America’s Moral Crossroads

On this Martin Luther King Day, during which the Inauguration festivities repeatedly linked freedom and war, I offer this reminder (written on King Day 2005):

In the years since King’s death, people who insist on reducing him to a “champion for racial justice,” period, have tamed his legacy. This dulls the true prophetic edge of a man who saw his own nation at odds with God’s will both at home and abroad.

        For many Americans, Martin Luther King Day gets lost as one of those minor, even token observances like Labor Day and Veterans Day. Yet there are three important reasons to pay serious attention to this holiday.

(1) Since slavery was America’s "original sin,” and since we still struggle with its consequences, it makes sense to take this occasion to stop and reflect on our Christian responsibilities in promoting a racially just society.

(2) The second reason is somewhat broader: Dr. King was not a public official, nor even a professional politician. He was an ordained Christian minister, a preacher, a trained theologian. By the time of his assassination in April 1968, he had become widely regarded as the moral leader of America. Today he is the only American singled out for his own holiday. He has become the closest thing were have to a national patron saint. Today, when many are concerned about “moral values” (some even expect their President to be their moral leader), King offers a timely example of what moral leadership really looks like.

(3) The third reason may be even timelier: Peace. We’ve just come through the Holy Day of “Peace on Earth” we call Christmas, as well as the World Day of Peace we now celebrate on January 1. Now, two weeks later, we honor the man who finished his career by moving beyond the civil rights movement to become a champion for peace.

Of course, King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 because of his commitment to a non-violent campaign for racial justice. But in his acceptance speech, he spoke of a commitment to non-violence that went beyond race-relations:

“This awards represents a profound recognition that non-violence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time—the need for men to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”

King knew, of course, that such recognition had not yet worked its way into US public policy. Indeed, 40 years later we still try to overcome oppression and violence by resorting to violence and oppression.

The Nobel Prize did not alter King’s character, but it did transform his agenda. While he still fought for black people’s rights, he began to sense the movement had an even higher   calling: to work for all people of good will. “Maybe our mission,” he said, “is to save the soul of America.”

For years King had promoted non-violence as the chief “weapon” in the civil rights struggle. Even as innocent children died in that struggle, he had long preached that the solution was not “getting our ammunition and going out shooting physical weapons.” Instead, he said, “We must know that we have something much more powerful. Just take up the ammunition of love.”

This was nothing but straight Gospel talk, of course, but King was coming to see non-violence as more than just a tool—in fact, as a value in itself—and he began to address himself to “Americans of good will who are committed to the struggle for brotherhood and the crusade for world peace.”

By then the US was not just struggling with civil rights; it was also a nation at war. Many within the movement urged King not to overstep his role, not to risk bogging down in the growing national turmoil over war in Vietnam. But finally King’s conscience dictated that he break his silence on the war, even if it meant breaking ranks with his allies in the movement.

The decisive moment came in April 1967, with his sermon at Riverside Church in New York City, the speech now known as the “Silence of the Night” speech, the speech many historians regard as King’s greatest—and the speech that redefined his place in American life.

He admitted that many supporters lamented his move, asking, “Why are you joining the voices of dissent?” and arguing “Peace and civil rights don’t mix.” His response: “My conscience leaves me no other choice. ” For he had come to see a darkness closing around America, and he believed someone had to break “the silence of the night.”

What was that darkness? It was the victory of violence in the world—not only violence by those oppressing racial minorities, but especially by “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.” He even worried that the war could make America a nation whose soul was “totally poisoned.”

He knew this would shock many, but he challenged them to see the logic of his outlook, appealing to his vocation as a minister of Jesus Christ:

 To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war... Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them?

For King, as for Pope John Paul II, being a Christian means being above all a citizen of the world, and he shared the world’s view that US war-making was “disgraceful” and “perverse.” He urged all draft-aged people to seek conscientious objector status, and called on clergy to mobilize war resistance.

But King was not done.

“The war in Vietnam,” he said, “is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” The world, he said, is going through a major historical revolution, and our nation is “on the wrong side.” Without  “a significant and profound change in American life and policy,” he feared we would be mired in violence and turmoil for generations to come. Believing this, he proposed a radical shift in American values:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies…A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth…A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." …America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war.

This marked a major turn in King’s ministry. Until now he had always argued that the civil rights movement was needed to fulfill the “core American values” this nation was founded upon. Now, in a new and radical way, he was arguing those values needed to change if America was to meet its responsibilities to the world and to the Gospels.

In the years since King’s death, people who insist on reducing him to a “champion for racial justice,” period, have tamed his legacy. This dulls the true prophetic edge of a man who saw his own nation at odds with God’s will both at home and abroad.

Taming King’s message does disservice to both him and to our people, for today our nation still continues its warlike ways, yet Americans cry out for truer values. We cannot pretend to fulfill his dream by making peace with African-Americans if we also continue to be “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

King concluded his Riverside talk by depicting America at a moral crossroads, faced with a historic choice. Would we choose the shameful legacy of nations who possess “power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight”? Or would we instead choose to end the night by learning to make peace our way in the world?

 If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

 America failed to heed him then, and 38 years later we find ourselves still stuck in the vicious cycle of violence. Is it our dark dead end, or have we simply circled back to the same old moral crossroads? If so, perhaps we have another chance to make the right choice, if only we will want the bright dream he dreamed. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2005