Be honest about King's message and its application today
Rev. Geoff Bowden
graduate student
It occurred to me during this year's annual fanfare, reminiscings and half-hearted applications of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ideas to the controversies of the day by the press, that our celebration of the man and his dream has become benign, perhaps even mendacious.
One political pundit, when probed about possible concerns that King would harbor in the current "war on terror," suggested that King's biggest concern would have been to see that the detainees currently held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba were given the proper civil rights afforded them by the strictures of the Geneva Convention.
My beef is not with the veracity of this claim, as he would have doubtlessly been concerned with the treatment of the prisoners. Rather, I am troubled by the short-sightedness and shallow nature of this interpretation of the essence of King's message — an interpretation that seems to be shared by political actors and commentators on both the left and the right.
King's struggle for civil rights was ensconced in a much larger vision for the human community, a vision based on the New Testament witness of Jesus and his faithful followers. The radicality of King's call for peaceful, non-violent resistance to oppression and evil mandates was no less than a query into the dubious prospects for a lasting peace and a genuine reconciliation with enemies while holding our current strategy to annihilate our enemies in Afghanistan and, potentially, all over the planet.
King was becoming increasingly aware of the implications of his tactic of non-violent resistance, observing Gandhi's tentative successes in the multi-fractured society of India at mid-century. But King didn't take lightly the consequences of this call, understanding full well the risks involved in loving one's enemies.
Detractors repeatedly tagged his mantra as excessively idealistic and impractical, leading one to believe that suggesting the application of the idea of non-violent resistance and loving one's enemies to our current engagement with global terrorism would rouse the detractors in spades. Yet King saw no other choice, as discipleship affords only a narrow path: I am certain that Jesus understood the difficulty inherent in the act of loving one's enemy.
He never joined the ranks of those who talk glibly about the easiness of the moral life. He realized that every genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God. So when Jesus said, "love your enemy," he was not unmindful of its stringent qualities. Yet he meant every word of it.
When we see the President, the First Lady or the Senate Majority Leader speak of Rev. King as a moral icon, a hero for civil rights, being honest requires us to be uncomfortable with this easy ascription made by those who apparently have no understanding of the deep core of King's moral vision. If political actors and commentators did have such an understanding, they would know that beyond properly caring for prisoners of war, King would have been most disturbed by the war itself: How can you reconcile yourself to your enemies while simultaneously trying to annihilate them? Is Jesus too small for international relations? Is it possible to love Osama?
These are not easy questions, so perhaps believers should return to the place to which King tirelessly returned: "You have heard that it was said, `but I say to you.'"
Rev. Geoff Bowden
graduate student
Jan. 22, 2002
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, January 24, 2002
