The Religious Prophet, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Given by James Covington on January 20th, 2008

I believe we can say that more than any other, Martin Luther King Day is the quintessential American patriotic holiday. Through the pain of its true sponsors, it refers back directly to the aspirations of our founders and the passions of our prophets. It permits us no easy celebrations, no mindless, instantly forgotten rituals, because, the moment we pay attention, it reminds us that we have yet to overcome our own prejudices and fears. No doubt, we have come a long way from the days of my childhood when blacks stood in segregated lines at movies and restrooms and none were allowed in restaurants. But the incident of the cross burning on a black family’s lawn in our own neighborhood a few weeks ago, reminds us once again how insidious racism remains. That incident reminds us once again that sub-conscious dismissal and disdain for those of color, as inferior to white people, did not necessarily dissipate with the establishment of civil rights laws. Regardless of other precipitous circumstances that may have led to that public act of contempt for an African American family, this nevertheless reminds us of the racist attitude that systemically continues to exist beneath the cover of our public congeniality toward those of color. Undoubtedly, some of these prejudices have been healed, but there is still more work to do, more conversations to have, more confessions to make, more consciousness-raising to be pursued, more action to be taken to convince all people of color, that we morally believe in our hearts, not just in our heads, that all human beings are truly created equal.

Having said that, as an association, Unitarian Universalists have actively addressed racism not only in our nation, but in our institution as well. Being against racism has been a prominent theme in our history for a very long time. Back as far as 1784 Universalist Benjamin Rush was one the founders of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. In 1833 Unitarian Lydia Maria Child wrote “An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans called African.” Many of the supporters of the Abolition, Theodore Parker, Olympia Brown and Mary A. Livermore were drawn from Unitarian and Universalist churches. In 1909 the Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes was a founding member of the NAACP. In the 1960 many UUs were actively involved in the civil rights movement, marching along side Martin Luther King Jr. into the 1965 March on Selma. I would venture to say that all efforts at ending racial discrimination have had Unitarian Universalist representation and participation.

Our Principles and Purposes reflect our history and were born out of the civil rights movement. Our first principle honors “the inherent worth and dignity of all people.” Our second principle directs us toward “justice, equity and compassion in human relations.”

But our record hasn’t been spotless. The men and women who founded Unitarianism were some of the Boston elite who profited handsomely by the slave trade. Although Meadville Theological School admitted its first African American student in 1870, it took till 1961 for the first African American to be settled as minister of the Chico Unitarian Fellowship in California. In 1969 our Association nearly fractured over the Black Empowerment Controversy when the Black Affairs Council staged a massive walk out of the General Assembly that year.

In recent years there has been a strong effort in our association to heal, to resolve and to accomplish what could not be done in 1969. In 1996 the UUA embarked on what has become the Journey Toward Wholeness program to make our movement anti-racist and anti-oppressive–to learn from our past mistakes, to redeem the times and to do justice. Our Fellowship participated in this endeavor just a few years ago.

In that process I have learned that racism and classism are alive and well. Racism is alive and well in racial profiling; in housing discrimination, job discrimination and covertly in our attitudes. Classism is alive and well in the steadily increasing disparity of income and wealth in our society.

Martin Luther King understood that, and in his Poor People’s March united concerns of class and race. He understood the common ground on which poor whites and poor blacks stood What we don’t always remember is that when King was assassinated in Memphis, he had been witnessing and preaching for economic justice for garbage collectors, of all races. He had recognized the truth that race and class in this country are inextricably intertwined. As our own UUA president, Bill Sinkford reminds us: “If our work for racial justice does not engage with the realities of class it is doomed to fail. Likewise, if we try to reconcile class inequities without acknowledging race, those efforts are equally doomed. ” [1]

Interestingly, our UUA president Bill Sinkford, is the first African American to head an historically white denomination. He has commented that the most frequently asked question as he travels across the country is “How can we attract people of color to our congregations.? His comment is that to make our major goal attracting more people of color is a bankrupt approach. Why would he say that?

The current thinking is that we should become even stronger advocates of anti-racism both in our congregations and in our communities. I certainly agree UU congregations should become forces in their communities to combat insidious systemic racism which works at many levels to keep non-whites down. Because many of us are part of the power structure, we can use that power to try to dismantle systemic racism. We will then be putting our values into action. Upon seeing our values in action, perhaps the minorities will then flock into our congregations because we are fighting their battles for them and with them.

I remind you that Martin Luther King was a Christian, a religious faith which many African Americans continue to embrace. King was a Baptist preacher. He was a religious prophet. He was a disciple of Mahatma Ghandi. He was all of these identities in the best sense. As a preacher and a prophet, he drew from the values of his faith to revolutionize the consciousness of a nation and bring justice to the disenfranchised. One of our greatest teachers in regard to working against racism was Jesus of Nazareth. He spent time with and held up for healing the lowest and most despised of Palestine, mixing with the prostitutes, the tax collectors and the lepers. He brought a message of salvation for all–not just for the privileged and the pure. The teachings of Jesus influenced King and his moral leadership in the Civil Rights movement. Most African Americans continue to identify with King’s interpretation of the Christian faith and may be one reason more of them are not active in our denomination in spite of our strong civil rights record.

These days we hear a lot about how combustive the admixture of religion and politics can be. And yes this is something we should be concerned about. But sometimes when I think of Martin Luther King, I think just the opposite: –that there may be too little religion in our politics, not too much–too little of the religious values preached by Martin Luther King. Too little of the religious values prescribed by the Hebrew prophet Micah: “to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” Too little of the religion taught by Rabbi Jesus, who summed up all the law and the prophets in two great commandments: “to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself.” Too little of the religion as defined by Thomas Jefferson, who said, “It is in our lives and not in our words that our religion must be read.

For instance, Jesus once told a story about the sower of seeds which may convey within it some important wisdom about how we should be going about working for racial and cultural diversity. A sower planting in his field reaches into his sack of seed and scatters it across the ground. In the scattering process, the seeds fall everywhere. Some fall on the path and are easily picked off by the birds. Others fall on rock and do not take root. Others are choked by weeds. And some fall on good soil and sprout returning as much as one hundred fold.

As Jesus interprets the parable to this disciples, the seed is a symbol for the word of God, which the non-theists in the congregation can understand as Truth. The word is scattered into the minds of women and men without discrimination. In some it is snatched away by the forces of deception. In others it brings excitement and joy but doesn’t take root. In others it is choked by daily pleasures, cares and concerns which clutter our lives. But in some it takes root in an honest and good heart and grows with patience.

Our Unitarian Universalist message is good seed. But it won’t grow if we don’t spread it. The sower scatters the seed everywhere. Our message of the inherent worth and dignity of every person and the goodness at the center of all of our hearts isn’t just for white folks. We must scatter our seed everywhere unrestrained by racial or cultural boundaries.

As a small congregation let us consider how we can best scatter the seed over Northwest Westchester County. I believe our seven principles are potent seeds. I urge you to join our Social Action Committee and together seek out ways we can reach out to other races as well as to those of different sexual orientation and seek out ways we can actively address the injustices and biases of class, race, gender and sexual orientation. Change only happens through the active exercise of moral principles.

Let me tell you a story that bears this out in the civil rights movement. In the midst of our presidential election campaign, an unfortunate exchange of words between the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama this week threatened to explode into real conflict, involving the always volatile U.S. issue of race. The dust-up was as unexpected as it was unfortunate, and was sparked in part by comments made about the respective roles of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson in achieving the historic goals of the civil rights movement. But race is the wrong way to view this escalating war of words (with operatives on both sides doing their political jobs of trying to gain from the controversy). Both of these candidates have records on civil rights and racial justice that deserve to be trusted. The truly historic significance of an African American and a woman emerging as leading candidates for president should not be diminished by bad campaign exchanges over race and gender.

The real issue here is the more complicated relationship between social movements and national politics; between moral leaders and elected officials in bringing about social and political change.

The great practitioners of social change - like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi - understood something very important. They knew that you don’t change a society by merely replacing one politician with another. You change a society by changing the political wind. Change the wind, transform the debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which political decisions are being made, and you will change the outcomes. Move the conversation around a crucial issue to a whole new place, and you will open up possibilities for change never dreamed of before. And you will be surprised at how fast the politicians adjust to the change in the wind.

The story of the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 is a good historical example. [2]

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had just won the Nobel Peace Prize and was ready to come home from Norway. The freedom movement had achieved a great victory in securing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and King was honored as the newest Nobel laureate. But the civil rights leader decided to stop by Washington, D.C., before heading back home to Atlanta–because he needed to meet with the president of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

King told Johnson that the next step on the road to freedom was a voting rights act, without which black Americans in the South would never be able to really change their communities. But the nation’s master of realpolitik told the U.S.’s moral leader that he couldn’t deliver a voting rights act. Johnson said he had cashed in all his “chips” with the southern senators to get the civil rights law passed and that he had no political capital left. It would be five or 10 years, the president told King, before a voting rights act would be politically possible. But we can’t wait that long, said King. Without voting rights, civil rights couldn’t be fully realized. I’m sorry, Johnson reportedly told King, but a voting rights law just wasn’t politically realistic. They would have to wait.

But Martin Luther King Jr. was not one to simply complain, withdraw, or give up. Instead, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) began organizing–in a little town nobody had ever heard of called Selma, Alabama.

On one fateful day, SCLC leaders marched right across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, alongside the people of Selma, to face the notorious Sheriff Jim Clark and his virtual army of angry white police. On what would be called Bloody Sunday, a young man (and now congressman from Atlanta) named John Lewis was beaten almost to death, and many others were injured or jailed.

Two weeks later, in response to that brutal event, hundreds of clergy from all across the nation and from every denomination came to Selma and joined in the Selma to Montgomery march. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel came down from New York to march beside the black Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr.

The whole nation was watching. The eyes of the U.S. were focused on Selma, as they had been on Birmingham before the civil rights law was passed. And after the historic Selma to Montgomery march for freedom, it took only five months, not five years or 10, to pass a new voting rights act: the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King had changed the wind.

It was a great thing that Johnson responded to the challenge as he did (other presidents might not have), but it was King, not Johnson, who had painted a vivid picture for the world to see that changed the winds of public opinion and made a voting rights act now possible. The Selma campaign had transfixed the nation, dramatically shifted the public debate, and fundamentally altered the political context to make a new voting rights law politically realistic.

It is a good lesson for this year’s presidential race. Change must go deeper than politics. In fact, unless change goes deeper, politics won’t really change. No matter which candidate finally wins this presidential election, he or she will not be able to really change the big things in the U.S. and the world that must be changed, unless and until there are social movements pushing for those changes from outside of politics. Because when politics fails to resolve or even address the most significant moral issues, what often occurs is that social movements rise up to change politics; and the best social movements always have spiritual foundations.

Even a candidate who runs on change, really wants it, and goes to Washington to make it, will confront a vast array of powerful forces which will do everything possible to prevent real change. Politics is unlikely to be changed merely from within - no matter who wins, and no matter how sincere they are, we will not see significant change unless, and until, the pressure increases from the outside. Remember, President Lyndon Johnson didn’t become a civil rights leader until Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks made him one.

[1] UUA Website
[2] Sojourners Blog, 1/19/08