Letters to a Birmingham Jail Quotes

“Intentionality is a nonnegotiable for those with a heart for reconciliation.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated churches where the gospel is cherished—these are the birthplace of the kind of racial harmony that gives long-term glory to God and long-term gospel good to the world.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The gospel will dominate a person and part of the reconstruction of that person will be a reorienting of our view of everything, including race.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Reconciliation and bridge building is messy, be it organizationally, culturally, or relationally. It is not for the faint of heart. There are tough calls and it can often feel like three steps forward and two steps back. Perseverance is crucial.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Lukewarm indifference is a greater threat than white-hot hatred.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Larry Acosta says that we hurt in isolation but heal in community.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“How is that for gospel and racial growth in the life of Peter! He now describes gospel-transformed people as a “chosen race.” One race. A new race. Peter argues the gospel replaces my race, culture and ethnicity as the primary identifier of my life.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“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.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”;”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I-it” relationship for an “I-thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“He looked upon us standing sinners, and intentionally gave up His comfortable seat, embracing the discomfort of the cross so that we might sit and reign with Him for all eternity.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Some have closed their eyes to the poor, others to the educational injustice and economic disparities that continue to plague our country. And, yes, some continue to close their eyes, not wanting to do the hard work of going to the other part of town getting to know someone who doesn’t think like, act like, look like, or vote like me.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“he reflected on how his mother had raised him, that if he was ever in a situation where there were no seats and women were standing, the chivalrous thing to do would be to give up his seat. He didn’t want to do that on this day; so he reasoned that if he would just close his eyes and not see women standing, he could continue his comfortable life.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“most of us believers need to confess that at least some of the time and in some of our actions, we actively or passively nurture some of the underlying prejudice, paternalism, or attitudes that remain from our country’s racist past.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“the United States has by far the highest rates of incarceration in the Western world; it witnesses more gun violence than any other so-called civilized country; its entertainment industry glorifies violence, misogyny, sexual promiscuity, and infantile self-indulgence; it offers less medical and family support for the poor than any other Western nation; it maintains inequalities of wealth on a par with the kleptocracies of the Third World; its rate of infant mortality is several times higher than most western countries; and, most grievously, the nation is witnessing a disastrous collapse of the two-parent family as the accepted norm for giving birth and raising children. The US racial history is not solely responsible for these indices of social pathology but that history has contributed substantially to every one of them.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Racial ignorance is a luxury of the majority culture. We really must be willing to place ourselves in the posture of a learner.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.