麻豆社

Good morning. Sixty years ago today, the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jnr was arrested at a demonstration in Birmingham Alabama. While sitting in his jail cell, he learnt that a group of white clergymen, though sympathetic towards the protests, had called them 鈥渦nwise and untimely鈥�.

King decided to write a reply. The resulting Letter from Birmingham Jail used theology to challenge the hypocrisy of society that saw itself as deeply Christian.

You ask why civil rights activists have come here to Alabama, he said. Well, just as St Paul was compelled to spread his faith, 鈥渟o am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town.鈥� His message was that racist laws were 鈥渕orally wrong and sinful鈥�, because they distort the personality and the soul. Racism encourages one group to believe they are superior, at the expense of the other, contrary to the Christian ideal of brotherhood. I am called an extremist, lamented King. But could we not call Jesus Christ 鈥渁n extremist for love?鈥�

Today, King has been embraced by almost all Americans, Left and Right, as a secular saint, but we mustn鈥檛 forget that at the time he was very controversial. Or that he was a compelling theologian who wanted people of faith to examine their conscience and re-engage with society. The church, he said in his letter, should not be a 鈥渢hermometer鈥� that records popular opinion. It must be a 鈥渢hermostat鈥� that transforms America.

To those who ask what the use of religion is to wider society, I鈥檇 point to King鈥檚 letter. Even Karl Marx, who described religion as an opiate, acknowledged that it helps people to articulate their suffering and to imagine an alternative. King's Christian epistle explains why racism hurts and pictures a better world to march towards.

The most affecting paragraph describes the agony of a black father explaining to his little girl why she cannot go to a fun fair because, as per southern custom, it was for whites only.

This was not a hypothetical. King鈥檚 daughter had cried when she was told she couldn鈥檛 go to Funtown in Atlanta. Her mother told her that the men who built the park were 鈥渘ot nice Christian people鈥� and had banned black families. 鈥淏ut,鈥� she said, 鈥渋t won鈥檛 be long before you can go because [your daddy] is trying to make it possible for you to go to Funtown or any other place that you would want to.鈥�

King concluded the Letter from Birmingham Jail by hoping for a future in which prejudice and hate are lifted and 鈥渢he radiant stars of love and brotherhood鈥� shine over us. I'm afraid to say, we are not there yet.

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