life to God, and so forth. Though his views would evolve different ways, he never returned to orthodoxy.
King was initially attracted to the voices of liberal theology that were more inclined to see the Bible as inspirational literature, and Christianity as a religion that shows love by serving others. And though King never felt drawn to orthodoxy, his studies raised questions about the prevailing views of liberal theology. In particular, he felt that liberal theology did not take seriously enough the human capacity for evil, for sin. Growing up in a racist culture, where hate rules, made it difficult to overlook or underplay the reality of sin.
At about this time, a new school of thought arose to challenge both views. It eventually took the label of “neo-orthodoxy,” and took some ideas from liberalism and some from orthodoxy, and created a new and blended view. One leading voice of neo-orthodoxy was Reinhold Niebuhr, and he became very much the focus of King’s graduate study. He was also a fresh voice heard in the tradition of the Social Gospel. With the orthodox, Niebuhr saw human nature as flawed. Writing in the historical shadow of the Nazi holocaust, Niebuhr argued that the role of the church is to identify human evil and confront it. But with the liberals, Niebuhr saw Christianity as primarily an ethical religion instead of a religion focused on creeds and biblical exegesis.
King was
impressed by the writings of neo-orthodox theology, but he remained attached to
the liberal views, too. His doctoral
dissertation was a critique of liberal theology’s view of God, from a
neo-orthodox perspective. Liberal
theology, he said, made God too impersonal, too distant. In this friendly critique of liberal
theology, King seemed to long for the personal and passionate God he was
introduced to at
And like so many other issues of life, Martin Luther King wanted to blend, to integrate, if you will, the best parts of competing ideas. King scholar Clyborne Carson, who has written about King’s theological views, said it this way:
“Overall, King’s theological development in seminary and graduate school reflected his lifelong tendency to incorporate the best elements of each alternative. When choosing between capitalism and communism or between power politics and pacifism, King sought to synthesize alternative orientations. [King wrote]: ‘An adequate understanding of (human nature) is found neither in the thesis of liberalism nor in the antithesis of neo-orthodoxy, but in a synthesis which reconciles the truth of both.’”
Martin Luther
King entered the doctoral program at
Having, in his mind, successfully blended the intellectual religion of the academy with the passionate religion of his roots, he was ready to lead a ministry in the long-standing tradition of the “Social Gospel.”
In many ways,
his father and grandfather fit well in that tradition. King would become the third generation
minister of
Both his father
and his grandfather were active in the “Social Gospel” movement, believing that
the church has an obligation to address the issues of society, especially
issues concerning racial injustice. In
1906, Martin’s grandfather Williams was among the founders of the Georgia Equal
Rights League, and the next year he helped form an
Martin’s father, King, Sr., also mixed his ministry with social activism. Especially during the Depression years, he saw the church’s mission to help care for those deeply disadvantaged. He also lead movements for Black voter registration, for equal pay for black school teachers, who were paid less than white teachers, and other issues that arose regularly.
King was well prepared to fill the historic role he did fill in preaching the social gospel, in teaching the nation about justice, in inspiring millions to a higher consciousness and a better conscience.
I don’t want to make too much of this parallel, but as he fought for integration and a blending equality of the races, I can’t help but also think of his inner struggle to integrate and blend the religious traditions that seemed so diverse: the academic ideals with the church in the city streets He talked about affirming the best from each religious tradition, and it is clear he had confidence in finding the best in each.
His admiration for Mahatma Gandhi, and his commitment to nonviolent resistance, was a reflection in his belief that countering hate with love can change the one who hates. Or, in the words of his Ware Lecture to the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1966, he could say to his oppressors:
“One day. . . we will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to the heart and conscience (of our most violent opponents) and we will win (them) in the process and our victory will be a double victory.”
There is still much work to do in this country to create true justice in race relations. But there is no question that we have come as far as we have today largely through the work and vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. And it is also clear that King’s vision was born of a religion inspired by Jesus’ social gospel.
There is another text that is often cited in that tradition. Perhaps the earliest preacher of the Social Gospel was the Old Testament Prophet Micah, who tells of a man who pleads to ask how he should honor and worship God. Shall he offer burnt offerings, or young calves? he asks. Shall he give the Lord thousands of rams, or maybe even his first-born son?
In answer he is he is told simply that all the Lord requires of him is this:
To “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”
In these words I think also offer a succinct and accurate summary of the religion of Martin Luther King: to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with his God.
from “Witness to Truth”
A Eulogy by Martin Luther King, Jr.
In Memory of the Rev. James Reeb
(In the 1965 civil rights march from
“James Reeb was
murdered by the indifference of every minister of the gospel who has remained
silent behind the safe security of stained windows. He was murdered by the irrelevancy of a
church that will stand amid social evil and serve as a taillight rather than a
headlight, an echo rather than a voice.
He was murdered by the irresponsibility of every politician who has
moved down the path of demagoguery, who has fed his constituents the stale
bread of hatred and demagoguery and the spoiled meat of racism. He was murdered by the brutality of every
sheriff and law enforcement agent who practices lawlessness in the name of
law. He was murdered by the timidity of
a federal government that can spend millions of dollars a day to keep troops in
“So in his death, James Reeb says something to each of us, black and white alike – says that we must substitute courage for caution, says to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murder. His dath says to us that we must work passionately, unrelentingly, to make the American dream a reality, so he did not die in vain.”
from Martin Luther King’s WARE LECTURE
Given before the General Assembly
of the Unitarian Univesalist Association
(I will read just a
bit of his introductory remarks, but the heart of the reading will come
after)
“There are those wonderful moments in life when you speak before a group that is so near and dear to you that you don’t feel like you have to engage in the art of persuasion. You don’t feel like you are in the midst of strangers. You know that you are with friends. I can assure you that I feel that way tonight.”
(He then mentioned his
various encounters with Unitarians over the years, including attending the
“The Greek language has three words for love – one is eros, another word is filio, and another word is agape. I’m thinking not of eros, or of friendship as expressed in filio, but rather of agape, which is understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all (people), an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.
“When one rises
to love on this level, he loves a person who does the evil deed while hating
the deed. I believe that in our best
moments of this struggle we have tried to adhere to this. In some strange way we have been able to stand
up in the face of our most violent opponents and say, in substance, we will
match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure
suffering. We will meet your physical
force with our soul force. Do to us what
you will and we will still love you. We
cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because non-cooperation
with evil is as much a moral obligation as cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we will still love
you. Threaten our children, bomb our homes,
send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at
“But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. And one day, we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory. This is our message in the non-violent movement when we are true to it. I think it is a powerful method and I still believe in it. I know that it will lead us to that new day. Not a day when we will seek to rise from a position of disadvantage to one of advantage, thereby subverting justice. Not a day when we will substitute one tyranny for another. We know that a doctrine of black supremacy is as evil as a doctrine of white supremacy. We know that God is not interested merely in the freedom of black men and brown men and yellow men; but God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race. He is interested in the creation of a society where all will live together as brothers and sisters, and everyone will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. With the non-violent method guiding us, we can go on into that brighter day when justice will come.”