“Most Americans’ image of Martin Luther King, Jr. is frozen in time on August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.” I don’t remember a lot of exact (or near exact) quotes from my days as a student at Vanderbilt Divinity School, but this one by Dr. Lewis Baldwin has always stuck in my mind. I was taking his “Martin Luther King, Jr. and The Social Roles of Religion” class during a spring semester at Vanderbilt. I think one of the reasons Dr. Baldwin’s comment resonated with me so powerfully was that I was (and am) guilty of it.
It’s hard to avoid this move. There is so much that is naturally iconic about that moment in time: the swelling crowd, the symbolic backdrop of the Lincoln Memorial, and the powerful, poetic, and prophetic oration of Dr. King. All of this is preserved on film to endlessly loop in our common memory. It is the image of King our children are introduced to in school and the image that we most naturally turn to on this holiday. It is hard not to be swept up in the power of the beauty of King’s concrete imagery used to describe the “beloved community”.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
This imagery and the way it has been etched on our national consciousness is powerful and it stirs our better nature and fuels our hopes. But we make a mistake in thinking that all the work of reconciliation and healing were done late August of 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial or a year later with the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. What Dr. Baldwin was trying to get across to us in his class was that the source of Dr. King’s passion for justice was rooted in the God of justice whom King encountered in Jesus Christ and saw reflected in figures like Ghandi. The justice of God is uncompromising and does not rest content with partial victories and compromises no matter how significant. What King discovered was that the passionate pursuit of justice leads one to see the deep interconnections of life. On the one hand, injustice is revealed to be more complex than removing a few stubborn weeds from life’s gardens. Below the surface we discover that the roots are deep and intertwined together. King’s own journey beyond the steps of the Lincoln Memorial led him to see the connections between racism, poverty, militarism, and the dangers inherent when a nation deifies profits over people.
In his lecture to us, Dr. Baldwin was helping us see that our cultural tendency to freeze Dr. King in time was a way of domesticating his message and call, a move to soften the edges of his movement. He reminded us that the Martin Luther King, Jr. who inspires us was also the same Martin Luther King, Jr. whose move to broaden his cause brought him into conflict with former allies. King believed deeply that a vision of God’s justice made one uneasy with situations that compromised the image of God in the poor and oppressed whether white or black, American or Vietnamese. Matt Kelley does a good job in speaking to the way in which King’s legacy must include an awareness of his critique of militarism and structures of poverty and the unfinished work of his legacy that remains in his recent post.
I think one of the reasons I am tempted to “freeze” King in time is the same reason I often settle for a domesticated Christianity that doesn’t ask much more from me than to be nice to others and to try not to be so selfish. I have a picture in my office from a Time/Life coffee table book my mother in law had. It highlights iconic photographs from Life magazine with quotes about those individuals from their associates and colleagues. In the book is a picture of Dr. King being manhandled by police as he is booked for arrest. I keep a picture of the quote from Bayard Rustin that accompanies King’s picture and it haunts me everyone time I read it:
It is a dangerous thing to have the hand of the Lord upon us. The fear this danger evokes is probably why I would rather freeze King in time and why I secretly would rather God give me a friendly “thumbs up” or wave from a distance than to experience the divine hand on my shoulder. So that is why today for me is a day not only to remember but also a day to confess and to pray for courage that accompanies vision. It is to remember not only the Martin Luther King who had a dream, but also the one who reminds us that “a time comes when silence is betrayal.”
