Martin Luther King, Jr. – Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Dated April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King wrote a letter from jail in Birmingham during the non-violent campaign there. In the letter, he defended the strategy of non-violence used in the Birmingham campaign.
One of the striking elements of the letter is King’s disappointment with the white clergy in the South. Here is a key passage:

Currently, white and black evangelicals are divided in obvious ways as we observe another MLK, Jr Day. For instance, African American Baptist churches are leaving the Southern Baptist Convention as white leaders there take aim at Critical Race Theory while yawning at Christian nationalism. White evangelicals as a group find themselves in much the same place as when King, Jr. wrote in 1963. I long for a change. I long for an end to concern for ideological purity and a striving for relational purity.

3 thoughts on “Martin Luther King, Jr. – Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

  1. This says it well “” I long for a change. I long for an end to concern for ideological purity and a striving for relational purity.””
    Hope deferred makes the heart sick, and the hope that some humanity would rise up and overcome our arrogance hidden in the bowels of our doctrinal towers is dead. Indifference was fueled by that arrogance. It has been said. The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. Neither hot, or cold, is the tepid theology driven by insufferable rightness that shuts its eyes to those it makes suffer makes me want to spit it out.

    The blood on the ground, it cries out. This is not a soft cry, but a weeping, wailing, screaming lament of “how long Lord” while those with the power in the silent indifferent church, rattle on, as they are prone to do, that race theory is some enemy of the church. The crumbs at the table, even the limp acknowledgement that lynching fields stain the silent church, are swept a way every time we fail to own the truth that white privilege benefited from blood shed and amends are in order.

    The evangelical church I knew, I walked away from this year As the upside down kingdom Jesus spoke of in the beatitudes was replaced by the doctrines of the American Dream (for white people mostly male) longing for beauty I saw a burned down forest. Now, any sign of beatitude ethos is called out as “socialism” I left the evangelical church to save my faith

    1. Now, any sign of beatitude ethos is called out as “socialism”

      Just thought it bore repeating. 🙂

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