The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and days leading up to it force me into reflection. I often wonder how it was possible that an alarming number of Christians outright opposed Martin Luther King Jr. or failed to stand in solidarity with him during his lifetime. A large part of it was old, deep-seated, prejudices against African-Americans, Native Americans, and other brown-skinned brothers and sisters.
Today, most of us find the racist arguments used by slaveholders and by those who opposed King despicably false. Yet back then, many white Christians, especially in the South, lived according to these narratives about the institution of slavery and white supremacy. Those who dared to oppose their local church community, to go against the spoken and unspoken rules of Southern society, by siding with King were often branded radicals or Communists. Some were physically harassed.
Funny how yesterday's Christian radical can become today's Christian saint.
In reflecting on King's legacy, I wonder if there are similar issues in our day, where the seeming majority consensus among Christians is plain wrong. In those cases, would I be willing to go against that Christian consensus and risk my reputation by siding with those in the minority? Would I be willing to be called a radical? I'd like to think so.
I am just one voice in the church, but there are plenty of others taking the time to focus on Martin Luther King Jr. and how his legacy has inspired their lives as Christians.
Helen Lee, author and speaker, shares the significance King's impact holds for immigrant families in particular:
For a number of years now, on the third Monday of the first month of the year, our family follows a short ritual over breakfast. My husband fixes breakfast, and I sit down our three boys at the breakfast table, where we read Martin's Big Words together. And then we pull up a laptop and watch King's entire "I Have a Dream" speech together, and we talk about the significance that this historical figure has had not just for the entire country and world, but for our family in particular.
Had it not been for the work of Dr. King, and his influence in mobilizing the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, who knows how long it would have taken for the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 to pass, if ever. This was the act that opened the doors of immigration to Asians, Latin Americans, and Africans, who had largely been legally excluded from doing so. This was the act that allowed my parents to come to this country from South Korea, in search of a better life for themselves and their eventual children and grandchildren.
I want my kids to understand that the freedom and equality we have come to expect here in the U.S. are not to be taken lightly, but to be treasured given the sacrifices of so many who fought for these rights for us all, Dr. King chief among them. I want my kids to see with their own eyes that Christian role models come in all manner of racial and cultural backgrounds.
Despite the fact that we live in a country and society that legally guarantees equal liberties regardless of skin color, the reality is that race-related issues and conflicts still exist in the church and the world. I know my kids will have to be prepared to fight their own battles one day in the area of racial understanding and reconciliation, within and outside of the church.
Lisa Sharon Harper, Sojourners' senior director of mobilizing, pointed to the importance of King's own church tradition:
As evangelicals consider celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we must be mindful of the influence of Dr. King's preaching and teaching. The historic black church tradition was born in the context of the 19th-century evangelical church. The theology of historic black churches—Dr. King's tradition—is grounded in the evangelical theology.
Like Charles Finney and William Wilberforce, Dr. King believed in the transformative power of the cross to redeem the individual and society. That is why he worked for racial justice. The fruit of his life sprung from his faith—a deep Christian faith. We must not forget that.
Carl Ruby, founder of the upcoming site WelcomeSpringfield.org, looks to King as an example of Christian discipleship:
In 2011, I had a life-altering encounter with King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. When I read it at a civil rights museum in Birmingham, Alabama, I was shocked to discover that it was less a political manifesto than a plea to people of faith, a plea that too many in that day, especially evangelicals, and certainly fundamentalists, either ignored, or in the latter case, outright opposed.
Martin Luther King has helped me to embrace a full view of the gospel, realizing that the gospel is about personal saving faith in Christ, but it's also about doing all that I can to make this world more like heaven. Celebrating MLK Day reminds me to live as one of those who bravely stood with King, rather than those who were the focus of King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. That said, some of those named in King's letter, namely Edward Ramage and Earl Stallings, took brave stands for civil rights that eventually cost them their jobs. King is a vivid reminder that there is a cost to true discipleship.
Jesus himself told us to rejoice when people falsely accuse us and say all manner of evil against us because of our allegiance to Jesus and Kingdom centered justice. I celebrate King for his courage, his eloquence, and for his example of extreme sacrifice. King's example has led me to focus on immigration reform and upon services to immigrants. For me, that is the justice issue of my day and I think both King and Jesus would be right in the middle of it.
Matthew Soerens, who serves with World Relief advocacy and co-wrote the book Welcoming the Stranger, had this to say:
The command to love our neighbors is core to the Christian faith, and nearly every Christian is familiar with the Parable of the Good Samaritan. For most of my life, I aspired (imperfectly, to be sure) to apply that passage by being kind and compassionate to individuals, particularly those—like the traveler beat up on the side of the Road to Jericho—who are in need.
Dr. King's words in a speech at a New York City church in 1967 challenged me to acknowledge that loving my neighbors also requires me to engage structural barriers that limit their flourishing. He suggested that responding directly to human needs—while vital—ought to be "only an initial act." If we are to genuinely love our neighbors who time after time we find beaten up along the same Road to Jericho, "we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway."
That means that we should tutor kids and address failing public school systems. We should befriend newly arrived immigrants and speak out for immigration reform. We should come alongside moms struggling with unwanted pregnancies and address the systemic issues of poverty and access to health care that can make abortion seem like the best option. We should visit those in prison and challenge a system that disproportionately imprisons African American men. From Dr. King, I learned that loving my neighbor means asking, "What's wrong with this road?" and then using the influence God has entrusted to me to try to change it—even if that upsets some people who benefit from the status quo along the way.
What about you? How have you been influenced by Martin Luther King Jr.?
