15 - Martin Luther King, Jr. as Public Theologian

Martin Luther King, Jr. as Public Theologian

By Frederick L. Downing

"King understood that a genuinely public theology which promotes the public good must be a constructive vision.... He emphasized the convergence of his particular religious faith with the foundational operating American myths. In so doing, he was not only able to gain a wide base of support, but he was also successful in bringing the American self-understanding closer to his own biblical understanding of community.

IN his seminal work, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, David Tracy argues that the current problem of address for theology is no longer simply secularism but more specifically, privatization. That is, in the present era religious faith is tolerated as a private system for those who wish to take what is perceived as a relatively eccentric or idiosyncratic position. But in this cultural process of uneasy toleration, religious faith is relegated to a place of benign neglect where its truth claims are not allowed to be taken seriously in the larger public.¹ Consequently, when we enter the realm of public discourse we are obliged by the consensus of the times to keep our religious views out of the market place or public square.

Even if we refuse to participate in this cultural rapprochement, the common tendency is to discount the qualities of our religious faith as irrelevant to participation in public life. The life and faith of Martin Luther King, Jr., is a case in point. Following King's assassination, April 4, 1968, there was an ecumenical memorial service in Harlem. The reporter who covered the event for a New York television station stood in front of the church and said: "And so today there was a memorial service for the slain civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a religious service, and it is fitting that it should be, for, after all, Dr. King was the son of a minister."²

Frederick L. Downing is Associate Professor of Religion, Louisiana College, Pineville, Louisiana. He has visited Israel in connection with archaeological field work and has served as a pastor and an army chaplain. He is the author of To See the Promised Land: Martin Luther King's Pilgrimage of Faith (1986).

¹David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 6, 34, 87, 88.

²Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and democracy in America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), pp. 97-98.

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In his book, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America, Richard John Neuhaus attempts to show that this story about King's faith is not an isolated incident. Like Tracy, Neuhaus argues that privatization of religious faith is a major problem of our era. Neuhaus fears that the prevailing tendency in American society to ban religious values from public discourse will result in the "naked public square" and an effort by the state to fill the void left by religion. Indeed, Neuhaus foresees the inevitable decline of American democracy unless religious institutions infuse morality and public discourse with ethical and transcendent dimensions. Both Tracy and Neuhaus agree that the theological task for the current era is a vigorous participation in public discourse. The theologian, Tracy argues, helps religious faith overcome privatization by acting as a public theologian and thereby addressing the three publics of church, academy, and the larger society.³

One way of pursuing this "most dangerous conversation," as Tracy calls the task of public dialogue between the classical stories of differing traditions within a context of pluralism, is to look for paradigms and examples which seem to exemplify the quest for a public good. What I propose in this essay is that the life and faith of Martin Luther King, Jr., serves as an instructive example for overcoming privatization and effectively working toward the common good by way of a legitimate public faith. This discussion of King as an exemplar for a public theology can be pursued along the lines of the various paradigms which have been proposed in recent years to conceptualize this effort toward a public ethic: the public church, civil religion, and the proposal for a public paidea. This approach should contribute to the conversation concerning the reconstruction of a public philosophy as well as the effort to establish a public paidea. But beyond those elements, this topic calls our attention to King's indebtedness to the praxis tradition of being, becoming, and doing the truth-an awareness concerning King which is not prevalent among scholars who have written about him, or widely held in American society.⁴

I

In 1966, Charles Fager wrote in The Christian Century that when Martin Luther King, Jr., "accepted the Nobel peace prize he baptized all races into his congregation and confirmed the world as the battleground for his gospel of nonviolence." According to Fager, King was no longer simply the spokesman for a minority group, and his confrontation with the ethical implications of public events-both national and international-was now inevitable. Though Fager was surely correct about the nature of that pilgrimage, King had actually been in the practice of celebrating the streets-to use Merton's phrase-since the

³Ibid. See also Tracy, pp. 1-31.

⁴See especially Tracy's note on King and the praxis tradition, pp. 93, n. 82.

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early days of the Montgomery movement. And from that initial meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, in December 1955, to his last march in Memphis, April 1968, King attempted "to keep God in the forefront." But also from the beginning, King tried to go beyond tribalism to work for the common good. He said that first night at the Holt Street church: "We are here in a general sense because first and foremost we are American citizens, and we are determined to apply our citizenship to the fullness of its means."

King readily admitted that he and the others in the mass meeting were "Christian people." He wanted that known throughout the nation. But they had gathered that night also because of a "love for democracy, because of our deep-seated belief that democracy transformed from thin paper to thick action is the greatest form of government on earth." With those beliefs, the group had assembled to address a public problem: the bus situation in Montgomery. As King exhorted the congregation to boycott in order to receive just and humane treatment for all citizens who ride public transportation, he said: "We're going to work with grim and firm determination... If we are wrong, then the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong." King went on to say that "we are determined here in Montgomery to fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."⁵

The public quality of King's faith is evident in this speech at the organizational meeting of the Montgomery Improvement Association. He saw himself and the movement as thoroughly religious, in fact, Christian. King spontaneously and willingly honored the particularity of his Christian commitment. But he did not see that his religious faith was in any way contradictory to the need to work for a public good. To the contrary, his faith undergirded and provided a rationale for just such an effort. God was to be kept in the forefront-the movement was to be religious.

For Martin Marty, the "public church" is a paradigmatic metaphor used to describe those persons of a deeply committed religious and particularly Christian faith who are willing to join others to work for the common good. More specifically, the public church is "a communion of communions"-"a family of apostolic churches with Jesus Christ at the center, churches which are especially sensitive to the res publica, the public order that surrounds and includes people of faith." The constituency of this convergence comes from three major sources: elements from the old mainline, the newer evangelicalism, and Roman Catholicism.

⁵Charles E. Fager, "Dilemma for Dr. King," The Christian Century (March 16, 1966), pp. 31-32; Martin Luther King, Jr., A Public Address at the Organizational Meeting of the Montgomery Improvement Association, Holt Street Baptist Church (Montgomery, Alabama, Dec. 5, 1955). A transcript of this speech can be found in the archives of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., in Atlanta, Ga.; hereafter cited as the King Center.

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This "communion of communions" is grounded in biblical, historical, and theological traditions as well as models, and "shares traditions, reason, aspects of Enlightenment, civic purpose, and transecting philosophies with many of the constituents and collegia in the larger civic order." The larger communion is "tinged with prophetic reminiscence," and has at the core of its witness responsibility to "the God beyond the gods."⁶

Within the realm of this conceptual paradigm, Martin Luther King, Jr., was a public theologian without rival in his generation. His life and faith demonstrate the dynamics of Tracy's schema of a theologian in public discourse: while recognizing a plurality of publics, a theologian will likely have a principal audience but not exclusive of the others. As a public theologian, King drew from all of the major reference groups of society, academy, and church. While attempting to address all three publics, King seemed to maintain a primary identity with the church. Yet it seems that he attempted to hold the larger society as his principal audience. From the traditions of the larger American society, King drew upon Jefferson's Declaration of Independence along with the constitutional and Lincolnian traditions as basic sources for public discourse. In the academy, King found a metaphysical basis for his theology and later activism. From the church, in addition to his primary identity, King drew his theocentric vision of the "beloved community."

One unique feature of King's public faith was his ability to join church tradition with the reference group of a wider society. His successful use of theological categories as a means of public discourse is even more stunning when it is remembered that this was a time which saw the rise and crest of secular theology in white mainline Protestantism. At a time when the use of God-talk was widely questioned, King was able to proclaim a theocentric vision of the Kingdom of God in a fresh and profound way. His success was, in part, due to his near singular ability to join the publics of society and church.

King's dream-a dramatization of his beloved community-was, as he said, rooted in the American Dream. His religious faith, then, included much that was common to the values of the larger American society. As a shrewd public participant in the larger American society, he attempted, to some extent, to manipulate the public consciousness. James H. Smylie suggests that by using the common religious traditions and symbols of the American heritage, King was able to confound "American pharaohs dependent to a large extent upon the same biblical traditions for self-identity." In so doing, King used the biblical book of Exodus as a type of double entendre: (1) its theological vision of liberation from oppression as transcendent critique, and (2) its locus of primary meaning within the American myth of origin as a means of self-identification and community. Some examples from King's sermons

⁶Martin E. Marty, The Public Church (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 3, 164.

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and speeches will help to show more clearly the nature of his public faith and how he was able to politicize religious faith.⁷

In April 1957, King preached a sermon entitled "The Birth of a New Nation." The Exodus story was the text of the sermon. The struggle, he said, for Moses and his followers to get out of Egypt and to move toward the promised land "is something of the story of every people struggling for freedom. It is the first story of man's explicit quest for freedom. And it demonstrates the stages that seem inevitably to follow the quest for freedom."⁸ He used the geographical regions of Egypt, wilderness, and promised land as existential categories of meaning:

There is something in the soul, it cries out for freedom. There is something deep down within the very soul of man that reaches out for Canaan. Men cannot be satisfied with Egypt. They try to adjust to it for a while; many men have vested interests in Egypt, they are slow to leave. Egypt makes it profitable to them, some people profit by Egypt. The vast majority, the masses of people never profit by Egypt and they are never content with it. And eventually they rise up and begin to cry out for Canaan's land.⁹

For King, the biblical narrative of Exodus was only the opening chapter in a much longer and continuing story of which the civil rights struggle was a later development-a later chapter in the same story. Thus, the Exodus narrative-with its symbolic and existential categories of Egypt, wilderness, and promised land-could be used time and again to speak to the basic human needs of the common folk or those of the most sophisticated. Here was a story of liberation from the heart of the church tradition which also shared the basic mythic structure embodied in the American myth of origin. And King used this paradigm from the biblical story over and over again to call America to be true to what she had said on paper and to help black people move toward Canaan land.

On May 17, 1957, King again sounded the same theme in a much more public gathering. This time he spoke to a group of 25,000 gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington for a prayer pilgrimage. On that occasion, he appealed in his speech to the President, to the Congress, and to the conscience of the nation. Having recounted the landmark Supreme Court decision of 1954, King described the resistance that had grown up against its implementation. Then he began a long remembered refrain: "Give us the ballot and we will place judges on the benches of the South who will 'do justly and love mercy,' and we will place at the head of the southern states governors who have felt not only the tang of the human, but the glow of the divine." As he concluded this speech, which seemed to ensure his status as the premiere leader and spokesman among American blacks, he encouraged each one to "keep faith in the

⁷James H. Smylie, "On Jesus, Pharaohs, and the Chosen People: Martin Luther King as Biblical Interpreter and Humanist," Interpretation (Jan. 1970), pp. 74-81.

⁸Martin Luther King, Jr., "The Birth of a New Nation," (Atlanta, April 1957), p. 1, King Center transcript.

⁹Ibid., p. 4.

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future." He said, "Let us realize that as we struggle for justice, we do not struggle alone, but God struggles with us." King's promise to those who had come to the "Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom" was that God "is leading us out of a bewildering Egypt, through a bleak and desolate wilderness, toward a bright and glittering promised land."¹⁰

Six years later, in August of 1963, King returned to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.. But this time there were 250,000 people gathered to hear him. Speaking to the largest crowd ever in the history of the movement, he declared, "I still have a dream." And it was a dream, he vowed, that was deeply rooted in the American dream-a vision of a time blacks and whites could gather at the table of brotherhood, a time when his four little children would be judged by their character and not the color of their skin. Quoting a messianic passage from Isaiah 40, King told how he longed for that day when the glory of the Lord shall appear, valleys would be exalted and mountains would be made low, a time when freedom will have come at last. Again, standing in the public square surrounded by the national monuments of America's past, he fused metaphors from his religious tradition with those drawn from the larger society."¹¹

Earlier that same year, while sitting in a Birmingham jail, King penned his most famous letter. Written to a group of eight clergymen, it was clearly intended to be read across a wide spectrum of the larger American society. During his stay in jail in the historic Selma campaign, King wrote another letter--the "Letter From Selma Jail," published in The New York Times, Feb. 4, 1965. After his historic march from Selma to Montgomery, he sat down and wrote "An Open Letter to the American People." One thing that is clear from these few examples from King's life is that he found it important to find ways to correlate the contents of his particular faith tradition with the basic documents and mythic structure of the nation. His appeal was not from the standpoint of a privatized faith, but to the conscience of a society called to transcendent judgment by a prophetic critique.

Martin Marty listed King among a group of persons who might serve as examples of a public faith in service of civility. In another context, Marty suggested that King might best be understood as a "critical public theologian." But in. any case, Marty concludes that such persons as King have always been in a minority. "The most heroic task ahead for believers in the public church communions will be to bring their part of humanity to a whole new stage of faith, in which the God of prey is left behind and people can affirm what they believe without pouncing on others."

Such a view of the public realm is appropriate for the man who saw

¹⁰Martin Luther King, Jr., A Public Address Delivered at the "Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom," (Washington, D.C., May 17, 1957), pp. 1-6, King Center transcript.

¹¹Martin Luther King, Jr., "I Have A Dream," A Public Address Delivered at the March on Washington (Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963), King Center transcript.

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the "best of America" in a microcosm of the civil rights movement. In one of his last books, King tells the story of the effort of thousands of the demonstrators to leave town by way of the relatively small Montgomery airport. There was a delay, and several thousand persons had to wait for hours in a crowded space. King described the situation this way: "As I stood with them and saw white and Negro, nuns and priests, ministers and shopworkers brimming with vitality and enjoying a rare comradeship, I knew that I was seeing a microcosm of the making of the future in this moment of luminous and genuine brotherhood."¹²

II

In life and in death, Martin Luther King, Jr., shaped the American national experience and self-understanding in no small way. While "civil religion" as a paradigm for discussing the religious dimension within the American experience has been less than successful, it remains an important conceptual tool for analyzing the lives of significant public figures like King, who so profoundly shaped national self-understanding in life and now in death.

For Robert Bellah, the chief spokesman for the use of civil religion as a paradigm for discussing the religious dimensions of the American experience, this phrase does not indicate a religion of the lowest common denominator. Civil religion refers to the common elements shared by the majority of Americans within a common religious orientation-a "public religious dimension... expressed in a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals." In the early days of the American experiment, biblical imagery provided the basic framework for imaginative thought and self-conceptions in American life. Essentially, the country was seen by its early citizens to be a new Israel, representative of the promised land of newness and opportunity. Gradually, utilitarian individualism began to replace the biblical symbolism as the primary tradition of American self-understanding. Bellah suggested that, in effect, the biblical tradition affirming an understanding of national life informed by the notion of community and virtue was corrupted by the utilitarian tradition with its emphasis on a neutral state where individuals could pursue maximum self-interest. It is important to note, however, that civil religion-despite the stereotypes and perjorative criticisms--contains a vision of religion in the public realm, and that it, too, has what Bellah calls a "biting edge," as well as a concern for virtue and the common good.¹³

With this in mind, one can suggest that the success of King's civil rights efforts indicated a strength and vitality in the American heritage of community and virtue. He demonstrated that there is still powerthough perhaps latent-in a tradition that calls forth the American

¹²Marty, The Public Church, pp. 136-7; Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), pp. 8-9.

¹³Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 171. See also Bellah, "Civil Religion and the American Future," Religious Education 71 (May-June 1976) 3, pp. 235-43.

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people to work for a common public good.¹⁴ How did Martin Luther King, Jr., bring about such a response that can be conceptualized in terms of the civil religion paradigm?

First, Martin Luther King, Jr., was himself a symbol-both in life and in death. In his Blessed Rage For Order, Tracy points out that certain historical individuals begin to take on a "symbolic dimension" in the culture in which they live. And he suggests that King, like the slain Kennedy brothers, before his death and especially after, took on a symbolic role in American life. Tracy put it this way: "He became a symbol, a cultural fact representative of a certain possible mode-of-being-in-this-world. As the culture experienced his preaching, his actions, his teaching, the culture's own memory image of Martin Luther King became itself a cultural fact, a symbol, a representative of a particular authentic possibility."¹⁵

Second, King was himself a symbol and a representative of reconciliation. He symbolized in his person and in his movement the mode of "real relatedness across difference." Herbert Warren Richardson put it this way: "King identified the goal of the struggle against evil as the total interrelatedness of man with man, an ability to live together with those who are different, even opposed." By appealing to the common biblical and democractic traditions within the American heritage, King helped large numbers of Americans-both black and white-to see that despite their differences there was a common ground for their relatedness. As Bellah put it: "The powerful response King elicited, transcending simple utilitarian calculations, came from the reawakened recognition by many Americans that their own sense of self was rooted in companionship with others who, though not necessarily like themselves, nevertheless shared with them a common history and whose appeals to justice and solidarity made powerful claims on their loyalty."¹⁶

Third, King was a "true interpreter" and a "prophet" of the American civil religion in the paradigmatic way that Bellah has described it. By appealing to the biblical tradition which was common to the national mythic structure and his own particular religious heritage, King could serve not only as a preacher to his own Baptist people, but also as a spokesman for an American civil religion which served as the basis for a common public good. In so doing, King used biblical symbols which were at the heart of the American experience and infused them with a new sense of meaning and vitality. Through his public speeches like "I Have a Dream" and his public statements such as the "Letter From Birmingham Jail," King was able to articulate the common dream of many of his fellow Americans, both black and white. In so doing, he rescued a heritage of religious terminology for a generation on the verge

¹⁴See Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), p. 213.

¹⁵David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1975), p. 216.

¹⁶Bellah, Habits of the Heart, p. 252; Herbert Warren Richardson, "Martin Luther King-Unsung Theologian," Commonweal (May 3, 1968), pp. 201-203.

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of losing it. In the process, King himself became the source of definitive statements of what it means to be an American in the ideal sense, and therefore a source of national self-understanding. To this extent, King helped black Americans shape and change the American civil religion from which they had formerly been excluded. His emphasis on love and nonviolence, as well as the overall reconciling character of his life and theology, stands as a symbol of judgment on a nation that ever attempts to define itself in militaristic terms.¹⁷

Fourth, though King eventually became an "unbearable symbol," his steadfast commitment to the mode of authentic freedom and possibility for all Americans helped to assure that upon his death he would continue to shape and influence national self-understanding. King himself and his articulation of biblical symbolism challenged the dual set of traditions of American self-understanding in which utilitarian individualism had won a dominant position over the biblical tradition. King stood not only for freedom of the oppressed but also for the actualization of the Christian imperative of love. According to Bellah, it was King's new articulation of Christian symbolism-the imperative of love and the oneness of all persons in the sight of God-"that conception, so close to America's expressed biblical values and so far from its utilitarian practice that together with militant activism, was so profoundly unsettling."¹⁸

Fifth, King's emphasis on a "beloved community," along with the metaphors of the "dream" and the "promised land," signify the centrality of the shared values of a' public common good in his own thinking, speaking, and symbolic actions. The aim of the civil rights movement under King's direction was the "broadening and strengthening [of] effective membership in the national community, invoking biblical and republican themes and emphasizing the economic and social dimensions of full citizenship on an international as well as national level." King called upon Americans to build a "just national community" by transforming social and economic institutions and by going beyond the culture of individualism. The strength of King's movement and the response that it engendered suggests that a truly American paidea is still possible.¹⁹

III

Throughout his brief public career, Martin Luther King, Jr., lived, taught, and proclaimed what he described in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail" as "a more excellent way." In the spirit of Merton's idea that the street is a place for celebration and the creation of a common

¹⁷Robert N. Bellah and Phillip E. Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 194; John Dixon Elder, "Martin Luther King and American Civil Religion," Harvard Divinity Bulletin 1(Spring 1968), p. 17.

¹⁸The idea of King as an "unbearable symbol" comes from C. Eric Lincoln. See especially his two works, Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang, 1970), pp. vii and following, and Race, Religion, and the Continuing American Dilemma (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984), pp. 241 ff. See also Robert N. Bellah, Varieties of Civil Religion, p. 172.

¹⁹Bellah, Habits of the Heart, pp. 213, 249-52.

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identity and consciousness, King spent his adult life attempting to take the alienated public space of America and transform it by way of the actualization of his vision of human wholeness.

King's lifelong pursuit of a just and humane society brought him into a profound interface with what the Greeks first called paidea-the cultural consensus of the model or paradigm for moral and human excellence in its citizens. In his public life, he assumed a leadership role in the education of American society which became an integral part of his larger vocation. As Craig Dykstra has seen: "Martin Luther King, Jr., was a powerful moral teacher because he confronted white people, physically and immediately, with black people and described them to each other as human beings, brothers and sisters, rather than slaves and misfits, or intractable enemies.²⁰

In his role as a public moral educator, King attempted to address the issues of tribalization and pseudospeciation. In so doing, King attempted to promote the moral and psychosocial health of the body politic. His success in the public realm gave the black community in America reason for hope and new grounds for trust. Likewise, King appealed to the American conscience for the resolution of a national identity crisis in which blacks bad become the objects of a projected negative identity amounting to what he saw as a "degenerating sense of nobodiness." But beginning with the Montgomery bus boycott, King attempted to project a positive sense of identity onto the black community in America. While he saw that "the unresolved race question" was something of a "pathological infection in our social and political anatomy, which has sickened us throughout our history," he also thought that "following the successful integration of buses in Montgomery, a new spirit of dignity and independence was felt in the heart of every Negro."

King came to understand that "for Negroes all over the nation, to identify with the movement, to have pride in those who were the principals, and to give moral, financial or spiritual support was to restore to them some of the pride and honor which had been stripped from them over the centuries." Late in his career, King reflected on the movement, and said: "I think the greatest victory of this period was not in terms of an external factor or external development. But it was internal. The real victory was what this period did to the psyche of the black man." Then King added that the greatness of this period was that we armed ourselves with dignity and self-respect. The greatness of this period was that we straightened our backs up and a man can't ride your back unless it is bent."²¹

²⁰The phrase "a more excellent way" is a quotation from Paul (I Cor. 12: 3 1) adopted by King in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail." For a discussion of the term "paidea," see the article by James W. Fowler, "Pluralism, Particularity, and Paidea," The Journal of Law and Religion (Summer 1985). See also Thomas Merton, Love and Living (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1979), pp. 46-53; and Craig Dykstra, Vision and Character (New York: Paulist Press, 198 1), p. 132.

²¹For a discussion of the concept of "pseudospeciation," see Erik H. Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton, 1968), pp. 41-42, 298-99, 319. See also Martin Luther King, Jr., "An Address to the Lawyers Advisory Committee Meeting," (New York, May 8, 1961), King Center transcript; King, "The Sword That Heals," The Critic (June-July 1964), p. 12; and King, as recorded on a tape entitled "I Have A Dream: Highlights from the Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.," (N. Hollywood, California: The Center for Cassette, Studies, Inc.).

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King's battle, waged against American tribalism and pseudospeciation, was nothing less than an effort to remake the national psychosocial identity so that blacks could be treated with a full share of "somebodiness." King's own journey and the history of his movement was something of a pilgrimage of faith characterized by an enlarged vision of a universal human community. And that vision along with King's pilgrimage disclosed the partial nature of the American moral and social fiber while declaring it to be tribal at the core. King's vision, however, was clearly beyond tribalism. His dream was a thoroughly interrelated multi-racial national and world community.

King attempted to work toward that goal by continuous efforts to educate the larger public. Beginning with his own group, he attempted to build a forum for the black community to find hope and trust, as well as to share their experiences of shame. Over the years, he carried out his mission of educating the public for a common good in nontraditional ways. While maintaining his vocational status and identity as a clergyman, King attempted to "celebrate" the public space of America by attempting autonomous freedom and a spirit of community where alienation had once ruled. Attempting "moral instruction" for the common good, he began to write a column for Ebony magazine entitled "Advice for Living." In addition, he became a regular contributor to a column for the New York Amsterdam News. King often spoke at bar associations, real estate conventions, civic groups, and various political forums. And it was not unusual for him to communicate with national leaders either by phone, telegram, or in personal conference.

In one of his last books, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, King was more explicit about his role as an educator of the public. In a chapter entitled "The Dilemma of Negro Americans," he addresses the problem of the American identity crisis. "The dilemma of white America," he said, "is the source and cause of the dilemma of Negro America. Just as the ambivalence of white Americans grows out of their oppressor status, the predicament of Negro Americans grows out of their oppressed status." The most hopeful and optimistic note that can be sounded about the status of American blacks, he said, is that the causes of this present crisis "are culturally and socially induced." Therefore, "what man has torn down, he can rebuild." Foundational to the difficulties for blacks in America is "pervasive and persistent economic want." In order for the black family "to grow from within," several elements are needed: "fair opportunity for jobs, education, housing, and access to culture." Fundamentally, blacks in America need justice, and to be seen, heard, and respected. "As long as people are ignored, as long as they are voiceless, as long as they are trampled by the

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iron feet of exploitation, there is the danger that they, like little children, will have their emotional outbursts which will break out in violence in the streets.²²

Because of the dilemma in which they find themselves, King suggested that blacks in America must do several things: (1) achieve a "rugged sense of sornebodyness," (2) work vigorously toward a sense of group identity, (3) make full use of the freedom that is already available, (4) unite around action programs that are devoted to the eradication of racial injustice, and (5) enlarge the vision of the whole society by "giving it a new sense of values as we seek to solve our particular problem.²³

King was very much aware of the pluralistic nature of the needs of the nation. His vision was clearly that of a paidea beyond tribalism. The great new problem of the human race is this: "We have inherited a large house, a great 'world house' in which we have to live together-black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu-a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace." King was right when he saw that our very survival depends upon our ability to make the necessary adjustments and meet the challenge of living in a "world house." As he put it, "together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools." Continued life in the great "world house" will require an education for justice and a paidea that goes beyond tribalism in order to confront the persistent problems of racism, poverty, and war. In an essay written while still in college at Morehouse, King put it this way: "We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education."²⁴

IV

As one of the few distinguished exemplars of a genuinely legitimate public theology in America, Martin Luther King, Jr., had a normative theory of the public good which he attempted to actualize for the creation of the "beloved community," or to make the dream a reality. In the beginning, this praxis orientation may have been more intuitive than reflectively systematized. But over the period of his public life, that approach became more refined as opportunities for reflection were presented to King. In reading his public speeches, one is quickly impressed with the seemingly self-conscious way he participated in the public realm. If there is one metaphor that one find repeatedly which seems to capture King's theory of how he as a minister should operate in

²²King, Where Do We Go From Here, pp. 102-13.

²³Ibid., pp. 122-32.

²⁴Ibid., pp. 167-71. See also, Martin Luther King, Jr., "The Purpose of Education," quoted in Lerone Bennett, Jr., What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1964), p. 29.

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the public realm, it is that often quoted phrase "to save the soul of America.²⁵

King used this metaphorical phrase time and again as a parallel to a wish to make the American dream a reality for all of its citizens. In other words, King saw his involvement in the public life of his country as nothing less than an effort to transform the moral direction of the nation-to save its very soul. In speaking of his role in the civil rights movement, he said: "We think we're rendering a great service to our nation, for this is not a struggle for ourselves alone, it is a struggle to save the soul of America." In a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, King described the movement this way: "It is a fight to save the soul of this nation... and make the American dream a reality."²⁶

For King, the nation was built upon a set of moral principles and understandings. As he saw it, the two most important documents in American tradition were the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation. "All tyrants... are powerless to bury the truth of these documents," King said. "The Declaration of Independence proclaimed to a world... that the liberty and dignity of human personality were inherent in man as a living being." The Emancipation Proclamation was significant as the "offspring of the Declaration of Independence." As such, it reaffirmed the principle of equality on which the nation had been founded.²⁷

King's theory of a public good began with the realization that society exists as a network of collective relations. "All humanity is caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny, whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." America exists in a profound sense, King said, as a dream. "It is the dream of a land where men of all races, colors, and creeds will live together as brothers." King was seemingly much aware of the pluralistic nature of the country and of the mutuality and tolerance needed for the nation to work as a viable society of community for all of its citizens. The substance of the nation as a dream was to be found in the foundational documents of the American republic. Other metaphors that King used to symbolize the American network of relations include the "beloved community," and the "promised land."²⁸

But King also had a series of metaphors to symbolize the deferred nature of America as a dream. "Ever since the founding fathers of our

²⁵King used this construction often. For example, see his sermon entitled "What a Mother Should Tell Her Child" (Ebenezer Baptist Church, May 12, 1963), p. 11, King Center transcript.

²⁶Ibid. See also Martin Luther King, Jr., A Public Statement on Segregation (Montgomery, Alabama, May 24,1961), King Center transcript.

²⁷Martin Luther King, Jr., A Public Address to the New York Civil War Centennial Commission (New York City, September 12, 1962), p. 1, King Center transcript.

²⁸Martin Luther King, Jr., "What a Mother Should Tell Her Child," p. 4. See also King, A Public Address to Charlotte, N.C., Branch of NAACP (Charlotte, North Carolina, September 25, 1960), p. 1, King Center transcript.

28 - Martin Luther King, Jr. as Public Theologian

nation dreamed this dream, America has manifested a schizophrenic personality. She has been torn between two selves-a self in which she has proudly professed democracy and a self in which she has sadly practiced the antithesis of democracy." The discriminatory practices throughout America's history had brought on a "cancerous disease," a malignancy in the body politic. King summarized this idea in his "Letter From Birmingham Jail" when he said: "Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality." This was true, King noted, not only for the oppressed but also for the oppressor. "It [segregation] gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority." Using Buber's philosophical schema, King suggested that such unjust laws substituted an "I-It" relationship for what should be an "I-Thou" relationship. Therefore, King saw that when arguing for the welfare of minority groups, he, in fact, was working for the public good-for the health of the nation.²⁹

King understood that a genuinely public theology which promotes the public good must be a constructive vision. Consequently, he chose self-consciously to emphasize the foundational documents like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in his efforts to bring franchise to minority groups. Likewise, in his public discourse, he emphasized the convergence of his particular religious faith with the foundational operating American myths. In so doing, he was not only able to gain a wide base of support, but he was also successful in bringing the American self-understanding closer to his own biblical understanding of community.³⁰

For King the church was the "chief moral guardian" of the community. Though he thought that political figures should be actively involved in working for the public good, he thought that the church had a major responsibility to solve the tragic dilemma of racism in America. "It has always been the responsibility of the church," he said, "to broaden horizons, challenge the status-quo, and break mores when necessary." King was advocating a theory of a public church and a public good when he said that the church was "called to combat social evils,... called to lead men on the highway of brotherhood and to summon them to rise above the narrow confines of race and class.³¹

With this view of church and society, King's faith took on an activist dimension that promoted the American public good. In fact, he was fearful that "the price that America must pay for the continued oppression of the Negro is the price of its own destruction." He said that unless the racial problem is solved, "I am convinced that America is

²⁹Martin Luther King, Jr., A Public Address to Charlotte, N.C. Branch of NAACP, p. 1. See also King, "Letter From Birmingham Jail," in Flip Schulke, ed., Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Documentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976), pp. 214-17.

³⁰For an illustration, see especially King's "I Have a Dream."

³¹Martin Luther King, Jr, A Public Address at the Conference on Religion and Race, (Chicago, January, 17, 1963), pp. 2-3, King Center transcript.

29 - Martin Luther King, Jr. as Public Theologian

doomed and she will lose her moral and political voice because she failed to live up to the great dream of America and to her great ideas." In such a context, King thought that the only solution was for the wronged party to initiate reconciliation. The black community must act, said King, in a redemptive way. In so doing, "it may well be that the Negro is God's instrument to save the soul of America.³²

How could the black community act in a public and redemptive way? (1) The black community must challenge an oppressive system. In so doing, blacks could achieve a sense of solidarity and "somebodiness." This would at the same time remind the larger community of true mutuality, and begin to demythologize the myths of superiority and inferiority which had previously given power to the status-quo. (2) Blacks must make constructive use of the freedom that is available in order to help bring about their own liberation. Blacks must be especially responsible in gaining and practicing the- right to vote. Citizenship requires a responsible role in society. (3) By acting nonviolently and responsibly in the public realm, blacks will increase their sense of self-respect and gain the admiration and respect of others. In this way, they promote the public good by the strengthening of the human personality. "I feel that this way of nonviolence is vital because it is the only way to reestablish the broken community. It is a powerful way to take direct action against injustice without waiting for other agencies to act." (4) By acting together in mass demonstrations (in public, responsible, and nonviolent ways), blacks could participate in assertive appeals to the national self-understanding. Such an effort would allow blacks the autonomy to actualize their rights as citizens (and thus participate in their own liberation). It would also afford the opportunity to confront the larger public and to communicate their message in a personal but profound and lasting way. This approach of massive public action was, for King, more than an effort to manipulate the public consciousness; it was a desire to appeal to the national conscience-to save its very soul. King saw events like the Birmingham campaign and the Selma march precisely in this manner.³³

In summary, King's theory of the public good was rooted and grounded in his theocentric view of the universe. His God was the Lord of history whose reign was established beyond tribalism. As the creator and sustainer of all persons, this God called all nations to work together in the "world house" to create genuine community-a neighborhood. Within this system, the church and its people were seen to be the "moral guardians." But he also thought that local church members were called to join together in a multi-racial, multi-faith community of true

³²Martin Luther King, Jr., "What a Mother Should Tell Her Child," p. 2. See also King, A Public Address to Charlotte, N.C. Branch of NAACP, p. 3; and King, A Public Address at a Rally to Support the Freedom Riders (Montgomery, Alabama, May 21, 1961), p 1, King Center transcript.

³³See especially, Martin Luther King, Jr., A Public Address to Charlotte, N.C. NAACP, pp. 3-4.

30 - Martin Luther King, Jr. as Public Theologian

brotherhood to create a microcosm of the new order of the human of the future. This is evidenced by his own understanding of the civil rights movement as a microcosm of future humankind.

Though King thought that governmental officials, both local and national, had a special responsibility to enact legislation that would promote the moral and social health of the public order, he took it upon himself as a minister "to save the soul of America." King knew that in working to overthrow tribalism and to establish genuine community, he was working for the moral health of the nation. America, like other nations, had been founded upon certain moral principles such as the explicit covenantal privileges and obligations of freedom, justice, and equality for all citizens. These national moral principles were consistent with King's own faith tradition, and fundamental to the health of the country and to the quest of blacks in America. By appealing to these truths common to the nation's foundational documents and to his own particular Baptist church tradition, King called America and his own people to follow him to the promised land-a new Canaan, a new America. In short, his vision was comprehensive and systematic, and was enlivened by a fervor that was generated by the intuitive and spontaneous wellsprings of his own particular black Baptist tradition. King had projected his own vision of the Kingdom of God outward in time and space, and his public theology was the result. It encompassed history and nations, and called them into judgment. But fundamentally, the constructive nature of the vision motivated individuals from across the spectrums of race, class, and religion to walk together toward the dawn of a new day.

Throughout the years of public service given to him, Martin Luther King, Jr., hoped for and worked "toward a bright and glittering promised land³⁴ for all the citizens of his land. He was a public theologian without peer in his time. When understood in the context of the pilgrimage that was his life, the words that he spoke to the prayer pilgrimage at the Lincoln Memorial in May of 1957 seem an appropriate way to remember his's untiring effort in the public square on behalf of the common good:

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us
thus far on the way,
Thou who hast by thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path,
We pray.

Lest our feet stray from the places
our God, where we met thee.

³⁴Martin Luther King, Jr., A Public Address Delivered at the Prayer Pilgrimage (Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., May 17, 1957), p. 6, King Center transcript.

31 - Martin Luther King, Jr. as Public Theologian

Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine
of the world,
We forget thee;
Shadowed beneath thy hand,
May we forever stand:
True to our God,
True to our native land.³⁵

³⁵Ibid