I hadn’t realized he had written an autobiography, and this is actually a compilation by a historian of those autobiographical pieces he had written over time. It contains some parts of sermons, letters, and observations he made during his life. I was very happy to read some of his comments about his own faith and theology.
Dr. King’s theology was something he thought about from his early teen-age years, struggling with his own faith and understanding of the Bible and religion. He thought about his faith in the context of racial oppression and wanted to come up with an answer, a strategy, that would allow him as someone who was shaped in the Christian tradition, to have an answer for the segregation and racial insult that he, his family, and his people had to endure day in and day out in the South.
Dr. King was well aware of the temptation to an emotion of anger, hatred, and bitterness for himself and all African Americans as the promised rights of the Constitution were denied them in daily life, at the ballot box, and in aspirations for their children. He himself was not poor, but he realized very quickly how segregation in education and employment robbed many people of an opportunity to provide for themselves, and their families, a decent life.
Dr. King was not a perfect man, his understanding of the Bible was different from that of many believers, his moral and spiritual life was not all it should have been and I imagine if he were here today he would agree that some of it was out of accord with what he himself had learned in the home of his parents. Nevertheless Dr. King had a profound and deep theology and understanding of justice as it is taught in the Bible. This is something many Christians today miss as they pursue a religion that is completely privatized, where it is all about their personal salvation or blessing.
Jesus called justice and mercy the “weightier matters of the Law” and unfortunately many Christians have not attempted to incorporate those teachings in their daily practice of Christian life or into a strategy for how they deal with public sin, oppression, and injustice. Dr. King wanted justice, but he wanted to pursue it in distinctly Christian ways, that is by love and peace to secure love and peace. Many of us don’t realize how hard a combination that can be. How can you be a “drum major for justice” when people are treating you as less than a human being, when you see people you know shot and killed, their houses bombed and burned, your own family threatened, falsely accused and put in jail, without wanting to take revenge and get even with violence?
Most of us Americans love freedom, many of our Revolutionary War slogans spoke of being willing to die rather than being a slave. Yet America seemed to expect black folks to be different, that they could put up with being assigned to being a second class citizen and wait until somehow white folks felt they had earned freedom. This was unacceptable to Dr. King, as justice delayed is justice denied. Yet, in God’s mercy Dr. King brought about a social revolution in America that was strongly Biblical in its call for Justice, and strongly Christian in its practice of love and non-violence. It was one of the most powerful social movements in American history, and everyone in our country is now the beneficiary of it.