Grace and peace be multiplied to each of
you in the name of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Let me rush to express my
sincere appreciation to Pastor
Rufus Smith, Dr. Russell Moore, Dr.
Don Carson, to all the others who are
responsible for my being here with you
today. "While confined here in the
Birmingham Jail, I came across your recent
statement calling my present activities
unwise and untimely.
Seldom do I pause to answer criticism
of my work and ideas.
If I sought to answer all the criticisms
that come across my desk,
my secretaries would have little time
for anything other than such
correspondence in the course of the day.
And I would have no time for constructive
work. But since I feel that you are men
of genuine goodwill and that your
criticisms are sincerely set forth,
I want to answer your statement in what I
hope will be patient and reasonable terms.
I think I should indicate why I am here in
Birmingham, since you have been influenced
by the view which argues against outsiders
coming in. I am in Birmingham because
injustice is here. Just as the prophets of
the 8th century BC left their villages
and carried their thus saith the Lord,
far beyond the boundaries
of their hometowns. Just as the
Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus
and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to
the far corners of the Greco-Roman world.
So am I compelled to carry the gospel of
freedom beyond my hometown. Like Paul,
I must constantly respond to the
Macedonian call for aid.
Moreover, injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere.
We are caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied in a single garment
of destiny. Whatever affects one directly
affects all indirectly.
You deplore the demonstrations taking
place in Birmingham, but your statement,
I am sorry to say, fails to express a
similar concern for the conditions that
brought about these demonstrations.
I'm sure that none of you would want
to rest content with a superficial kind of
social analysis that merely deals
with effects and does not grapple with
underlying causes. It is unfortunate that
demonstrations are taking place in
Birmingham, but it is even more
unfortunate that the city's white power
structure left the Negro community
with no alternative."
In his own handwriting,
on the margins of a folded newspaper,
behind the bars of a Birmingham jail,
the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
stated in no uncertain terms,
that the problems of race, injustice,
and segregation in America is a
church problem. He argued that the problem
was not with the extremist groups
of Klansmen and citizens councils.
But with the white Christian moderate.
With white people of good genuine will who
were hesitant to press against the clear
issues of injustice that crippled black
and brown people, many of whom
were Christian. It was white pastors who,
while preaching the gospel,
denied its power to the disinherited.
It was predominantly white southern church
pastors who further marginalized black and
brown people by leveraging their
collective rebellion against the ethics of
the gospel in the cities where
they preached. And in this,
the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
detected a strange dichotomy between the
message of Jesus Christ and the practice
of his church in America.
And though this is a hard
historical truth, it needs to be
proclaimed to you by a chocolate man
like me. And it needs to be said to you in
love. By choosing to conform to the world,
Christians have created a segregated
Church. The history of racism in the
American church has been hiding in plain
sight. The consequences of not confronting
racism and removing the systems of
injustice has led to decades-long patterns
of theological arrogance and sociological
privilege, that have kept us separated.
Listen, friends, our society suffers from
de jure and de facto segregation.
That is to say that segregation has not
evolved only from the private practices
and preferences of individual men,
so much as it has been constructed by laws
and policies. And insofar as it depended
on your forefathers and now on you.
And by you, I mean kind-hearted, genuine,
well-intentioned white Christians.
The white evangelical church in America
has done very little to change de
jure segregation. And our society has gone
in one direction and the church has
strangely followed. It should be that as
the church lives out,
a kind of Ephesians 2 refusal to
participate in de jure or de
facto segregation, we would see a changing
society. But to be sure,
today's segregated brand of American
evangelicalism is yet largely unrepentant
of the sin of segregation.
There are of course some
notable exceptions. I mean,
he did just leave the stage and take half
of what I had to say.
Just as there are some notable white
Christian leaders who marched with Dr.
King, fought alongside Dr.
King. White pastors who lost their
churches, who were estranged from the
fellowship of friends and family,
all because they believed that all people
were made in the image and the likeness of
God. Men like Dr. Glen Stassen
at Fuller Seminary, and Reverend James
Hester Hargett of Los Angeles,
and notable others. But some 50 years
later, the sting of white evangelicalism's
compliance with racial segregation is
still felt in the curriculums of her
affluent theological seminaries.
It still reverberates over the airwaves
of her radio stations and podcast.
It still dominates the editorial boards
of her major publishing houses or what's
left of them. My argument today is
that Dr. King's ministry is a documented
witness that God raised up a preacher
to call the church to its unified roots,
by casting down the barriers that kept
black people vulnerable to abuse,
subjected to poverty,
victims of criminalization and despair.
While at the same time deconstructing the
societal ideas that made white people feel
superior, advance as though they were a
cut above black people.
And few there were who listened.
And now 50 years later,
with documented proof that there has been
no progress for African Americans in the
area of home ownership, unemployment,
and incarceration. Instead of naming
racism, injustice, and rebranded
segregation for what it is,
in the biblical vernacular
of unrighteousness and sin.
This segregated brand of evangelicalism
seems unready and unwilling to file
divorce papers with white privilege and
systemic injustice. When an aspiring
pastor trains at a Bible School or
seminary that has a professed high view of
Scripture and the righteously high view
of Christ, cannot register for a
homiletics course that trains his or her
ear beyond the rhythms of legendary white
men. When he cannot find contextualization
in his counseling classes,
or learn of African church fathers who
gave birth to trusted exegetical practices
and clarification for Christian doctrine.
When he is left to graduate without
knowing the names of some of America's
brightest church men like Gardner Taylor,
Sandy Ray, William Augustus Jones,
or Clay Evans. Y'all want more?
Men who fought for justice,
not in lieu of the gospel,
but because of the gospel.
We can sense evangelicalism's unreadiness
to tear away from the perks of segregation
and slowness to prepare future leaders for
a truly unified Church.
And not just our seminaries,
what shall we say about our churches?
How is it that 50 years later,
we still have wealthy white churches
thriving on the margins of our big cities,
while struggling poor black and brown
churches languish in the city? Surely,
they worship the same Jesus.
Surely, many of the cardinal doctrines of
biblical theology are shared between them.
So what is it that keeps us separate?
Could it be that in the matters of race
and segregation, the church simply mirrors
the world rather than demonstrating a
prophetic witness of the beloved
community? How are we still here 50
years later? I want to suggest to you that
maybe part of the reason we're still here
50 years later is that we have, perhaps,
unconsciously made an assumption that
sound doctrine and personal conversion are
sufficient to solve the ills of our world.
We are wrong to presume that the proper
parsing of verbs and biblical ideas is
in itself enough to hurdle the long night
of racism and injustice.
I want to be clear to say this because I
don't want y'all to say I'm not a
gospel preacher. I contend not with the
notion that sound doctrine is critical.
It is absolutely necessary and fundamental
to the work of the church in the world.
I simply want to suggest that some Bible
preaching and some Bible believing
preachers may have inadvertently made a
distinction within orthodoxy,
that the Bible itself does not recognize.
The Bible recognizes no significant
distinction between personal orthodoxy and
corporate orthopraxis.
To be a person of orthodox faith is to,
at the same time, be a person of right
action toward one's fellow man.
And by the way, this is not political,
it's biblical. Perhaps the greatest
prophetic voice available to the nation
in 2018 is not a conservative news pundit,
or a pop music star with a
social conscience, or a legendary civil
rights revolutionary.
The most prophetic and relevant voice
available to the nation today is a gospel
preacher who understands the implication
of the gospel to be both to the human soul
and to the society that traps the human
spirit. That to get the gospel right is
to somehow move beyond the preservation of
right doctrine, to the place where we
apply that right doctrine.
Through the church's influence in the
world around her, to somehow make public
the profession of her faith.
In other words, families broken by
systems. Vulnerable populations made
at risk by systems of injustice.
And broken communities almost hopeless
by the perennial growth of achievement
gaps and wealth disparities.
They all need to see a church.
A church that demonstrates how right
doctrine functions outside of the walls of
the church. I want to say that this is not
a call to party platform politics.
We've seen enough of that and we recognize
an individual's freedom of choice.
But we more forthrightly recognize that
the Christian has an obligation to call
out wickedness where it exists,
to challenge systems of injustice where
they reign, and to love mercy and justice
on a corporate societal level.
This is what, whatever you call him,
this is what the Reverend Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.
understood and declared.
And I want to propose that Martin King's
vision of racial harmony was a vision of
justice for all people,
of equal access and opportunity,
not a church where black people simply
assimilate to white culture.
His vision for racial harmony cannot be
and should not be reduced to a kind of
cotton candy multi-ethnic community.
Something that's sweet to the taste,
but it's void of substance.
His vision of racial harmony was a society
where justice prevailed,
a community where all persons were
dignified because they were made in the
image of God. A society where the church
is not silent about injustice because her
Lord is the God of righteousness.
And in this way, King most clearly
understood justice not to be a social
construct, but that justice is a biblical
theological Christian idea.
His sermons and his public speeches have
overtones with latent references to the
Old Testament prophets to the Lord Jesus
Christ and the Apostle Paul.
I'm feeling my health.
I need to calm down.
I did see this Hammond B-3 Organ and
I'm wondering, does anybody know how to
work it in just a few minutes?
[applause] While some Christians
misunderstand why we celebrate Dr.
King and others use their ignominious
labels to discredit Dr.
King, or worse to justify their rejection
of his ministry, Martin King seemed
to have a better grasp on public practical
theology. The command to love neighbor
more than his ardent critics who claimed
theological orthodoxy. In his message,
"Paul's Letter to the American Church,"
King urged us to always be sure that
in our struggle against evil,
we and I quote, "Struggle with Christian
methods and Christian weapons.
Never succumb to the temptation
of becoming bitter," he said,
"As you press on for justice."
Be sure to move with dignity and
discipline, using only the weapon of love.
Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.
In your struggle for justice,
look your oppressor in the eye and let him
know that you're not attempting
to defeat him, or humiliate him,
or even to pay him back for the injustices
that he has heaped upon you.
But let him know that you are merely
seeking justice for him as well as for
yourself. Let him know that the festering
sore of segregation debilitates the white
man as well as the Negro.
With this attitude, you will be able to
keep your struggle on high
Christian standards. And that method,
friends, is not only
distinctively Christian,
but the notion of justice there is
distinctively a biblical idea.
That is to say that King lived
instinctively what you and I articulate
biblically. It is something that he
understood practically,
that you and I pronounce theologically.
That is this very idea,
righteousness is the root of justice and
justice is the offspring of righteousness.
Now, I'm no deep biblical scholar,
but I did study with some.
And let me humbly submit to you my
observation from the Scripture and propose
to you the biblical foundation for King's
fight against injustice in the name of
Jesus Christ. The New Testament in the
original language has words for
righteousness and justice that share
a root. They are a kind of cognate cousin.
They work in the same semantic
domain often. In fact, at times,
they are interchangeable.
The implication is that the notion of
righteousness is related to justice.
And this is what makes the claim of the
gospel so scandalous. It is that we,
who are sinners, are now through the shed
blood of Jesus Christ made righteous
before God and have peace with God.
We have been justified. That is,
righteousness has been credited to our sin
depleted accounts. At the cross,
God got justice and we got righteousness.
So now, in the church,
we who are righteous ought to be found
fighting for justice.
Throughout the Scripture,
the notions of righteousness and justice
are not to be separated, so why have we?
No church ought to be found declaring
something righteous that is not just.
How is it that for so long
American Christianity has had its finger
on parsing the language of righteousness,
but its feet far from fighting injustice?
And now, today, we are witnessing the
emergence of a new generation of Americans
that are fascinated with justice,
but they haven't met the author of
righteousness. They are trying to get
justice on the streets apart from
understanding righteousness taught
in our churches. And they will never find
it. And at the same time,
we have a church or at least some segments
of it, Matt, not yours,
that are preaching righteousness but will
not fight for justice.
Both of those are insufficient.
Both are incomplete.
Neither represent the full scope of God's
call upon us. And while I cannot speak
for all black America,
I do have the mic today and I'm on good
historical grounds to propose to y'all
that this is what has frustrated many
black churches with our white evangelical
brothers and sisters.
Those of you who have a firm grasp on
orthodoxy, who understand the finer tenets
of the gospel, who launch coalitions,
who sustain commissions,
and who produce curriculum and lobby with
Congress. We have expected you to be our
greatest allies in the struggle against
injustice. We wanted you to tell your
churches and your congregations that God
was never pleased with segregation and the
systems that segregation has created.
We wanted you to use your influence
with your governors and your politicians
to end the long night
of systemic injustices.
We wanted y'all to cry about the public
school to prison pipeline.
We wanted you to see that states
like Illinois spend more money on mass
incarceration than they do education.
That the prison industrial complex is a
wicked big business swallowing black men
and brown boys. That mass incarceration
has been created to create a permanent
second-class citizenry of black and brown
people. And we wanted you to shout it
from your pulpit. We want you to tell your
city fathers that contract leasing,
red lining, and neighborhood improvement
laws intended to keep us living
in segregated quarters was offensive to
God and that you wouldn't stand for it,
by the strength of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We wanted y'all to unflinchingly denounce
the politics of fear and the outright
racism that elected playboys,
while denouncing a black man who was loyal
to his wife all his years in office,
and took care of his kids and did not
disgrace America. We wanted y'all
to preach a gospel that was bigger than
the clandestine, provincial,
and colonial misreads that told slaves to
obey their masters as if Paul intended
American slavery to be ordained by God.
Shame on you. That wasn't for you, Matt.
I'm sorry. That just came out.
I'm trying to get it out.
We have wanted you to come to Memphis,
but to say in your coming that the
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
came to Memphis and was slain in Memphis
because a poor black garbage collector was
killed, not by his truck,
but by a racist mayor Henry Loeb,
who would not pay black garbage workers
the same way that they paid white ones.
And that that same economic injustice
still lives today. But instead of finding
allies in the fight for justice on the
grounds of righteousness,
we have encountered antagonists.
Instead of understanding our play,
we have been met with demands to justify
our sentiments. Instead of you coming to
our churches, moving
into our neighborhoods,
serving under our pastors,
leveraging your privilege,
we have had to move into your churches,
read your theological heroes,
march under your banner,
and keep silent in your pews when
Trayvon Martin was killed,
Mike Brown was murdered,
and Laquan McDonald was shot
down with 16 bullets.
And instead of being able to be our
expressive or contemplative selves in your
churches, we have had to sit down and make
you comfortable. We have had to learn all
about you in seminary,
but you ain't never had to learn about us.
I'm trying to say, friends,
that Martin King would say to us,
these things ought not be.
He saw in our coming together a prophetic
witness that Jesus Christ was America's
only hope. He decried the ethnic divisions
in our churches. And I don't have time
to quote the sermon that I have here.
But in one of his sermons,
I can hear him say, "What is this that I
hear a white church in America and a
Negro church. That on Sunday morning,
when you stand up to sing "All Hail the
Power of Jesus Name" and "Dear Lord Father
of All Mankind." Do you not see
that 11:00 a.m. is the most segregated
hour of the week?"
So, in my last three minutes,
I'm going to give you something,
answer the question.
How do we overcome the divisions that
make 11:00 a.m. the most segregated hour
of the week? First, let me say,
we will overcome. King told us how.
It's a biblical command, not an option.
We've got to love one another.
We don't always have to agree.
We don't always have to vote the same way.
We don't always have to like the same kind
of food. But of necessity,
we must love one another.
And this is as hard for me as it is for
you. John wrote it like this, "Beloved,
let us love one another,
for love is from God and everyone who
loves is borne of God and knows God.
The one who does not love does not know
God for God is love. By this,
the love of God was manifested in us that
God sent His only begotten Son into the
world that we might live through him.
And this is love, not that we loved God
but that he loved us and sent his son
to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another."
Here is John's argument in a sentence.
"Lovelessness is Godlessness."
We cannot claim to be in relationship
with God if we fail to love one another.
But there's something else here.
John's assertion is that love has an
incarnational and identifying function.
Love has got to be manifested.
It's got to be put on clear display.
You can't just talk love in your spoken
sentiments. You got to demonstrate it
in how you treat people every day.
That this love as revealed through the
person and work of Jesus Christ,
is extended not on the basis of the virtue
of the giver… I'm sorry.
It is extended on the basis of the virtue
of the giver, not the worthiness of the
recipient. And John has the audacity
to assert that this love is what
identifies us as the children of God.
We are not children of God apart from
loving one another. Our nation desperately
needs to see a church that does that.
Love is not only the more excellent way,
it is also the transforming power that
helps us to right the wrongs of our
fellow men. If y'all heard of a man named
Zacchaeus. As E.K. Bailey once said,
Zacchaeus was wee little man,
a wee little man was he.
But he was a tall man of repentance.
When this chief tax collector made rich,
not from the hard work of his hands,
but from the manipulation of his
own people. When he received salvation,
he makes a startling pronouncement.
He actually says that he will give to the
poor and restore those he has defrauded.
The man who hurt and defrauded others is
now the same man who can help those he
victimized and pilfered.
The account of Zacchaeus in Luke 19 is a
statement about the salvific ministry of
the Son of Man and its effects in the
lives of the same. We can learn much from
Zacchaeus about the kind of evidence that
should mark the lives of people who walk
with God. He recognizes that he has
defrauded people and that the poor need
the help of the wealthy. Now I must admit,
as I prepare to leave the stage,
I'm taken by Zacchaeus' his honesty and
his desire to restore what he took.
But I must also admit that this gathering
today has got to do more than apologize.
We've heard apologies.
We appreciate the Southern Baptist
Convention apologizing in 1995,
for its participation in and compliance
with slavery and segregation.
We appreciate that apology for its absence
in the Civil Rights Movement.
But what I want to propose to you as I
leave today is, we need to move
from apology to strategy.
The same groups of people that hurt entire
generations through segregation,
are the same groups of people that can now
end segregation. We can fix the problems
that we create. An apology is nice,
but it's time to strategize to figure out
how we can ensure fair and
equitable housing, regardless of one's zip
code. It's time that we concede together
of a way to make certain that little brown
boys and little black girls can get
an excellent education,
regardless of the property value of the
home in which they are raised.
An apology is nice, but we need a strategy
that repairs the centuries long lag that
slavery created and separated an entire
ethnic minority population.
It's about time that we strategize how we
can get some more non-white presidents and
professors in our evangelical seminaries.
You mean to tell me they don't exist
nowhere? It's about time that we work
to eradicate the tolerance of racism in
our local churches. It's time we
strategize how to overcome the systems
that perpetuate and separate churches
from one another. And even in that,
we don't despair because we will overcome.
How do I know we will overcome, you ask?
How can you be so sure?
In a world of cynicism and bitterness,
how do I know we will overcome?
We shall overcome because the moral arc of
the universe is long,
but it bends toward justice.
We shall overcome because it was
for freedom that Christ set us free.
We shall overcome because though we
are perplexed, we're not in despair.
We shall overcome because God is our
refuge and our strength.
A very present help in the time
of trouble. We shall overcome because they
hung him high and they stretched him wide.
He bowed his head and for you and me,
he died. We shall overcome because the
wall of separation has been torn down in
two. We shall overcome because he was
wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
We shall overcome because one dark Friday
gave way to one bright Sunday morning.
We shall overcome because early Sunday
morning.
♪ [music] ♪
