{"id":2348,"date":"2023-02-06T07:39:04","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T12:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2348"},"modified":"2023-02-06T07:39:04","modified_gmt":"2023-02-06T12:39:04","slug":"equal-souls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/06\/equal-souls\/","title":{"rendered":"Equal Souls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>.
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At the beginning of this first full week of Black History Month, it\u2019s clear America\u2019s civil rights movement still has a long way to go.\u00a0
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The unique gift of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s leadership continues to bear fruit, even in his absence.\u00a0
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But something else is missing from the landscape of contemporary civil rights activism: MLK\u2019s resilient trust in God.
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Lewis Baldwin, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of African American Studies at Vanderbilt University, points out that many labels were attached to King during his lifetime.\u00a0 \u201cHe was called a civil rights activist.\u00a0 He was called a social activist, a social change agent, a world figure.\u00a0 But I think he thought of himself first and foremost as a preacher, as a Christian pastor.\u201d
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His father was a pastor. His grandfather had been a pastor.\u00a0 His great-grandfather had been a pastor.\u00a0
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When King was called in 1954 to become the 20th<\/sup> pastor in the storied history of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, he expressed no aspirations to campaign openly for civil rights.\u00a0 The committee that hired him said they were looking for a \u201cnoncontroversial pastor\u201d who could help heal internal church tensions and restore congregational morale.\u00a0 Baldwin reports, \u201cKing arrived with a 34-point plan for the future.\u201d \u00a0In other words, he would be just another exceedingly busy pastor.\u00a0
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The very next year, however, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus.
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King plunged into organizing a bus boycott.\u00a0 The rest is civil rights history.\u00a0
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It\u2019s clear that King never ceased to be who he truly was \u2013 someone who believed in the existence of an infinite-personal God, a creator who endowed all men and women with equal worth and dignity as co-bearers of his image, and who calls us, through Jesus, to confront social injustice with non-violent love.\u00a0 \u00a0
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\u201cEvery genuine expression of love grows out of a consistent and total surrender to God,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0

During his brief 13 years of public ministry, King was beaten, hit with stones, stabbed in the chest by a deranged woman, and imprisoned 29 times.\u00a0 J. Edgar Hoover called him \u201cthe most notorious liar in the country.\u201d \u00a0Like all of us, Dr. King was far from perfect. \u00a0In the face of unremitting criticism, he doubled down on his trust in God.\u00a0 Nothing good, he said, could happen apart from clinging to the God whose mission he yearned to represent.
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King biographer Taylor Branch has pointed out something crucial about the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.\u00a0 It \u201cfused the political promise of equal votes with the spiritual doctrine of equal souls.\u201d
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And that highlights an important contrast with today\u2019s civil rights conversation. \u00a0For many contemporary activists \u2013 whether community organizers, politicians, or action groups \u2013 faith is no longer central.\u00a0 It may not even be in the picture.\u00a0 Millions of people who care about civil rights share Dr. King\u2019s relentless trust in God.\u00a0 But when it comes to the public face<\/em> of civil rights dialogue at the highest levels in our country, talking about God is clearly out of fashion.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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Every activist agrees on the absolute need for equality and human rights.\u00a0
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But if God\u2019s presence is no longer assumed, where exactly do these rights come from?\u00a0 If someone like God isn\u2019t there to declare that human beings are equal, what makes us think such a thing is true?\u00a0 And if Jesus is just one voice among many spiritual traditions, why should we put ourselves at risk by imitating Dr. King\u2019s radical dependence on Jesus\u2019 non-violent methods?
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Secularism is the worldview that dominates American university campuses and much of the 21st<\/sup> century\u2019s social and political dialogue.\u00a0
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But secularists struggle when it comes to the so-called \u201cmoral question.\u201d\u00a0 On the one hand, they insist there are no absolute values \u201cout there\u201d waiting to be discovered.\u00a0 That\u2019s because there\u2019s no God who is empowered to say, \u201cThis is right and this is wrong.\u201d\u00a0 Human beings must therefore live by their own authority.\u00a0 We\u2019re boldly challenged to create our own values.\u00a0 \u00a0
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At first glance, this formula seems to promise glorious freedom.\u00a0 But in actual practice, it leads to chaos.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
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When my favorite values conflict with your favorite values, and there\u2019s no divine Authority to act as referee, who or what decides who \u201cwins\u201d?
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Author Robert Nozick begins his much-admired book Anarchy, State, and Utopia<\/em> with this oft-quoted line: \u201cIndividuals have rights, and there are some things no person or group can do to them.\u201d
\u00a0
That\u2019s a lovely idea.\u00a0 But an honest person has to respond, \u201cWait a minute: Who says<\/em>?\u201d\u00a0 Who can say \u2013 with authority \u2013 that individuals actually have rights?\u00a0 And does that mean non-Western people have to buy into the preferred rights of Western people if they don\u2019t happen to like them?
\u00a0
Virtually everyone agrees that it would be a very good thing for as many people as possible to enjoy the Good Life.\u00a0
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But here again, secularism struggles.\u00a0 Who gets to decide what constitutes a \u201cgood\u201d human life?\u00a0 Secular authors generally fall back on evolutionary biology (\u201cgood\u201d is whatever propagates our species) or cultural relativity (\u201cgood\u201d is what this group of people, at this moment in history, feel good about).\u00a0
\u00a0
What do those two options have in common? \u00a0
\u00a0
In both of them, morality is a moving target.\u00a0 Things like \u201cright,\u201d \u201cwrong,\u201d and \u201cgood\u201d turn out to be relative. \u00a0If our deepest core values are actually subject to change, then human rights may end up depending on our feelings or the results of the most recent election.
\u00a0
We can safely say that Dr. King cherished a dramatically different view of reality.\u00a0 He lived and breathed a set of bedrock spiritual convictions that, in the end, provided the moral foundation for America\u2019s civil rights movement 60 years ago.\u00a0
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MLK quoted Amos 5:24 more than any other Bible verse: \u201cBut let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.\u201d \u00a0
\u00a0
What concept of justice is he talking about here?\u00a0 It\u2019s the notion of justice that emerges from the Old and New Testaments, as embodied by the Hebrew Torah and Jesus\u2019 Sermon on the Mount.\u00a0 And whose righteousness is he talking about? \u00a0Rather than clinging to cultural definitions of what is right and good, he is proclaiming God\u2019s<\/em> righteousness \u2013 God\u2019s character as revealed in God\u2019s Word. \u00a0
\u00a0
As Dr. King himself once said:
\u00a0
\u201cDarkness cannot drive out darkness.\u00a0 Only light can do that.\u00a0 Hate cannot drive out hate.\u00a0 Only love can do that.\u201d<\/em>
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It won\u2019t be our own faint light or our own untrustworthy love that will finally attain the most important goals of the civil rights movement.
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But wonderful things will happen as we choose to align ourselves with the God who is Love and the Savior who is the Light of the World.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here.\u00a0At the beginning of this first full week of Black History Month, it\u2019s clear America\u2019s civil rights movement still has a long way to go.\u00a0\u00a0The unique gift of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.\u2019s leadership continues to bear fruit, even in his absence.\u00a0\u00a0But something else is missing from the landscape of contemporary civil… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43,550],"class_list":["post-2348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-civil-rights","tag-martin-luther-king-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2350,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348\/revisions\/2350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}