The Legacy of Dr. King

I think I was in jr. high when I was first introduced to Martin Luther King Jr. I may have learned about him in elementary school (I can't remember), but it was as a teenager that I understood the impact of his life and what he stood for. He has been a role model of mine ever since. Listening to his speeches never gets old to me and his words are still relevant and powerful to us today.

On November 4 of 1956, he delivered a message entitled "Paul's Letter To American Christians." to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. (This is one of a collection of sermons contained within the book entitled "A Knock At Midnight"). Dr. King wrote a modern day (1956) epistle to the American church, borrowing from Paul's various letters to the early churches, and contextualizing the message to the American context of his day. Although, this message (and the others within this book) were preached in the 1950s, so much of their content is relevant to us today in 2009. Here are a few excerpts...

"You can do so many things in your day that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day....You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development. But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress....Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make it a brotherhood."

"You have become the richest nation in the world, and you have built up the greatest system of production that history has every known. All of this is marvelous. But Americans, there is danger that you will misuse your capitalism....You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of your salary and the size of your wheelbase on your automobile, rather than the quality of your service to humanity....They tell me that one tenth of one percent of the population controls more than forty percent of the wealth....God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty. God intends for all of His children to ahve the basic necessities of life, and he has left in this universe 'enough to spare' for that purpose. So I call upon you to bridge the gulf between the abject poverty and the superfluous wealth."

"There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church. You have a white church and you have a Negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such division exist in the Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning to sing "All Hail The Power of Jesus' Name" and "Dear Lord and Father of All Mankind," you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the entertaining world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church. How appalling that is."

"I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may."