Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, Ph.D.
(This is the full text of the lecture delivered at the 2016 Festival of Preaching at St. Mary's Ecumenical Institute in Baltimore, MD on Saturday, April 16, 2016.)
The preaching,
public ministry and practice of public theology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
offer us critical lenses through which we can look and see the prophetic role
of the preacher in the twenty-first century.
In as much as Dr. King was a Baptist preacher and pastor, along with
being most known in the public sphere as a Civil Rights leader, He was a public
theologian bringing to bear his theological training, upon the social
conditions of his time. For him, faith –
what we believe about God and the universe – was to be acted out in ways that
brought about not only spiritual transformation, but social transformation.
This is to say
that for King, if the church was to be the church, it would engage in prophetic
witness that would bring its spiritual, social, economic and political
resources to bear in ways that would affirm God’s love, and be truly
reconciling, redeeming, liberating and transforming.
In his preaching
and praxis of ministry, King’s own particular prophetic concerns were to
address what he deemed to be the “triplets of evil” – racism, classism
(economic inequality), and militarism (war).
His witness would spawn a religious and social movement unparalleled in
American history. The demand for racial and
social justice in the South would be the impetus for concomitant social and
political movements across a number of sectors:
·
The roots of the struggle for women’s rights
(feminism and womanism), the rights of
gays and lesbians, the rights of workers and the disabled, and the rights of immigrants of
various hews of brown, red, yellow and black can be traced to the prophetic stance of Dr.
King.
gays and lesbians, the rights of workers and the disabled, and the rights of immigrants of
various hews of brown, red, yellow and black can be traced to the prophetic stance of Dr.
King.
·
It was King who espoused a form of nonviolent
social resistance and direct action that would ultimately lead to the passage
of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) by the Congress
of the United States.
·
The epistemological foundations of affirmative
action – however we might view it today – is rooted in King’s prophetic vision
of equality and justice throughout society.
·
The American Civil Rights movement - led by Dr.
King - served as an impetus and model of liberation and human rights movements
across the globe – in Africa , Asia , Europe , and
Central and South America .
Here, I will address the legacy of
Dr. Martin Luther King, with particular focus on ways that the preachers today might
seek to appropriate and re-appropriate prophetic preaching and praxis within the
context of 21st century realities in the church and society. This analysis will entail three parts. First, a brief overview of prophetic
preaching – what it is - will be offered.
Second, an analysis of the spiritual, social and intellectual
development of Martin Luther King, Jr. will be offered. Here the formative influences (roots) -
familial, spiritual (the church), communal, and intellectual - on King’s
thought and praxis will be examined. Who
and what in his development most influenced King? Thirdly, a brief analysis of King’s
preaching and prophetic witness will be offered with a focus on implications
for the 21st century church. What
might we glean from preaching and praxis of King as we seek to effect change
into the future?
I.
AFFLICTING THE COMFORTABLE: PROPHETIC REACHING
AND PUBLIC THEOLOGY
What are we speaking of when we
speak of prophetic preaching? When
addressing the matter of the prophetic role of the preacher, several questions
must be raised. How does the preacher speak
to the church and to the society with a prophetic voice? From whence does the power and authority of
the preacher come? From whence has the
power and authority of the preacher been derived in history?
What
are the words that will “afflict the
comfortable” and speak truth to power?
What words will speak to the systemic evils of the churches and the
world, and lead persons to faith in Christ, and lead even those who may lack
faith toward social transformation and just action?
Is
there a word from the Lord today that will sufficiently – adequately –
relevantly speak to increasingly complex social concerns, and lead to wholeness
of individuals and communities?
What
words from the Lord speak to disparities in employment, education, health-care,
housing, safety and technology? Is there
a word from the Lord that speaks to drug trafficking and addiction, violence,
gambling, and abortion? Is there a word
from the Lord that speaks to gender justice, marriage equality, human
trafficking, misogyny toward girls and women, domestic violence, police
brutality, homelessness, war, global warming, environmental injustice, white
supremacy, conspicuous consumption, materialism, and greed?
What
resources can the preacher today draw upon to empower her or him to speak to
the abject poverty, racism, sexism, and classism incumbent across much of
society and extant and many of our communities?
Is
there a word from the Lord about Ferguson, Charleston, Cleveland, Chicago, Flint,
and Baltimore? How might the preacher
speak to the death inflicted upon the likes of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown,
Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and Freddie Gray?
What happens when the preacher is accused
of mixing politics and religion? How
can we preach in the legacy and tradition of the likes of Jarena Lee and Martin
Luther King, Jr… Fannie Lou Hamer and Adam Clayton Powell… Katie Canon and Jeremiah
Wright?
Should it be the preacher’s role to speak to any issues of social and political concern, or are preachers only to speak of spiritual and pastoral matters?
How might preachers today balance their pastoral, priestly and prophetic functions in preaching?
Should it be the preacher’s role to speak to any issues of social and political concern, or are preachers only to speak of spiritual and pastoral matters?
How might preachers today balance their pastoral, priestly and prophetic functions in preaching?
When speaking of prophetic preaching, we are
essentially speaking of preaching which calls persons and structures back into relationship
with God, and preaching that paves the way for the coming reign of
God.
Prophetic
preaching is rooted in the Old Testament
biblical traditions, and in the
public ministries of the likes of John the Baptist and Jesus. It was generally the task of biblical
prophets to speak to real conditions, which existed among Hebrew people – and
to call people back into covenant relationship with God. The biblical prophets, thus, stood with one
foot in the past – reminding Israel of its history in God – and with one foot
in the future. Thus, the paradigm for
the biblical prophetic preacher is a dialectical paradigm of history and hope –
past, present and future.
It speaks holistically
to the existential concerns of people and communities. It speaks to the hurts and hopes, and
ultimately challenges the status quo with the expectation of liberation from oppression and deliverance for God’s
people.
Marvin McMickle,
the author of Where have All the Prophets Gone?, asserts that prophetic preaching shifts the focus of a
congregation from what is happening as a local church to what is happening to
them as a part of society.
McMickle asserts that there is a need to
recover this prophetic tradition in light of four prevailing trends in much
of preaching today -
•
An unclear/narrow
understanding of morality
•
An overzealous
preoccupation with praise and worship
•
A false
and narrow view of Patriotism
•
An
unbalanced focus on prosperity and personal enrichment themes.
McMickle further
asserts that prophetic preaching happens
when the preacher has the courage to speak truth to power not only inside
the church building, but also in the streets and boardrooms and jail cells of
the secular world.
Thus, the need for prophetic
preaching today.
II.
THE ROOTS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR’S
SPIRITUAL, SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
In order to
comprehensively understand Martin Luther King’s public achievement - it is
critical to consider the spiritual, social and intellectual influences on his
life. Throughout his public life, King
consistently reached down into the deep streams of the religious experience and
social integration that had been so integral to his early formation. It was within these streams that he seemed to
consistently discover and re-discover the essence of a faithfulness in God,
which would ultimately sustain him in his constant beckoning for persons in the
church and society to heed the words of the Prophet Micah, to:
“love kindness, and to do justice, and to walk
humbly with God.”
(Micah
6:8) and,
Amos, to:
“Let justice roll
down as waters, and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)
In many of the
biographical works that have been written on Martin Luther King, Jr., a great
deal of attention has been given to his intellectual development at Morehouse
College in Atlanta, Crozer Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and Boston
University where he completed his doctoral studies in 1955. Certainly, his spiritual, emotional and
intellectual development at these institutions, along with additional academic
work at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, would provide
the foundation for his public ministry.
These institutions would provide the “fertile ground” necessary for
progress in what King would refer to as “a serious intellectual quest for a
method to eliminate social evil.”
But in order to
comprehend King’s movement toward a theological praxis of non-violent social
resistance, as a prophetic preacher and public theologian, his experiences and development
in these institutions should be considered against the backdrop, and within the
context of his earlier development.
I would suggest
that there were three major influences present in King’s early life that shaped
his later attitudes and actions. These
were:
(1)
His black middle class family (which included his
extended family and the family/community ethos in which he was raised)
(2)
The religion of
the Black Baptist church
(3)
The patterns of
racial segregation and discrimination in the South.
Lewis V. Baldwin
in There is a Balm, suggests that
King’s cultural roots were “folk, black, and southern.” These cultural roots remained a part of
King’s thought and praxis into his adult years.
Foundational to
his early development were King’s early family experiences. In Liberating
Visions, Robert Franklin suggests
that King’s fundamental character was shaped and nurtured within the valuing
context of the southern middle-class family structure. The Kings and Williamses were prominent
leaders in the “new South.” His family tree included a long line of Baptist
preachers (his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were ministers), and
outspoken advocates for freedom and justice.
King’s views on racism in America can be
clearly traced to his early development.
In his biography, Let the Trumpet
Sound, Stephen B. Oates reports on King’s preschool years, when his closest
playmate was a white boy whose father owned the store across the street from
the King family home. When the two
friends entered school in 1935, they attended separate schools. One day, the parents of his friend announced
that M.L. could no longer play with their son.
Their explanation was, “Because we are white and you are colored.”
Later, around the
dinner table, King’s parents responded to his hurt by telling him the story of
the black experience in America. Oates
points out that it was typically through conversations such as this (around the
dinner table) that black youth would be socialized into the protest traditions
of the black community and church.
King’s early
childhood experience with racism predisposed him to study and address the
psychological and social effects of oppression.
His later formal education was predicated upon and guided by the more
informal learning and personal experience of his early years within the
nurturing context of a close-knit family, church, and culture.
These
early influences are evident in the King’s later intellectual attraction to:
(1)
A model of the rational, black minister as organic
intellectual as modeled by Benjamin Mays at Morehouse College and Mordecai
Johnson at Howard University
(2)
The model and
method of nonviolent social transformation of Mohandas Gandhi, the Indian
political/social reformer
(3)
The philosophy
of Personalism of Harold DeWolf and Edgar Brightman at Boston University
(4)
The Dialectical Method of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel
(5)
The Christian Liberalism and Social Gospel of Walter
Rauchenbusch
(6)
The Christian
Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr
And so, with these
cultural and intellectual influences, theologian James Cone speaks of the
impact of Martin Luther King’s prophetic witness in writing:
As a prophet,
with a charisma never before witnessed in this century, King preached black
liberation in the light of Jesus Christ and thus aroused the spirit of freedom
in the black community. To be sure, one
may argue that his method of nonviolence did not meet the needs of the black
community in an age of black power; but it is beyond question that it was King’s
influence and leadership in the black community which brought us to the period
in which we now live, and for that we are in debt. His life and message demonstrate that the
“soul” of the black community is inseparable from liberation, but always liberation
grounded in Jesus Christ…[i]
The recurring
theme and consistent overarching prophetic concern in King’s sermons,
throughout his career, was what he called Beloved
Community. It was rooted in the
biblical notion of Agape (God’s
unconditional love), and was the ultimate goal for which he worked.
In King’s
conception of Beloved Community,
faith and action were interrelated. In
this regard, King viewed theology and ethics as indelibly interconnected. Theology – what we believe and comprehend
about God (how we talk about God), could not be separated from ethics - who we
are, and what we do as the human family.
Our creed and our deed had to be in concert. Our talk and our walk had to correspond.
This faith-action
(creed-deed) dialectic found its ultimate expression in the notion of Beloved Community. For King, the Beloved Community was an integrated community in which persons of
all races and creeds lived together harmoniously as sisters and brothers in
peace. It was the Kingdom of God on
earth. King stated, “I do not think of
political power as an end. Neither do I
think of economic power as an end. They
are ingredients in the objective we seek in life. And I think that end, that objective, is a
truly brotherly society, the creation of Beloved
Community.”[ii]
IIIII.
THE LEGACY OF DR. KING – WHAT MIGHT WE
APPROPRIATE?
Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. spoke to the divine and moral imperative that the church and society shares
in seeking to eradicate racial hatred and social disintegration, and advanced
the appropriation of the Christian love-ethic as foundational for
constructively moving toward the realization of authentic community – Beloved Community. King asserted that God’s intent is for the
human family to live in community as interrelated members. In the final
analysis, King’s preaching and praxis offer insight to the contemporary church and
preachers - and has implications and application - in at least three principle
areas: Call, Conviction and Commitment.
Call
Over the course of
King’s 13 year public ministry it became clear that his praxis of ministry in
the public sphere was ultimately rooted in a deep sense of a call by God. This sense of calling is what ultimately spawned
his action. For instance, there is not
an indication that King had any personal intent or professional inclination to
become the leader of the movement for racial and social justice in the South,
but with the course and convergence of events within the context of his public
ministry in Alabama - like Biblical prophets - King came to the conclusion that
it was indeed a part of his vocation and call the become one the prophetic public
voices of the Civil Rights movement.
Likewise, it is incumbent upon preachers today to clearly discern as to
if and how they may be called by God to engage in public ministry and address
prophetic concerns as they might emerge.
Conviction
For King, his
sense of calling was acted upon within the context of his convictions. King’s convictions were largely rooted in his
understanding of God and people. King
believed that all persons were created by God with inherent worth, and that all
people were therefore privy to the moral prerogative of human dignity. King consistently affirmed what he deemed to
be the “Somebodyness” of all people regardless of race, class or other
categories.
Ultimately, it was
these convictions that led to his prophetic witness. Likewise, it is incumbent
upon preachers who might engage in the public square today to be equally as
clear about our convictions – and what we believe about God and God’s people.
Commitment
In the midst of
the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-56, Dr. King made a statement that would
become a signature of his prophetic witness when he said that “True peace in not merely the absence of tension,
it is the presence of justice.” He
would later state that “The moral arc of the universe in broad, and it always
bends toward justice.” These two
statements speak clearly to King’s commitment to racial and social justice, and
his strivings to help eradicate the “triplets of evil” of racism, poverty and
war. It was out of his sense of calling
and conviction that his commitments to justice derived. Today, prophetic preaching and praxis likewise
calls for clear consistent commitment in light of calling and conviction.
[i]
James Cone, A Black Theology of
Liberation, 37.
[ii]
Martin Luther King, Jr., in The Christian
Century, (Chicago, IL: Christian Century, July 13, 1966).
No comments:
Post a Comment