Conservatives & MLK

I’m somewhat active in the Twittersphere, and the other day I came across this gem (which also included a picture of a clown reading a large book):

@cpoliticditto, 1/14/22

Republican politicians, researching MLK quotes to tweet while disrespecting his legacy 364 days a year

While many things could be said regarding Republican politicians, I immediately thought of the same practice among white conservative evangelical pastors. While they may give lip service to “racial reconciliation” year-round, they quote MLK one day per year while decrying nonviolent protests like Colin Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter (95% of whose demonstrations have been peaceful, and it’s not clear who escalated the violence in the 5%). These protests, of course, are clear analogues to the nonviolent activism of MLK himself.

I am not simply speculating that white conservative pastors do this. I have witnessed it firsthand many times while on staff at an evangelical megachurch. It turns out one of these experiences was captured on video!, so today we will have a brief story time, followed by some resources to hear from Dr. King in his own words.

MLK Day, 2017

My new boss, a transplant from the deep South, had been on the job for about six months. He had taken over as campus pastor of a predominantly white congregation (one of many in our multi-site church) in a historically Black neighborhood. During those six months, Trump was elected president and was about to take office.

It was decreed from church leadership at the original campus (in a wealthy suburb that is 98% white) that every location of the church must have a special moment during the service to honor MLK. I remember my new boss rolling his eyes at this decision, despite trying to express excitement during the moment itself in his comments below.

After a worship song or two, my boss welcomed everyone and drew their attention to the communicator card they received on the way in, urging them to fill it out. Then came our MLK moment (and because of video footage, this is verbatim except for light edits for grammar and length):

Today is a special, special day, and tomorrow is a special day that I did not want us to go without acknowledging. Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Since we are a multi-ethnic fellowship, I think it’s always important to pull these things out. So I looked at some of my favorite quotes from MLK, and you know there was civil rights and all the things he did, but he was also just a preacher, and that’s what captures my heart. He was a Christ-follower first. And I believe he will go down in the annals of history: the apostle Paul, the great church forefathers, and he will go down in that lens.

I love this quote from him, and I wanted to read it not to celebrate him, but to celebrate a brother in Christ, who it’s an understatement to say did so much so that we could have unity here today and do what we’re doing. Listen to this, which is attributed to him and is one of my favorites: “I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

I don’t mean to not underscore the importance of the Civil Rights Movement by any stretch of the imagination—that would be foolish—but he was a Christ-follower first. And Dr. King, while I can’t speak for him, he found what he was made for, and it cost him his life…

So I pray that tomorrow, whether you have the day off or you’re working, don’t just look to that and remember a good man. Remember what he stood for, and that he found something he was willing to die for. And challenge yourself with that: what is it in your life that you’re willing to die for?

Why am I posting this in nearly its entirety? For one, the pastor is confirming the above tweet out loud: “I looked at some of my favorite quotes from MLK”: Oh, is it mid-January again? I better look up some MLK quotes, even though I disagree with every aspect of his legacy outside of the bare “colorblind” equality written into our laws.

But second, look at the gymnastics this pastor has to do in order to “honor” a person he is so ideologically opposed to!

• “You know there was civil rights and all the things he did, but he was also just a preacher, and that’s what captures my heart.” This is the common ground he can find with MLK: they’re both preachers. (NOT the civil rights work!)

• “He was a Christ-follower first… he was a Christ-follower first.” The pastor says this not once, but twice. He feels the need to rank MLK’s priorities: following Jesus first, fighting for racial justice second. Is this how MLK would describe his own life? (My pastor acknowledged that he can’t speak for MLK, but he sure tried pretty hard to do so.) Or would MLK view the two as inseparably united in his own work?

• “…not to celebrate him, but to celebrate a brother in Christ.” What a strange and telling idea: we will not celebrate MLK—we will celebrate only his status as a brother in Christ.

• “And challenge yourself with that: what is it in your life that you’re willing to die for?” Here’s the takeaway. It’s not to examine your own racial bias. It’s not to oppose policies that harm people of color. It’s not to embrace nonviolent protest. It’s to find something in your own life that you can be passionate about.

MLK’s words and context

The quote my old boss decided to use, the result of his 3-minute Google search of MLK quotes, actually has a pretty interesting context. By 1963, MLK was beginning to shift some of his focus from the South to the North. While there was still much work to do in the South to oppose the horrors of Jim Crow, there was also systemic racism in the industrial North. So Dr. King began to spend more time in the North, to spread the message of nonviolent protest and racial justice.

One such northern project was a march in Detroit. This is where he said the quote above (which my boss said was “attributed to him”), in a section of his speech about nonviolent protest:

For we’ve come to see the power of nonviolence. We’ve come to see that this method is not a weak method, for it’s the strong man who can stand up amid opposition, who can stand up amid violence being inflicted upon him and not retaliate with violence.

You see, this method has a way of disarming the opponent. It exposes his moral defenses. It weakens his morale, and at the same time it works on his conscience, and he just doesn’t know what to do. If he doesn’t beat you, wonderful. If he beats you, you develop the quiet courage of accepting blows without retaliating. If he doesn’t put you in jail, wonderful. Nobody with any sense likes to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and human dignity. And even if he tries to kill you, you’ll develop the inner conviction that there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they are worth dying for. And I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

This method has wrought wonders. As a result of the nonviolent Freedom Ride movement, segregation in public transportation has almost passed away absolutely in the South. As a result of the sit-in movement at lunch counters, more than 285 cities have now integrated their lunch counters in the South. I say to you, there is power in this method.

What was the thing MLK had found that was worth dying for? My pastor seemed to suggest it was some vague, spiritual quality of “following Christ,” the mere fact that MLK identified as a Christian. But Dr. King tells us in this very speech. It was the work of desegregation—he risked his life to integrate public transportation and lunch counters. I think it’s fair to say that, for MLK, this was following Christ.

But like my old boss, I can’t speak for MLK. Which is why I’ve tried to let him speak for himself. If you’d like to do the same, here are some resources:

• Here’s the text of the full speech in Detroit quoted above.

• Here’s the famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” As it turns out, this was first published in my new employer’s magazine. This short letter is so famous that it might even feel cliché at this point—but if you’ve never read it, please do. It’s addressed, specifically, to a group of white “moderate” Christians, so it is very relevant for would-be allies.

• Here’s the Twitter account of Bernice King, MLK’s daughter and CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Many of her tweets are powerful quotes from her father, including this one:

  • “The white liberal must see that the Negro needs not only love but also justice. It is not enough to say, ‘We love Negroes, we have many Negro friends.’ They must demand justice for Negroes. Love that does not satisfy justice is no love at all.”

May we not only engage in “love,” a vague sentiment of friendship. May we instead live in real, embodied love—love that demands justice.