Religion Dispatches
10 Questions for Gary Selby on Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in America’s Struggle for Civil Rights (Baylor University Press, 2008) What inspired you to write Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom? What sparked your interest? Like so many things, my fascination with King grew out of a combination of factors. I grew up a beneficiary of what one person called “white affirmative action”; yet, f…
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…in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified in advance.” For King, the challenges of a dawning age required a recognition of a shrinking world—that globalization had produced what he called a geographical togetherness, and that this togetherness very much needed a spiritual grounding (where our moral and spiritual genius would make possible a beloved community). He insisted that this new age required of us a commitment to excellence…
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Mike Huckabee has joined the ranks of those invoking Martin Luther King Jr. to legitimate civil disobedience in response to the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same sex marriage. As the former Arkansas governor declared Sunday morning on ABC’s “This Week,” “I don’t think a lot of pastors and Christian schools are going to have a choice. They either are going to follow God, their conscience and what they truly believe is what the scripture tea…
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…g post decrying the poor journalism of the local television news crew (shocking), especially its narrative linking of recent protests to the CHI changes, pointing out that the revision process “began in 2007 and copies were printed months ago.” True enough. Those of us who watch closely have seen the changes coming. And of course the Church rejects the idea that non-Mormon activism drives Mormon doctrinal change. But I suspect that the Church news…
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…former AFA employees who spoke with RD said they were happier no longer working there. Martin has started a blog, where he hopes to spark conversation among Christians about how their message is being “presented, perceived, and received.” “I’d much rather be working in the secular world than for a ministry,” said Swindle. “The secular world is nicer.” *The word “first” has been removed from this sentence to avoid any confusion. While this was th…
Read More…“God’s law” over “man’s law” to the American revolution and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. According to one student, in the Foundations course both Staver and Lindevaldsen “espoused the opinion that in situations where God’s law is in direct contradiction to man’s law, we have an obligation to disobey it.” Deborah Cantrell, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law, and an expert in both legal ethics and fam…
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…monished us?” Bayard Rustin’s pivotal role as advisor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and as organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech) should have assured his place in American social and political history. But Rustin has long been denied his proper place—largely because he was an openly gay man. A Single Human Family In this centennial of his birth, Rustin’s work is taking on a…
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…hes thanks to All Labor Has Dignity, a new collection of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches to labor audiences edited by Michael K. Honey, a former organizer turned historian, whose 2007 book Going Down Jericho Road chronicled King’s final campaign: the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike in 1968. As the director of Interfaith Worker Justice, I was familiar with Dr. King’s support for labor. I’d read his final speech in Memphis supporting the sa…
Read More…ke the claim that the powerless are divisive and untimely. In 1958, Martin Luther King and 2,000 other Baptist ministers were expelled from the National Baptist Convention because of their commitment to civil rights. Moreover, of the nearly 500 black churches in Birmingham in 1963, only nine participated in the Civil Rights Movement. Nine. The “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was partly written in response to local clergymen who found King’s presen…
Read More…And the scriptures that have been written are the scriptures that I go by. KING: Nothing is being written today? BOTSFORD: Absolutely not. KING: Done. As a pastor in the United Church of Christ, I believe that God is still speaking—that means that God does speak outside of the written text and that God is capable of doing a new thing (Isaiah 43:19) because God is still alive and moving in the world—and yes, God can even change his (or her) mind fr…
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