A Dangerous Spirituality

Rev. Jeffrey Symynkywicz, January 17, 2010

           It surprises me sometimes how many people have forgotten that Martin Luther King was a member of the clergy, that he was a Baptist minister. That is what he did for a living. At this time of year, when we hear so much about Dr. King’s oratorical skills; about his place as political leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient; about his place as a role model to an entire generation of African Americans, it often seems to me that his personal religion-- his theology-- his spirituality-- remain, too often neglected and unexamined.

           But the more I study the subject, the more obvious it seems to me that if we don’t understand Martin Luther King’s religion, then we really don’t understand Martin Luther King. Not deep down. While the basic motivation for Dr. King’s desire for civil rights may have been that he was an African American born into a deeply racist society, I think we need to look deeper to really know him:

           It was Martin Luther King’s spirituality and his deep religious faith which fanned the flames of his basic human desire for freedom and which provided him to emerge as the leader of his people’s struggle. It was this faith which gave him the strength and inspiration and hope he needed to articulate and persevere-- and to articulate that desire in a way which could stir the courage of a people and awaken the conscience of an entire nation.

           To really know Dr. King, we have to look deeper; we have to look at his faith.

            As Vincent Harding writes in a recent issue of Sojourners magazine:

           “The spirituality of Martin [Luther] King… was the spirituality of wrestling with the angels, the angels within and the angels [all] around. The demonic angels and the divine angels. [There was] no spirituality without wrestling—that's where King was coming from. That spirituality came directly out of the gospel of Luke: ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me.’ And what is the spirit upon me for? So I can jump and scream and shout and sing? Yes, maybe that. But right then, in Montgomery, Alabama, the spirituality began, ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me’ so that I can go and stand with the poor, with the messed up, with the beaten up, with the downtrodden.”

           Harding continues:

           “That was King's spirituality. A spirituality that makes it impossible for you to avoid the folks in trouble. A spirituality to work with the poor, to be with the prisoners, to stay close to the brokenhearted, and to know … [that his own people, that] black folks were simply one of God's beloved people, [and you]  … had to figure out what you do with all of the other beloved people. Especially the messed-up beloved people. [Especially the beloved people who do evil.] Especially the beloved people that don't know they're beloved.”

           Young Martin had grown up on a steady diet of gospel preaching, with the church as the center of community life, and the minister the ordained spokesman for God Himself. His life was rooted in the radically concrete and imminent spirituality of the black church, a spirituality rooted not in mere intellectualization or even in the study and analysis of arcane scriptures, but in the bittersweet experience of day-to-day living, in the community.

           As the historian Julius Lester has written: “When the black preacher shouts, ‘God is a living God!’, don’t argue. Get ready to shake hands with the Lord Almighty.”

           Lester continues: “A black church congregation doesn’t want to be told about God. They want to feel him, see him, and touch him. [And] It is the preacher’s responsibility to see that they do.”

           His growth within the African American church helped to imbue Martin Luther King Jr.’s spirituality with the basic, direct, unadorned strength and courage of the simple folk among whom he lived. It was this fundamental faith in a God who radiated Faith, Hope, and Love, endlessly, which would continue to undergird Dr. King’s life, and give him the strength he needed to carry on, leading his people’s long, hard journey toward freedom.

           This was the depth of King's spirituality, and it sent him into Selma; into Birmingham; and finally, even unto Memphis. It sent him wherever he needed to be to be present, to be constantly at the side of those in trouble. That's the spirit that led him to the Mall in Washington in 1963. He didn't just arrive as the celebrity speaker for the day, and then leave. He didn’t fly in and deliver his "I have a dream" speech and then disappear. No, as Victor Harding reminds us, “He came [to Washington] out of hard struggles that were guided by his spirituality. Tough, dangerous, death-defiant struggles.”

           Yet, at the same time, his spirituality was so broad, so universal, so bursting forth with the illimitable love and mercy of God, that he could speak not just to his comrades in arms, but to the whole nation, too, and say (in Harding’s words) "You aren't what you should be…  And I'm not just cursing you out, I am entreating you in love to be what God meant for you to be, for me to be, for us to be." King was offering all of us the opportunity to be “free at last” if we're willing to work, if we're willing to struggle, if we're willing to face our bondage and our brokenness.

           “This spirituality,” Vincent Harding continues, “took [King] back to Birmingham to mourn with the … mothers and fathers of those bombed-out children. But it also led him to challenge the white supremacy of that Alabama countryside and say, ‘No, I'm not going to give into this, because this is contrary to the Spirit. White people are not supreme. And every time they think they are, they are killing their spirit and every spirit.’” And doing violence against the Spirit’s way.

           This spirituality led him to Selma, to challenge the terrible voting discrimination there and throughout the South. It led him there because his faith told him that all people were equal in the sight of God. And “on earth as it is in heaven”, should it be. His spirituality turned him into the drum major for freedom; the inspiration of thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands who hungered and thirsted for righteousness and justice.

           But his spirituality led him even farther on than that. It led him beyond the struggles of his people alone. It led him beyond the issues of his own nation.

           It was at Boston University that King made his first acquaintance with Gandhi’s philosophy of satyagraha, or “soul force”. It was from Gandhi that he gained many of the ideals and insights that would serve as the basis of the nonviolent civil rights movement in America; it was from Gandhi, too, that he heard the call of faith to oppose violence and oppression in all its forms, throughout the world. 

           “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor,” Dr. King said in 1966. “I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit signs. This is the way I'm going. If it means suffering a little bit, I'm going that way. If it means sacrificing, I'm going that way. If it means dying for them, I'm going that way. Because I heard the voice saying: do something for others.”

            Dr. King was a man of peace, but he was not a man of vacillation and appeasement. He was a prophet—pulling his people and his nation forward into the next stage of their development. From the Hebrew prophets on down, true prophets have seldom been easy people to be around, especially for those in power and those wedded to the status quo.

           Like Jesus before him, he was not always an easy man for those in power to bear. While he was alive, there were no universal outpourings of “Hosannas” for him, from Left and Right alike. When he was still alive, he was no safe and easy, cuddly and warm national icon. No, when he was still alive, in many, many circles, he was despised and rejected by many; he was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and there were many—many indeed—who esteemed him not.

           As a direct result of his Christian faith, Dr. King was a radical—a man who knew that the building of the beloved community required a complete transformation of the society in which he lived, and the values it lived by.

            As war raged in Vietnam, Dr. King took a stand. In Vincent Harding’s words: “…before many months were over, King also said, ‘I identify with those people you call gooks and enemies and Viet Congs and those who must be burned to death. I identify with them; they are my sisters and brothers. Those are my children running aflame.’ That was his spirituality. It's not just praying ‘Our Father,’ but finding his sisters and brothers [wherever they were in the world] and then … challenging [those powers and principalities who oppressed and opposed them]”—even if that meant challenging his own government.

            It meant acting out his commitment to the poor by trying to organize the poor. Not just by giving charity to them, but organizing them so that they could gain what they needed for their own lives.

           “That is the spirituality that we see him going to the end of his life with.” It was the spirituality that brought him to his own Calvary at Memphis. In a voice tinged with sorrow, a voice that implored his country, his final words to us were:  "America, listen to me, please. You are being burdened down by your warped values. Any nation that chooses to spend more on armaments than on social reform is a nation in trouble." He said, "America, I would not say these things to you if I did not love you. But you are in danger of giving in to militarism, to materialism, as well as to racism."  [Vincent Harding]

           Nor was he speaking merely to white Americans when he said these things, but to all of us, black and white and all races—to all of us who give over our power to a corrupt and degenerate status quo, rather than following the ways the Spirit of Love and Justice demands of us.

           Dr. King’s spirituality often made people uncomfortable. Maybe that's what real spirituality does. It gets people uncomfortable with the way things are, and fills their heart and nerve and sinew to do something to change their lives, and change the world. Real spirituality can be a comfort to the afflicted, yes. But just as often, it ought to afflict the comfortable, too.

           “Religion is not a private affair,” said the great Unitarian social activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “[Our] Religion [should] not [be] a skylight [toward heaven, but] the Front Door” open to the real world. Our religion needs to inspire us to open that Front Door.

           Walter Rauschenbusch, the father of the Social Gospel Movement, and another great influence on Dr. King, used to say that the problem wasn’t that there weren’t enough good people in the world. There were many, many good people, he believed. But that there were very few who were good enough to disturb the peace of the devil, to disturb the peace of society founded upon injustice. Perhaps it is both as a disturber of the peace, and as a messenger of peace, that the spirit of Dr. King lives still deep within our hearts.

           May his spirit also live fully in the ways in which we live our lives, and care for our world.

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