Article Title, Author, and Abstract for Theology Today April 2008 (65.1)
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Vision of America: An Ethical Assessment
PETER J. PARIS
This is the fortieth anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination. Five years before that tragic event, King delivered a speech that has gained immortality in the nation’s history. The purpose of this lecture is to assess the enduring significance of that speech as the clearest societal vision ever portrayed of what America can and should be. If America is to be a racially just nation, King’s vision must be normative for every political platform and public policy agenda in the nation. The aim of this essay is to describe the context of the 1963 March on Washington, analyze the structure of his speech on that occasion, exegete its content, and evaluate its ongoing ethical import.
Revisioning the Church: Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Model for Reflection
LEWIS. V. BALDWIN
Abstract: This essay has arisen from the author’s research on the nature and purpose of the church in the view of Martin Luther King Jr. It contends that King was first and foremost a man of the church, that his sense of the church as prophetic witness and movement was central to his social activism, and that there is a need for a reappropriation of many of his ideas for the contemporary church. The essay teases out some of King’s most striking images of the church without imposing a systematic ecclesiology on his thinking.
Gendered Legacies of Martin Luther King’s Leadership
TRACI WEST
Abstract: This essay is a critical reflection on issues of gender within the legacy of Martin Luther King’s leadership, exploring the implications for contemporary social activist church leaders. It focuses on notions of maleness found in scholarly interpretive narratives about King and descriptions in biographies of King and of other Civil Rights movement leaders. The significance of his maleness when assessing King’s leadership is discussed in relation to: 1) Christ metaphors and 2) sexual conduct. Briefly considered is how the sexist treatment of women leaders by King and others informs the legacy bequeathed to current social justice organizers.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s God, Humanist Sensibilities, and Moral Evil
ANTHONY B. PINN
Abstract: This essay attends to the nature and meaning of moral evil through an interrogation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Personalism and African American humanism. Combining his modality of Personalism with African American humanist sensibilities provides an opportunity to think about moral evil and theodicy in ways that do not collapse into redemptive suffering. This is done through a theological turn toward a doctrine of God that recognizes and appreciates God’s ongoing and fundamental concern with human welfare, but a concern that often involves divine missteps and the need for God to redirect effort.
The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
DWIGHT HOPKINS
Abstract: This essay looks at Martin Luther King Jr.’s last will and testament found in his final publication, The Trumpet of Conscience. The summation and new direction of his vision is divided into five chapters: “Impasse in Race Relations,” “Conscience and the Vietnam War,” “Youth and Social Action,” “Nonviolence and Social Change,” and “A Christmas Sermon on Peace.” Each essay presents fresh and provocative developments in King’s intellectual and faith journey. He truly had become a global citizen rooted in the everyday struggles of his community and that of the poor. The question remains: how do King’s words and legacy sound today?