The Thinking of
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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By John T. Crestwell, Jr. “Have we, in America, had a hero in our time—that is, since World War II? I can think of only one man with a serious claim, Martin Luther King. The theme was high, the occasion noble, the stage open to the world’s eye, the courage clear and against odds. And martyrdom came to purge all dross away.” The words of Robert Penn Warren remind us that Dr. King made more than a significant impact on our society. Where do we begin when we dissect the man trying to figure out what made him tick? What gave him courage? What made him have the audacity to believe his America could be saved? We could start with Dr. King’s family and say he represented the fifth generation of Baptist preachers, beginning with his great, great-grandfather, and that is what made him remarkable. We could say that since one of his grandparents was a founding member of the now 8-million-member National Baptist Convention, USA, he had a legacy to build on and was therefore destined for prominence. We could say that he was who he was because his father was a founding member of the Atlanta NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and therefore social justice was something he knew firsthand. We could say that he was an anomaly, a once in many lifetimes occurrence. How could a mere 26-year-old lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott and then eight years later, as a ripe 34-year-old, become a national figure after delivering his “I Have A Dream” speech? This has to be an anomaly! We could conclude that these few things made Martin Luther King the man he was. But we would not be accurate. The picture would not be complete. Indeed, King’s family helped him to mature early into a leader but the ideas that would give him the ability to use his skills—these would come during his post-graduate studies. I would like to posit three theories or beliefs we find over and over in King’s sermons and speeches with the hope of showing you some of the ideas that made Dr. King think the way he did. These philosophies were ingrained into King’s psyche at the now closed Crozer Theological Seminary (a liberal school in Chester, Pennsylvania—just outside Philadelphia); and also at Boston University where he worked on his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology. These three philosophies are Evangelical Liberalism, The Social Gospel, and Personalism. As you will see they are all interrelated… First, when we speak of Evangelical Liberalism, we are not talking about a fervent fundamentalist Christian theology. On the contrary, we are talking about a fervent and intensive examination of Christian scripture and the history of Christian thought. Much like the early Unitarian movement when our forebears changed from literalists to biblical critics, Dr. King learned the best of liberal critical examination of scripture. So, liberal in the religious sense means you question and examine your faith using modern and scientific scholarship. In their book, Search for the Beloved Community, authors Kenneth Smith and Ira Zepp, say King took a total of 34 quarter hours of the 110 required for graduation from just one seminary professor, Dr. George Davis. And through Davis, King would become an evangelical liberal in its truest sense. The essential teachings of Davis’s evangelical liberalism are that there is moral order in the universe—there are moral laws from God that govern our world, just as there are supposed physical laws in the universe… History “presses on toward the mark” so to speak. For Davis, humankind progresses toward an ultimate reality of peace—the Beloved Community. Davis concluded that at times it may appear that peace and truth are on a long and endless road; that the movement toward freedom for all humanity is a long arduous process, but for Davis this would not stop the inevitable—God’s Kingdom of love on earth. Here you can already hear the words of King when he said we could “speed up the day” to the time of the Beloved Community. King would also find scriptures to support his new belief… You would him say often: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Or King would quote a Unitarian, Theodore Parker, when he said, “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice!” In an early sermon in 1954, "Rediscovering Lost Values", we can clearly hear the teachings of Davis in King’s sermon: “All I'm trying to say is our world hinges on moral foundations God has made it so! God has made the universe to be based on a moral law... This universe hinges on moral foundations. There is something in this universe that justifies Carlyle in saying, ‘No lie can live forever.’ There is something in this universe that justifies William Cullen Bryant [a Unitarian] in saying, ‘Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.’ There is something in this universe that justifies James Russell Lowell [another Unitarian] in saying, ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne. With that scaffold sways the future. Behind the dim unknown stands God within the shadow keeping watch above his own.’ There is something in this universe that justifies the biblical writer in saying, ‘You shall reap what you sow.’” Davis’s evangelical liberalism rings true in King’s message. And as a sidebar, we can hear his Unitarian exposure in Boston springing forth here as well. Amen! J Second, Davis introduced King to the idea of the “Social Gospel” as coined by Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch grew up in a conservative German Lutheran family in the late 1800’s in Rochester, New York. After his theological training, he became the minister of the Second German Baptist Church in New York City, in what was known as the “Hell’s Kitchen” area of Manhattan because it was economically depressed. This experience showed Rauschenbusch that the Christian message must somehow be tied to society—it must fix societal ills. And he began to study the Bible and other resources to find justifications for his belief… For Rauschenbusch, everything in history is under God’s control and stands before the judgment of God. And the speaker of God—the prophet of God must bridge the gap between the will of God and the present order of things. In other words, she or he must be a voice crying in the wilderness for change. But crying about what? For Rauschenbusch, the cry is social. It’s cleaning up Hell’s Kitchen; it’s challenging the status quo, speaking truth to power for the oppressed and marginalized. Religion for him must bear fruit and that fruit must be seen socially, not just intellectually or theologically. His biblical basis for this was the stories of the prophets who were radical social critics. We can hear this resonate within King who believed the church must deal with housing, jobs, education, all facets of humankind, wherever there was a need for justice... In a sermon “Guidelines for a Constructive Church” (1966), King displayed his Social Gospel underpinnings. He said: “… When the church is true to its guidelines, it sets out to preach deliverance to them that are captive. This is the role of the church: to free people. You have groups sitting up there who would really like to do something about racial injustice, but they are afraid of social, political, and economic reprisals, so they end up silent. And the preacher never says anything to lift their souls and free them from that fear. And so they end up captive… Some people are suffering. Some people are hungry this morning. Some people are still living with segregation and discrimination this morning. I'm going to preach about it. I’m going to fight for them. I’ll die for them if necessary, because I got my guidelines clear. And the God that I serve and the God that called me to preach told me that every now and then I'll have to go to jail for them. Every now and then I’ll have to agonize and suffer for the freedom of his children. I even may have to die for it. But if that’s necessary, I'd rather follow the guidelines of God than to follow the guidelines of men. The church is called to set free those that are captive; to set free those that are victims of the slavery of segregation and discrimination, those who are caught up in the slavery of fear and prejudice… It seems that I can hear the God of the universe smiling and speaking to this church, saying, "You are a great church because I was hungry and ye fed me. You are a great church because I was naked and ye clothed me. You are a great church because I was sick and ye visited me. You are a great church because I was in prison and ye gave me consolation by visiting me… And this is the church that’s going to save this world.” Yes, you can very clearly hear, in King, the influence of Rauschenbusch’s Social Gospel philosophy. Lastly, there is the concept of Personalism; Dr. King learned about this mostly at Boston University while working on his Ph.D. from Professor Dr. Edgar Brightman. I like the idea of Personalism because it is close to our Unitarian heritage. This is not a shock considering again that King was in Boston for some time… Brightman wrote that “personalism is the belief that conscious personality is both the supreme value and the supreme reality in the universe.” All mortal beings then are copies of the Supreme Person in the Universe. In laypeople’s terms, if God has personality and worth, what God creates has personality and worth. If we are all manifestations of the Creator, the ultimate personality; if we are the Imago Dei, the Image of God, then all have God’s “personality”. Thus every human being has worth and dignity and it is inherent—you are born with it. |
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Copyright by Rev. John T. Crestwell. All rights reserved. Please contact him for permission to use. |
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