On April 4, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while standing on the balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. His speeches still captivate us with rare rhetorical and theological brilliance, particularly the address given at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, held August 28, 1963, in Washington, D.C. The speech, officially called “Normalcy, Never Again,” is widely remembered as “I Have a Dream.”
King’s published writing may not be as widely celebrated in popular culture as his speeches and sermons, yet they have still endured. King’s written body of work continues to provide fertile soil for congregations that strive to be thoughtful about how faith responds to the social, political and spiritual questions of the day. Notably, King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” dated April 16, 1963, still raises poignant questions for the contemporary church in America.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” was intended to be a response to a public statement by eight white ministers who took issue with King’s nonviolent tactics, calling the protests in Birmingham “unwise and untimely.” When we read King’s words 61 years later, the call to action is no less demanding. King argues that people of faith must see the “interrelatedness of all communities and states.” If we do the work of justice in isolation, we delude ourselves into thinking that what happens in one place has no consequences for people in another place.
A central argument in the letter is that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. We have a moral obligation to obey just laws and a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Borrowing from St. Thomas Aquinas, King writes: “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law … Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” Congregational leaders would be wise to revisit King’s letter. Our dear brother died 57 years ago, but his words still speak.
