MLK Service 2016
Reading #1 – Frank Bolden
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But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.
In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: “Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”
Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”‘ But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.
Perhaps I have once again been too optimistic. Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom. They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. Yes, they have gone to jail with us. Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are at present misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with America’s destiny. Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here. For more than two centuries our forebears labored in this country without wages; they made cotton king; they built the homes of their masters while suffering gross injustice and shameful humiliation -and yet out of a bottomless vitality they continued to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.
Reading #2 – Barry Pilgrim
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First, they must make it palpably clear that segregation is morally wrong and sinful, and that is stands against all of the noble precepts of our Judeo-Christian tradition. There are at least two reasons why Christianity and Judaism must affirm the immorality of segregation. The first has to do with the sacredness of human personality. Deeply rooted in our religious heritage is the conviction that every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Our Judeo-Christian tradition refers to this inherent dignity of man in the Biblical term the image of God. The innate worth referred to in the phrase the image of God is universally shared in equal portions by all men. There is no graded scale of essential worth; there is no divine right of one race which differs from the divine right of another. Every human being has etched in his personality the indelible stamp of the Creator. Every man must be respected because God loves him. The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of his intellect, his racial origin, or his social position. Human worth lies in relatedness to God. An individual has value because he has value to God. Whenever this is recognized, “whiteness” and “blackness” pass away as determinants in a relationship and “son” and “brother” are substituted.
Segregation stand diametrically opposed to the principle of the sacredness of human personality. It debases personality, Immanuel Kant said in one formulation of the Categorical Imperative that “all men must be treated as ends and never as mere means.” The tragedy of segregation is that it treats men as means rather than ends, and thereby reduces them to things rather than persons. To use the words of Martin Buber, segregation substitutes an “I – it” relationship for the “I – thou” relationship. The colloquialism of the southern landed gentry that referred to slaves and Negro labor as “hands” betrays the “thing” quality assigned to Negroes under the system. Herein lies the root of paternalism that persists even today. The traditional southerner is fond of “his Negro” as he is a pet or a finely tooled fire arm. “It” serves a purpose or gets a job done. The only concern is performance not well being.
But man is not a thing. He must be dealt with, not as an “animated tool,” but as a person sacred in himself. To do otherwise is to depersonalize the potential person and desecrate what he is. So long as the Negro or the member of any other oppressed group is treated as a means to an end; so long as he is seen as anything less than a person of sacred worth, the image of God is abused in him and consequently and proportionately lost by those who inflict the abuse.
A second reason why segregation is morally wrong is that it deprives man of that quality which makes him man, namely, freedom. The very character of the life of man demands freedom. In speaking of freedom at this point I am not referring to the freedom of a thing called the will. The very phrase, freedom of the will, abstracts freedom from the person to make it an object; and an object almost by definition is not free. But freedom cannot thus be abstracted from the person, who is always subject as well as object and who himself still does the abstracting. So I am speaking of the freedom of man, the whole man, and not the freedom of a function called the will.
Neither am I Implying that there are no limits to freedom. Freedom always operates within the limits of an already determined structure. Thus the mathematician is free to draw a circle, but he is not free to make a circle square. A man is free to walk through an open door, but he is not free to walk through a brick wall. A man is free to go to Chicago or New York, but he is not free to go to both cities at one and the same time. Freedom is always within destiny. It is the chosen fulfillment of our destined nature. We are always both free and destined.
With these qualifications we return to the assertion that the essence of man is found in freedom. This is what Paul Tillich means when he affirms, “Man is man because he is free” or what Tolstoy implies when he says, “I cannot conceive of a man not being free unless he is dead.”
-Part of an address by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Conference on Religion and Race, January 17, 1963 in Chicago, IL “A Challenge to the Churches and Synagogues”
Reading #3 – Janet Quartarone
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The most powerful thing for me was that we were in the middle of this really raucous crowd and it had gotten kind of scary, and they were ready to head out. But the clergy stepped out, kneeled down to pray, and it just went silent. And there was just like this really powerful moment of peace, and the police didn’t know what to do. I think, at that point, they may have even walked away because this crowd that had been chanting and loud had just entirely gone silent and was listening to Reverend Sekou pray, and that was one of the most powerful moments for me.
That moment of prayer was like the first time that I really felt God. Well, I’ve never been like super religious. I’ve always been more spiritual. Like I just felt God’s presence and meaning that, in that moment, I knew that I was supposed to be there, and I was seeing God in all the people who werethere which I had never, like, experienced that before. So that night has had pretty much everything to do with my faith and where I am now.
-Tori Dahl, an intern from Minnesota, in the Episcopal Service Corp, directed by Jon Stratton, an Epioscopal priest.
Reading #4 – Monique Taylor-Kincaid
The Bible does not just say love thy neighbor. It tells you what love is, so that you know exactly how to identify it and what love definition you need to live by when you have to get up out you pews and get out in those streets and love on these various, different black people, these various different people no matter what shape or size they may come in. So it has shown that the church is stubborn, that some churches are very stubborn, but it also has shown that some black churches are the black sheep, ironically. And they come out, and they do exactly what the Bible says without doing exactly what the Bible says. They’re fluid in their spirituality, and they’re fluid in their reading of this book. And, actually, the more fluid you are with it,…the better your understanding is of it. When you’re fluid in the Word, you live better because you’re not constantly looking for the literal meaning in these scriptures. You’re moving. You’re just letting the word push you. You’re letting it come out of you. That’s what you’re supposed to do.
-Brittany Ferrell (and Alexis Templeton) are co-founders of Millennial Activists United
