Summary: The dedication of the memorial in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington D.C. has been postponed; however, the monument is already erected, in sight of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Is this where Martin Luther King belongs? For Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake, and Rev. Dr. J. Alfred Smith Sr., teachers at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) is most renowned for his contributions to the civil rights movement, and rightfully so. However, the civil rights movement is oftentimes reduced to a solely political movement. The deep spiritual, religious motivation behind it is neglected; the public sphere has forgotten about it. To me, the spirituality and theology King has formed and molded is the most important thing. It is the foundation of the political fight; the foundation of non-violence; the foundation of direct action; the foundation for the courage and love which weaves through all of the early civil rights movement. Faith, faith in Jesus Christ, gave the movement the power and strength to fight against injustice and inequality. There is a direct line leading from the spirituality and theology which the African-American community has developed in the times of slavery to the spirituality and theology which sustained the civil rights movement around King. I encountered this African American Christian thought most profoundly in a class about Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman (1899-1981), a theologian who was well known to King Senior and Junior. In Jesus and the Disinherited, 1949, Thurman cites his maternal grandmother, who told him about the core message of her minister: “You – you are not niggers. You-you are not slaves. You are God’s children.” Jesus provides an alternative identity to believers, our true identity. We do not depend on how our fellow human beings define us. Ultimately, we are defined by God, and God’s loving relationship to us. This is what we can build our identity on. This is where we get our strength, our security and our pride. This American theology, although derived out of the very particular experience of slavery, is inclusive in its heart. Its core message is that ALL people are God’s children, independent of their status and situation here on earth. Thurman, as well as King, both make a point of including people of ALL races, also white people, even white supremacists, into their Christian love. God’s kingdom is open to ALL, without exceptions, without conditions. This inclusivity is very different from another line of American theological thought which has its beginnings in the experience of the early Puritan settlers from Northern Europe. Right from the beginning, the Puritan emigrants defined themselves AGAINST others. Outnumbered and out powered by the religious and political forces in their former home countries, the American Puritans sought to prove to themselves and to the world that they were RIGHT in defending their persecuted religion. John Winthrop (1588-1649), the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, coined these famous words: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” An obvious way to prove the beliefs of the American Puritans to be right is to prove other belief systems to be wrong. If Puritanism is right, then Catholicism, the “darkness of popery”, is wrong. If Puritanism is right, then Native American religions, which countless American missionaries describe as to be of the devil, are wrong. Seeds of assumed superiority are easily planted in this black-and white worldview. There is a direct line of thought leading from the exclusivity of early American Puritanism to theologies of racist supremacy, and concepts of social Darwinism. The important underlying idea is that God and/or nature have designed the world to consist of elect or superior and damned or inferior beings. Godly election/natural superiority reveals itself in this-worldly success,
