I recently wrote a diary called What is a left wing Evangelical Christian?
I was totally unprepared for the overwhelming response. Most of the comments were either thoughtful or thought provoking and sometimes both. I am still processing all of that and will return to it in a later diary.
Today I am going to talk about the man who inspired me to be both a Christian and a social activist. The Reverend Martin Luther King Junior.
I am not going to talk about his birth but rather about the day he died. That event changed me forever.
I was 11 years old on April 4th, 1968. If you had told me the tears I cried that day would eventually shape my entire life I'd have said you were nuts. But a man I never met, who died more than 50 years ago remains for me the inspiration for my thirst for social justice and an example of the immense power of a courageous voice.
But on the day I was inconsolable. I was confined to bed and had been for months, depression and illness were already my constant companions. Seeing yet another great man assassinated was the tipping point.
Fearing for me my parents and family tried to distract me. It was a family friend who came up with the perfect treatment. It was a dusty old book about a nerdy young man who more or less out of necessity went to sea spending months fighting horrible sea sickness, terrible conditions, and a hostile crew who had no use for a young scientist. But in the end he comes to these magical islands in the middle of the ocean and there this devoutly religious young man finds his true calling.
And thus is was that on the day Martin Luther King Jr. died I made the acquaintance of the young Charles Darwin. On the same day I committed, if I ever got healthy to being a Christian and a social activist I discovered the great love of my life. Biology.
There is a pernicious belief widely prevalent in the land that you can’t be a learned person, a scientist and a mathematician, and be devoutly religious. But for me the two have always been inextricably linked. They are joined by the death of the Reverend King.
Needless to say I am a King nerd.
And knowing that once a year the young Reverend who leads my church lets me deliver a sermon on the life and message of Martin Luther King Junior. I call it Speaking Truth to Power.
This past Sunday was the day.
After service over coffee and cakes I asked people if they thought they were evangelical Christians or not. This was a question that came up over and over again in the responses to my first diary. How do you define evangelical Christian? Which is a fair question and one I am truly struggling to answer.
My fellow congregants turned my question around on me. They asked if Martin Luther King Jr. was an evangelical Christian? I have read every word he wrote, listened to his speeches repeatedly, devoured biographies and I really still can't answer that question definitively.
The best thing I have read on the subject remains a piece that originally appeared on Huffington Post but the link below is from Auburn Seminary which is where the author comes from.
https://auburnseminary.org/voices/7-ways-know-youre-rev-martin-luther-king-jr-kind-christian/
It asks all Christians if they are a Martin Luther King Jr. kind of Christian?
In it the author, Reverend Paul Brandeis Raushenbush proposes 7 tests based on the life and teachings of the Reverend King. I am going to use those tests here as the basis of a highly personal essay.
I think the logical connection between social activist Christians and progressive democrats has broken down nearly completely. There are many reasons for this but at the heart of it is a creeping distrust progressives have developed for Christianity. We have all just seen this distrust lead to a rush to judgement in the case of Covington High School students. And that is just one example.
I can’t overcome the barriers that have formed by myself. All I can do is let my voice and my own unique point of view be heard.
I am a self described left wing evangelical christian. These are my answers to the Reverend Raushenbush’s 7 questions. I speak for no one but myself. But I encourage you all, in celebration of Reverend King’s awe inspiring life and tragic death to take a moment to answer all these questions. I encourage people who don’t practice an active faith to replace the word faith with the word life.
1. Does your faith encourage an active and prophetic stance towards creating justice in this world; or does it explicitly or implicitly encourage a complacency towards inequality here on earth with the idea that faith is more spiritual than social and that it will all work out in the afterlife?
My faith is activist. Until yesterday I would have told you acting on your faith is one of the duties of an evangelical Christian. It seems many people don't think that is a requirement. But I continue to think it is at the core of evangelical faith. Though how you chose to act on your faith may vary radically from evangelical to evangelical. In this at least Martin Luther King Jr. was evangelical.
Living the Gospel is for me, and I think many Christians (evangelical or otherwise) would agree, is about making the world better here and now. One very powerful tool for doing that is improving social justice. But you can be evangelical and default to the afterlife to remedy all ills. Martin Luther King Jr. chose another and I believe far better path.
2. Does your faith affirm the fundamental dignity and worth of all people and reject any claims of superiority, ether explicit or implicit, based on identities including race, religion, sexuality, gender, class or nationality?
I really struggle to understand how any evangelical Christian can fail to affirm these self evident truths. Another core believe of evangelism is that we are called to the Gospel of the life of Jesus Christ. At no time did Jesus discriminate against anyone. He did the exact opposite. How so many people can preach and practice actions that fly in the face of Christ's teachings befuddles me.
I think it did Martin Luther King Jr. as well. He walked in Jesus' footsteps in the very best way he could.
3. Does your faith encourage critical examination of the context and deeper meanings of teachings and scriptures and is it open to continued revelation of eternal truths that come with new knowledge, instead of a fundamentalism that idolizes the past?
This is a very high bar for any Christian never mind an evangelical. I come from a faith tradition that requires me to daily challenge my faith and its role in my life and the world. I don't find it easy work. And I don't think Martin Luther King Jr. did either.
You can be an evangelical and take a hard fundamentalist stance. But you don't have to in order to be an evangelical Christian. You can choose to live in the present and act on the future.
4. Does your faith promote non-violence, and believe that war is only to be used as a last choice or not at all? Does your faith confront and reject teaching that might cause anyone to act with violence or incite rage or hatred towards others.
I always want to smite evil doers. And those who have done me wrong. They are of course not always the same thing. Not that I distinguish. I want to punch and kick and scream and shout and generally mess them about.
Like many of you I am a child of the assassinations of good men. How could you not want to strike back. Oddly, in the life of one of the assassinated (King) we see complete commitment to giving peace a chance.
For me the evangelical path requires a life of non-violence. Evangelicals are meant to be leading a life based on the Gospels, on Jesus' life and teaching. Jesus was non-violent. Thus as an evangelical I am called to non-violence. Even if it seems unnatural.
5. Does your faith further interfaith cooperation and empower your ability to feel compassion for the suffering of those who are different from you and see the wider interconnected responsibility of the human family instead of caring only about and for those in your immediate group?
I come from an Ecumenical faith. We are welcoming and embracing of other faiths and religions even though 600 years ago our founder was put to death my Catholics who thought him a heretic. The solution to intolerance, Dr. King taught us, is not more intolerance however great the temptation. It is building bridges. I couldn't practice a faith that didn't build bridges.
Here the Reverend King and I are in complete agreement. Jesus' life as described in the Gospels is one of inclusion, empathy, and responsibility. Nobody could seriously read the Gospels and not understand that.
As an evangelical, that is someone who tries to live the Gospels and share my joy with others I can not fathom how so many of my fellow self-described evangelicals practice hate and xenophobia. This was also a sticking point for Martin Luther King Jr. Only a small number of evangelicals of any colour or denomination supported the civil rights movement. But by definition they all should have and many none evangelical Christians had no problem doing so.
This is where the ever widening gulf between left wing evangelicals like myself and right wing fundamentalist evangelical Christians began to form. That gulf has widened to a point I am struggling to find any remnants of a Gospel based faith in their religious beliefs.
6. Does your faith promote social justice and equality as well as individual charity as both integral parts of the Gospel?
How on Earth can anybody read the Gospels and miss all three of the legs of the Christian stool. They aren't just integral they are the very point. While Christ died for our sins and to give us the possibility of redemption he lived to preach social justice, equality, and charity.
Martin Luther King Jr. couldn't understand why this is not self evident to all Christians and neither can I. How is it possible to claim to be living the Gospel and act in complete discord with the life of the man (the Son of God) you claim to worship? I would say fighting for social justice, promoting equality, and acts of individual charity are requirements of all evangelical Christians.
7. Is your faith grounded first and foremost in love, and do you believe that love, not dogma or judgment, is the defining characteristic of God?
My person faith and that of my church is built on two statements about love. Love God! Love thy neighbour as thy self! These used to be central tenets of the Evangelical Movement. The first is still paid lip service to, though its implications are obscured. The second seems to have been forgotten by far too may.
It is that second idea that drove the life of the remarkable Reverend King. It was that love that powered his mission. And it is that love that gives his message the ability to move us today as we honour him.
It was such a central part of his life, as was his attempt to live the Gospel that I am lead to conclude that much as the actions of other evangelicals disappointed him he remained an evangelical Christian through out his life. He preached love, he shared love, and he drew strength and power from the Gospel and those are core evangelical beliefs.
In my next diary I am going to introduce some of the many voices on both the right and the left that are crying out that we must redefine evangelical and take the word and the faith back from the Trumpites (and sadly, yes that is a thing).
In the meantime I want to share with you the last line of Sunday's sermon.
"It is time we stop honouring Martin Luther King Jr. and long past time we begin walking in his footsteps."
The revolution is here.