BELOVED COMMUNITY TOOL KIT
(by C. Anthony Hunt, Ph.D.)
I. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Beloved
Community
In
the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., at least seven features of beloved community
can be identified.
1.
Beloved community is shaped by a
recognition of racial (and other social) injustices. W.E.B. DuBois posited
in 1903 in the Souls of Black Folk that “the problem of the 20th
Century is the problem of the color line.”
In the years preceding and through the era of the Civil Rights movement,
race/racism remained the prevailing social concern of the time, as is reflected
in the title of sociologist Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 study or race relations in
America – “The American Dilemma – The Negro Problem”.
2.
Beloved community is engaged in action
and reaction rooted in agapic love. Through
the practices of peace-making, community-building and nonviolence it offers alternatives
to established Church (or churches) orders that have placed the cultural idol of
religion over Christ.
3.
Beloved community provides Christians
the best chance walk with Christ in agapic love. The walk toward beloved
community requires that we walk in with genuine love, respect, and humility, so
that I may see a glimpse of the world someone else wants to share with us.
4. A separation of secular and religious
life in atmospheres that are inherently hostile to the Gospel is not possible,
necessitating the formation of beloved community. Instead of trying to prove others wrong,
it beckons us to clothe ourselves with the One who gave ultimate service and offer
people space where they can find a lived gospel experience.
5. Beloved community is sometimes the last
hope for a relationship between God and persons, the oppressors and the
oppressed. There exists in beloved
community a creative and holy tension, a commitment to remain in community even
when the ties that bind are stretched to snapping. We do this because we
understand that we cannot exist without one another. Our individual communities
will not survive without beloved community.
6.
Beloved community is not beholden to the
categories and limitations of earthly pressures, no matter how dire, because it
is contingent upon relationships based in unconditional love and upon God’s imperative.
In beloved community we, like those who
marched and sat-in with Dr. King, prepare ourselves for what may come. We learn
the laws of humankind, and where we feel that the Gospel requires us to take a
stand contrary to the law, we faithfully choose Christ’s example. When we see
human beings being treated unjustly, we, like King, defy whatever State mandate
that, in the following of it, renders us complicit.
7.
Beloved community is that which brings
together the totality of all persons, both individually and collectively, and
provides for them a genuine identity in a disingenuous world. We require some venue through which we can experience
and develop the integrated self and community. We understand, as Josiah Royce
argued, that the virtues of humankind cannot be perfected in solitude. Only in beloved community can we find
ourselves, to stop being individuals and to start being people.
