During his lifetime, Martin Luther King, Jr. faced many challenges. Not the least of which was justifying to fellow clergy and religious laypeople how an ordained minister of Jesus Christ could be involved in social activism. In Strength to Love King addressed this question by claiming that as a believer in Christ it was his ministerial duty to fight injustice. For King, that injustice centered on Jim Crow racism, and in particular segregation.
The Segregation of Blacks
King firmly believed segregation was the de facto root of inferiority among blacks in America. Segregation, in his interpretation, denied blacks their natural rights afforded all Americans as aptly stated in Thomas Jefferson’s famed Declaration of Independence, which declared that, “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Even though it can be argued that Jefferson did not mean his words to include blacks, King nonetheless saw them as inclusive of all Americans. The Thirteenth Amendment not only abolished American slavery, but guaranteed blacks the rights afforded to all Americans regardless of race.
Still, King argued that segregation, like slavery, became a blemish on American history, and, like slavery, would one day cease to exist. However, he also found that, like slavery, the ramifications of hundreds of years of being placed in the inferior caste would not be erased overnight. In fact, the social and political changes in which King witnesses were the result of what he considered the decay of a system “born in injustice, nurtured in inequality, and reared in exploitation.”
“God is Able”
King’s Christian faith was rooted in the belief that God is able to conquer the evils of this world. There are numerous examples in the Christian Bible where God’s presence preceded his people to victory. King used these stories as the cornerstone of his social activism. King stated, “God walks with us. He has placed within the very structure of this universe certain absolute moral laws. We can neither defy nor break them. If we disobey them, they will break us. The forces of evil may temporarily conquer truth, but truth will ultimately conquer its conqueror. Our God is able.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man of faith. That faith allowed him to withstand the violence and the hate that threatened his life and the lives of his family. In those instances when he felt he was no longer able to go on, he tells the story of how God’s spirit comforted him and even when he received word that his home had been bombed he found himself at relative peace because he knew he would still be victorious. God is able.
References:
King, Martin Luther Jr. (1981). Strength to Love. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
