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Before King, the promises contained in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution had been hollow. King and the other leaders of the twentieth-century civil rights movement, along with millions of ordinary protesters, demanded that America live up to its stated ideals. They fought without muskets, without money, and without political power. They built their revolution on Christian love, on nonviolence, and on faith in humankind.
We’ve mistaken King’s nonviolence for passivity. We’ve forgotten that his approach was more aggressive than anything the country had seen—that he used peaceful protest as a lever to force those in power to give up many of the privileges they’d hoarded.
He warned that materialism undermined our moral values, that nationalism threatened to crush all hope of universal brotherhood, that militarism bred cynicism and distrust.
For Williams, theology and social action were like voices in the choir, better together than apart.
“Hatred makes nothin’ but more hatred,
History, he concluded, was guided by the spirit, not by matter.
“But let judgment run down like waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
“When we love on the agape level,” he wrote years later, “we love men not because we like them … but because God loves them.”
“In the broadest sense,” Brightman wrote, “personalism is the belief that conscious personality is both the supreme value and the supreme reality in the universe.” To personalists, God is seen as a loving parent, God’s children as subjects of compassion. The universe is made up of persons, and all personalities are made in the image of God.
But the more he talked, the better he looked.
“I knew that there is nothing more majestic than the determined courage of individuals willing to suffer and sacrifice for their freedom and dignity.”
If we are wrong, 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. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie. Love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Gandhi had proved that the laws of morality were as inescapable as the laws of gravity,
“And if this age is to survive, it must follow the way of love and nonviolence that he so nobly illustrated in his
Today, we no longer have a choice between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence.”
The cross stands as a reminder of the way Jesus lived, not merely the way he died, King said. The cross calls us to action. The cross expresses a commitment to the faith that God would go to any length to “restore a broken community.”
“The law may not be able to make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me,”
“Every man should have something he’d die for. A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”
that is why the saint always recognizes that he’s a sinner, and the worst sinner in the world is the man who feels that he isn’t a
Only a “dry-as-dust” religion permitted ministers to praise the glories of heaven while neglecting conditions on earth,
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,”
The question, he said, “is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be,” while reminding these ministers of the extremism of people like the prophet Amos, Jesus, Jefferson, and Lincoln. “I would agree with St. Augustine,” he wrote, “that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’
“I still have a dream.”
“It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream,”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
“I have a dream,” he said, “that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain…
“My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” Let freedom ring. All over this land.
Let freedom ring. From New Hampshire, from New York, from California, from Colorado, from Georgia, from Tennessee, from “every hill and molehill of Mississippi.” From every mountainside. Let freedom ring.
And … when we allow freedom to ring … we will … speed up that day when all of God’s children … will … join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
In a dark, confused world,
He was murdered by the timidity of a federal government that is willing to spend millions of dollars a day to defend freedom in Vietnam but cannot protect the rights of its citizens at home. He was murdered by every sheriff who practices lawlessness in the name of law. He was murdered by the cowardice of every Negro who passively accepts the evils of segregation and stands on the sidelines in the struggle for justice.
“God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race, not just one part of it.”
To think beyond race, class, and nation meant giving unconditional love to all mankind, he said. This is what God calls on us to do. This is what God expects
I still have a dream, because, you know, you can’t give up in life … I have a dream that one day men will rise up and come to see that they are made to live together as brothers. I still have a dream this morning that one day every Negro in this country, every colored person in the world, will be judged on the basis of the content of his character rather than the color of his skin … I still have a dream that one day the idle industries of Appalachia will be revitalized, and the empty stomachs of Mississippi will be filled, and brotherhood will be more than a few words at the end of a prayer …
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Everyone can be great because everyone can serve.
But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life … But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. His eyes scanned down and then to the left and then back up at his audience. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!
“Our very survival,” he wrote, “depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”
