MLK the Preacher, Orator, Prophet and Martyr.

Wednesday August 28 is the 50th Anniversary of the greatest speech of the American Civil Rights Movement, and in my view the most powerful piece of oratory on behalf of justice, peace and human flourishing during my lifetime. There's plenty on the media on the significance of that speech, and the long echoes of the refrain, "I have a dream....."

My own comment is simple, and mostly in MLK's own words. One of my treasured books is a battered old fontana paperback of MLK's sermons, Strength to Love. (cost 35 pence net). From the sermon Transformed Nonconformists come these two quotations. Such wisdom, such prophetic wisdom, for our own time 50 years later.

Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. We must, of course, be well-adjusted to avoid neurotic schizophrenic personalities, but there are some things in our world to which men of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men [and women] of work and food, and the to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted!

And these words echo the wisdom of A J Heschel, one of MLK's supporters, and a radical religious leader in his own right,

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man.

 

And then go here and listen to MLK in full flow, and give thanks for words and the power of the Word.

Comments

[John Rackley]

I agree about Strength to Love. My copy too is battered. It introduced me to an expression of Baptist identity that I had not met before - liberal, socially concerned, intuitive and immersed in non-violence - one I still try to nonour. Many years later the Richard Attenborough film Ghandi helped me understand the impact of that man.
As I watched the TV programmes about MLK I noticed in a less televisual age how still his facial expression was as he spoke. It was all in the words, the resonance and cultural allusion. And he was shorter than many around him. Great words give you elevation.