Search for "Martin Luther King Jr."

Only The Good Die Young: The Moral Universe of Game of Thrones

By George Schmidt

…for understanding the distinction between Tolkien’s Christian idealism and Martin’s Christian realism, the office of the Hand of the King is it. For it is here that we locate a Tolkienesque character with all the Manichean logic of an Aragorn forced, by his close friend the king, into an office that demands one to “play the game.” And as the tagline of the show says, “In the game of thrones, you win or you die.” For those who have seen the first s…

Rev. Bernice King Named New President of SCLC. Really?

By Jonathan L. Walton

Last week, Rev. Bernice King, youngest daughter of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King was named the 7th president of the organization her father founded in 1957, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Since Martin King’s assassination in 1968, the organization, largely built around King’s own personal charisma, ingenious imagination and unflappable moral courage, has struggled to find its way. Sure it has had its high moments. The commun…

Honoring and Renewing Dr. King’s Other, More Challenging, Dream — 55 Years Later

By Peter Laarman

Fifty-four years ago—on April 4, 1968—Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Exactly one year earlier—on April 4, 1967—Dr. King created a huge furor by coming out strongly against the Vietnam War before a packed crowd at New York’s Riverside Church. For the remaining months of his too-short life, King poured himself into an effort to forge an interracial movement among the poor, whose cause had been abandoned by a Lyndon Johnson det…

Obama, MLK, Not “Nice” Enough to Moderates?

By Paul Harvey

…fast. In reviewing Jonathan Rieder’s work Gospel of Freedom: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and the Struggle That Changed a Nation, the historian Barton Swaim gives King’s letter ritual praise but in the end finds it too full of self-pity (this from a man in solitary confinement at the time, and spied on relentlessly by the federal government), self-aggrandizement, and name-drops of liberal theologians. He concludes that the…

Right Wing Suspicion of Experts is Martin Luther’s Fault

By Jonathan Malesic

…have maintained, Kristof makes the quintessential Protestant move. Martin Luther published the bible in German in part to undermine papal authority. In his view, any believer should be able to interpret scripture, not just the clerical elite. Like many great innovations, Luther’s had severe unintended consequences. In their efforts to level the ability to interpret the bible, Protestant groups struggled to maintain doctrinal unity and so splinter…

Hey Hey, Ho Ho White Jesus Has to Go… But The Issue is More Complicated Than You Think

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…matter.” In his “Advice for Living” column for Ebony in 1957 Martin Luther King Jr. was asked, “Why did God make Jesus white, when the majority of peoples in the world are non-white?” To which King replied: “The color of Jesus’ skin is of little or no consequence…The significance of Jesus lay, not in His color, but in His unique God-consciousness and His willingness to surrender His will to God’s will.” Clearly Dr. King is trying to reassure reade…

What We Don’t Know About Black Social Gospel: A Long-Neglected Tradition Is Reclaimed

By Gary Dorrien

…haring important things with white progressive Christianity. Martin Luther King Jr. was steeped in it. His role models were second-generation black social gospel leaders, and their role models were black social gospel founders. The things that defined the black social gospel made it distinct, controversial, and historic. This tradition has an unsurpassed legacy in American religious history by virtue of its role in the civil rights movement. Yet i…

Cornel West: Do Not “Santa-Clausify” MLK Jr.

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…e of the few public intellectuals who consistently refers to Martin Luther King Jr. by remembering to include the suffix to his name. This appropriately distinguishes the man and his career from that of his father, another prominent preacher in Atlanta, and occupant of the selfsame pulpit that his son would make into a national icon. It was there, at that same pulpit (actually across the street from the original site of the Ebenezer Baptist Church…

This is Not a Religion Column: The Audacity of Compromise…

By Jeff Sharlet

…le of democracy, he spoke on the anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech — delivered 45 years ago on the steps of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial, an American temple of democracy. Much has been made of that coincidence, generally along the lines of “a dream fulfilled.” And yet, the subtle religiosity of Obama’s speech reveals a dream diluted, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of liberation for all repackaged…

Awake from Dreaming: Forecasts and Fears of the Next Four Years

By Edward J. Blum

A great deal can change in four years—just ask Martin Luther King Jr. The year of his brilliant and prophetic “I Have a Dream” speech, 1963, was itself a dream year for him. His speech captivated millions and paved the way for new Civil Rights legislation. Ralph Abernathy heralded it as “a prophecy of pure hope.” Joan Baez believed that “the breath of God thunder[ed] through him.” A teenaged Bill Clinton wept in his Southern living room. Time mag…