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The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 5

The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968)

Ί am many things to many people', Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledged in 1965, in an article in the magazine Ebony, 'but in the quiet recesses of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher. This is my being and my heritage for I am also the son of a Baptist preacher, the grandson of a Baptist preacher and the great-grandson of a Baptist preacher.'

1 In a great deal of King's own published work, and certainly in

much of the literature about him, his specifically Baptist convictions are not prominent. He emphasised his indebtedness to a variety of academic influences and in his non-violent campaigns he acknpwledged the influence of well-known figures such as Gandhi. This enabled him to connect with a wide range of people. It is also the case that the particular strand within Baptist life which King represented - one marked by radical, socio-political involvement - is one that has been somewhat overshadowed by the deeply conservative political standpoint of some Baptist communities in the USA in more recent decades. A Baptist who is strongly sympathetic to King, T. Furman Hewitt, writing in 1998 about Baptists and ethics, spoke of the common perception of Baptists as 'typically conservative'.

2

In one of his essays in Biography as Theology (first published in 1974), James Wm. McClendon, Jr., explored several different interpretations of King. He noted that David L. Lewis, in King, A Critical Biography, treated King as a gifted orator and populist politician who was ignorant of political realities and was ultimately a failure.

3 However,

McClendon argued that alongside that should be set William R. Miller's emphasis on King's desire for reconciliation, which could be seen by some as weakness. Miller's book contains the idea of King as martyr.

4

McClendon also drew attention to those who portrayed King simply as a race leader.

5 McClendon showed, by an analysis of crucial episodes in

King's life, that these interpretations fail to do justice to a man for whom

1 C. Carson, 'Martin Luther King, Jr., and the African-American Social Gospel', in T.E. Fulop and A.J.

Raboteau, eds., African-American Religion; Interpretive Essays in History and Culture (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 358. 2 T. Furman Hewitt, 'Mining the Baptist Tradition for Christian Ethics: Some Gems', Perspectives in

Religious Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring 1998), pp. 63-80. 3 James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1974,

new edn. 1990), pp. 50-2; citing David L. Lewis, King, A Critical Biography (New York: Praeger, 1970). Republished in 1978, see footnote 21 below. 4 McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology; pp. 52-3; cf. W.R. Miller, Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Life,

Martyrdom, and Meaning for the World (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1968). 5 McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology, pp. 52-3; C.E. Lincoln, ed., Martin Luther King, Jr., A Profile

(New York: Hill & Wang, 1970), and J.A. Williams, The King God Didn 't Save (New York: Coard- McCann, 1970).

6 Journal of European Baptist Studies

'religion was more than peripheral, more than a politician's tool, more than a reformer's stratagem'. I want to take this line of thought a little further and to argue that King cannot be properly understood if he is not set within the specific African American Baptist environment which shaped him and also to seek to show that his Baptist convictions were crucial to the emphases that characterised his life and work.

Baptist heritage

Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968) belonged to a strong Baptist family, linked to Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. But the King family's ties to Baptist life went back much further - to the slave era. King spoke of the spiritual lineage he had, beginning with his great-grandfather, Willis Williams, who joined the Shiloh Baptist Church in Georgia in 1846. He was an 'exhorter'. The family tradition of fervent preaching continued, and Martin Luther King Sr. built up Ebenezer, Atlanta, from 400 members in 1931 to 4,000 in 1940.7 King Jr. knew from his own family history about the malign power of racism. The Williams family left Shiloh Baptist Church when, like other Southern States' congregations, it divided along racial lines. Martin Luther King Sr. was active in protesting against segregationist practices. When King Jr. decided to be baptised as a young boy he was taking a step that would continue the Baptist tradition into which he was born. However, by contrast with many of his forebears and the way they expressed their faith, at the time of King Jr.'s baptism and for some years afterwards, his involvement in the church did not spring from deep conviction.8

Indeed there was much about the Black churches that King questioned. By his early teens he was well acquainted with the mechanics and the culture of church life,9 but in this period he resisted the inevitable pressure to become a minister. As Stephen Oates puts it in his biography of King published in 1982, Let the Trumpet Sound: 'An emotional, fundamentalist ministry had little relevance to the modern world, he thought, and he wanted nothing to do with it.'10 It was at Morehouse, an African American Baptist College in Atlanta where King studied from 1944 to 1948, that King's views began to change. He was profoundly

McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology, pp. 55-59. For a fascinating exploration of King's spiritual pilgrimage see F.L. Downing, To See the Promised Land (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1968). ' Richard Lischer, The Preacher King (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 24. 8 C. Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol I: Called to Serve (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 33-5, 361. 9 For McClendon on religion as culture see James Wm. McClendon, Jr., Witness: Systematic Theology, Vol 3 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), chapter 2, and specifically on Black church culture, pp. 85-8. 10 Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), p. 14.

The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 7

impressed by the College President, Benjamin Mays, whose sermons he found to be rational as well as spiritually powerful. Benjamin Mays' parents were former slaves. Mays himself decided that he was going to pursue the educational opportunities that were available to him and he gained a PhD from the University of Chicago. He was a Baptist minister in Atlanta before becoming President of Morehouse. Mays offered important perspectives on Black church life, pointing out (for example) that whereas there was much evidence of discrimination in the White churches, Black ministers preached the unity of humankind.

11 To a significant extent it was

because of King's admiration for Mays, and his understanding of the social gospel as advocated by Mays, that King decided towards the end of his time at Morehouse that he was going to 'serve God and humanity' by becoming a Baptist minister.

12

Mays was not the only inspirational role model that King found in African American Baptist life in his College and then Seminary period. Howard Thurman, the author of the social gospel volume Jesus and the Disinherited (1949),

13 was a family friend. King Jr. made a point of

listening to the dynamic William Holmes Borders, at Wheat Street Baptist, Atlanta, to Sandy Ray, Pastor of Brooklyn's Cornerstone Baptist Church, and to Gardner C. Taylor, at the huge Brooklyn Concord Baptist Church, one of the largest Baptist congregations in the country. At Morehouse King began to speak the language of theological liberalism, but by contrast with many White liberals, his experience as an African American meant that he was always aware of the reality of evil and suffering.

14 Yet King was

deeply committed to finding coherent intellectual answers to the issues facing a divided society. Listening to Borders in particular, who had built Wheat Street Baptist into Atlanta's largest Black church, King found someone who had the academic credibility that his own father did not have. Both King Sr. and Borders had worked their way out of poverty to graduate from Morehouse College, and King Sr. was active in protesting against racial discrimination, but Borders had also studied at Garrett Theological Seminary, had obtained a Master's degree, and taught part-time at Morehouse College.

15 It was this combination that King Jr. admired.

In 1948 King entered Crozier Theological Seminary, Chester, Pennsylvania. His description of his theological pilgrimage at this point is a famous one. He wrote: Ί came early to Walter Rauschenbusch's

11 B.E. Mays and J.W. Nicholson, The Negro's Church (New York: Institute of Social and Religious

Research, 1933), pp. 388-9, cited by McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology, pp. 62-3. 1 2

Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound, pp. 19-20. 13

See Vincent Harding, Ά Dangerous Spirituality', Sojourners, Vol. 28 (1999), pp. 28-31. 14

Lischer, Preacher King, p. 53. 15

Carson 'Martin Luther King, Jr., and the African-American Social Gospel', p. 347.

Journal of European Baptist Studies

Christianity and the Social Crisis, which left an indelible imprint on my thinking by giving me a theological basis for the social concern which had already grown up in me as a result of my early experiences. Of course there were points at which I differed with Rauschenbusch. I felt that he had fallen victim to the nineteenth century "cult of inevitable progress" which led him to a superficial optimism concerning man's nature.'16 Crozier Seminary itself was a Baptist institution known for the progressive theological views of its teaching staff.17 Out of just under 100 students, eleven of them were African Americans. For the first time King absorbed an integrationist atmosphere. Although the studies at Crozier were wide-ranging - it was here that King wrestled with Marxism and came to reject Marx's materialistic interpretation of history - nonetheless there was serious engagement with the Baptist tradition. Oates, in his biography, misses this, failing to point out that Crozier was a Baptist institution or that Walter Rauschenbusch was a Baptist.18

In this period King was exploring not only the Black approach to the gospel and society but also the social gospel expounded by Baptists from the White community such as Rauschenbusch. However, King was to forge his own approach. McClendon suggests that while Rauschenbusch regarded agape love as good will, to be expressed in organised acts of kindness to alleviate social evils, King saw agape love as 'aggressive non-violent social action, a powerful force reaching out towards an alienated enemy'.19

It might be that the word 'aggressive' creates the wrong impression. Indeed McClendon quotes in this same section of his work how King was to tell an angry Black crowd gathering outside his bombed-out home in Montgomery, Alabama (bombed by aggressive Whites), to avoid retaliation, for 'Jesus still cries out..."Love your enemies"...This is what we must live by'.20 What is certain is that King drew from and remoulded his Baptist heritage in ways that were to prove potent.

The beloved community

King, as a seminary student, began to seek to put into practice the understanding of Baptist life which he had imbibed. In 1948, having preached a trial sermon at Ebenezer, Atlanta, with Mays as one of his supporters, King was ordained as a minister of the National Baptist (later

16 MX. King, Stride Toward Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p. 91. 17 For Crozier see W.H. Brackney, A Genetic History of Baptist Thought (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), pp. 369-82. 18 Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound, pp. 25-6; Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol. I: Called to Serve, p. 46. 19 McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology, p. 60. 20 Ibid., p. 59.

The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 9

Progressive National Baptist) Convention.21 Three years later he embarked on PhD studies at Boston University's prestigious School of Theology. For the first time he found himself in a theological environment that was not shaped by Baptist tradition - the school was a Methodist foundation. The trajectory of his PhD dissertation also seemed to be likely to move him away from any specifically Baptist focus. However, as he pursued his studies, which included an examination of the thinking of Paul Tillich, he came to the conclusion that to follow Tillich was to take a theological path that led inexorably to the concept of an impersonal God.22 In the light of this, King came to view the idea of a personal God, who was in relationship with people, much more satisfying, although King would later come to feel that in this period he operated as if God was a 'metaphysical category'.23

It is clear that King's search for the personal dimension of relationship with God - although never the purely individualistic - was aided while he was at Boston by the 'Personalist' philosophy presented there, especially by Edgar S. Brightman.24 Referring to Brightman's work, King spoke of his own longing for 'that religious experience which Dr Brightman so cogently speaks of, although at the same time King could think of moments in his life when he had, as he put it, been 'awe awakened'.25 Smith and Zepp argue that the concept of the 'Beloved Community', which became central to King's thinking, and which has been described as perhaps King's 'most poignant phrase', was given theological and philosophical foundations by Personalism.26 In one of his first published articles King spoke about the goals of 'reconciliation', the 'redemption' of humanity, and 'the creation of the beloved community'.27

In the search for the roots of the term 'Beloved Community' as an expression of King's vision, attention has been given to Personalism, to the philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce (who founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation), and even to Rousseau's social contract.28 But, as Richard

21 Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol I: Called to Serve, p. 153. 22 D.L. Lewis, King: A Biography (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1978), p. 44. 23 MX. King, 'Pilgrimage to Nonviolence', in J.M. Washington, ed., I have a Dream (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1986), p. 61. See also C. Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol5: Threshold of a New Decade (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 419-25. 24 See P. Deats and C. Robb, eds., The Boston Personalist Tradition (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986). 25 Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol I: Called to Serve, pp. 415-16. 26 Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp 'Martin Luther King's Vision of the Beloved Community', Christian Century, April 3,1974, pp. 361-363. See their Search for the Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1974). Glen H. Stassen and David P. Gushee talk about the poignancy in Kingdom Ethics (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity Press, 2003), pp. 405-6.1 am indebted to Parush Parushev, the Academic Dean of IBTS, for this reference. 27 M.L. King, 'Facing the challenge of a new age', in Washington, ed., I have a Dream, pp. 21-2, Papers, Vol. 3 p. 458. 28 See for example Hanes Walton, The Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. (Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Co., 1971).

10 Journal of European Baptist Studies

Lischer, argues, the beloved community existed in the earthly community in Ebenezer.

29 King saw community embodied in and through Baptist

congregations. In 1951 he had the exciting experience of preaching at Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn. There were, he knew, many similar African American Baptist communities led by inspiring preachers. What examples, he asked his Methodist colleagues at Boston, do you have? They could name only one.

30

Although his vision was becoming clearer, King could never have imagined the way in which his own ministry within a Baptist congregation would develop. In 1954, while still finishing his PhD, he was called to become the minister of the historic Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. It is not always recognised that this church already had a history of commitment to civil rights. Vernon Johns, who was an early leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, was pastor from 1947 to 1952. In an acceptance statement addressed to Dexter Avenue, King spoke of his own limitations. Ί come to you', he told the church members on 2 May 1954, 'with nothing so special to offer. I have no pretense to being a great preacher or even a profound scholar.' At the same time, King set out what kind of 'beloved community' he wanted to see. His words have a prophetic ring: Ί have felt with Jesus that the spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and to set at liberty those that are bruised.'

31

Dexter Avenue soon felt the impact of King's leadership. The church membership was divided into small groups with a view to stimulating more active participation.

32 New committees were set up to administer a

scholarship fund, promote Christian education, and guide social and political action. A congregational visiting scheme was introduced.

33 These

changes were well accepted. The church report in 1955 spoke of increased financial giving, a full-time church secretary having been appointed for the first time, and a successful Daily Vacation Bible School.

34 By the time of

the next annual report, Montgomery had been shaken by the public protests against racial discrimination led by King - the one-year-long bus boycott which led to equal treatment for African Americans in the public transport system. Yet King, despite his new and unexpected position as a nationally-

Lischer, Preacher King, p. 20. 3 0

C. Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol.2: Rediscovering Precious Values (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 10-11. 3 1

C. Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol.6: Advocate of the Social Gospel (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 166-7. 3 2

Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol.2: Rediscovering Precious Values, p. 287. 3 3

Ibid., pp. 287-94. 3 4

Ibid.,pp.>78-9.

The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 11

known figure, remained a local church pastor. His report spoke of the 'superb' work of the church's Social and Political Action Committee and of higher 'levels of spiritual development'. As King surveyed the way he had been 'catapulted into the leadership position of a movement that has now risen to international proportions', he paid tribute to the congregation's 'words of encouragement when I needed them most'.35 For King, as he put it in 1957, 'worship at its best is a social experience', with people from all levels in life coming together to 'bow before Almighty God'.36 This was an authentic communal Baptist aspiration.

When McClendon wrote his essay on Martin Luther King he observed that it had not been widely noted up to that point that the focus of the Montgomery movement and of subsequent King campaigns, which took the title the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was the mass meeting, which had all the trappings of a revival meeting - preaching, clapping, singing, cries of 'amen' and prayer. Most of the anti- segregationist leaders, such as King and his friend Ralph Abernathy, were ministers. Protesters were mainly Baptists and Methodists. People who were protesting knelt on the streets in groups to pray. Marches were called 'Prayer Pilgrimages'. Other models for a mass movement might have been found, McClendon argues, and he suggests that one of these might have been the Labour Movement, but the model used was that which was most familiar to Southern African Americans - the church.37 This aspect of King's vision is now more widely accepted, but it is important to recognise that the approach he and others took was not simply a matter of pragmatism: King liked to say that 'the universe bends towards justice'.38

Within that broader vision, he had a theological understanding of the 'beloved community' as a gift of God.

Preacher King

Having noted the place of the beloved community, another typically Baptist element that was present in King's thinking was the crucial role played by the pastor. The pastor's authority, said King as he outlined his hopes for Dexter Avenue, 'is not merely humanly conferred, but divinely sanctioned'. He maintained that 'leadership never ascends from the pew to the pulpit, but it invariably descends from the pulpit to the pew'.39 But this was not a theology of priestly domination. That approach had no place in Baptist

35 C. Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol 3: Birth of a New Age (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 409-412. 36 Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol.6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, p. 297. 37 McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology, p. 56. 38 Stassen and Gushee, Kingdom Ethics, pp. 167-8. 39 Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol2: Rediscovering Precious Values, p. 287.

12 Journal of European Baptist Studies

ecclesiology. Rather, said King in another statement to Dexter Avenue, Ί come to you with only the claim of being a servant of Christ, and a feeling of dependence on his grace for my leadership. I come with a feeling that I have been called to preach and to lead God's people. I have felt like Jeremiah, "The word of God is in my heart like burning fire shut up in my bones". I have felt with Amos that when God speaks who can but prophesy?'

40 This was a classic Baptist understanding of the preaching

ministry and it was out of this sense of the 'prophetic' that King's wider political involvement naturally took shape.

This connection is clear in the first public address that King gave when the Montgomery bus boycott began. Speaking to an overflowing crowd at Holt Street Baptist Church, Montgomery, on 3 December 1956, at the First National Institute on Non-Violence and Social Change, the twenty-six-year-old-King delivered a message shot through with the biblical themes that were the common language of the African American Baptist churches and had been since the days of slavery. 'We, the disinherited of this land', he announced, 'we who have been oppressed so long, are tired of going through the long night of captivity'. From that night on, wrote Richard Lischer, 'King and the black church community forged an interpretative partnership in which they read the Bible, recited it, sang it, performed it, Amen-ed it, and otherwise celebrated the birth of Freedom by its sacred light'.

41 King's own reflection on the speech places it firmly

within the genre of preaching as understood among Baptists. 'As I sat listening to the continued applause', said King, Ί realized that this speech had evoked more response than any speech or sermon I had ever delivered, and yet it was virtually unprepared. I came to see for the first time what the older preachers meant when they said, "Open your mouth and God will speak for you." ... it would always remind me that God can transform man's weakness into his glorious opportunity.'

42

Alongside the preaching ministry was a strong pastoral commitment. Indeed it can be argued that it was a sense of pastoral responsibility, specifically the way Rosa Parks was treated by the Montgomery authorities, which drove King to take up the public fight against segregation.

43 In this context King never considered himself to be an

invincible warrior for God. Rather he saw himself as a weak human being who continually needed God's transforming strength and the help of others. Worship services, including celebrations of the Lord's Supper and baptisms, were truly communal events. Speaking to the Dexter Avenue

4 0 Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol.6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, pp. 166-7.

4 1 Lischer, The Preacher King, p. 198.

4 2 King, Stride Toward Freedom, p. 63.

4 3 1 am indebted to Keith Jones, the Rector of IBTS, for this thought.

The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 13

church in 1956, however, he regretted the ways in which his many new responsibilities had adversely affected his pastoral duties.44 His pastoral work and his preaching ministry were of equal importance. Two years later, he related to the congregation how he had experienced the brutality of police officers, an unwarranted arrest, and a near fatal stab wound by a mentally deranged woman: these things, he said, have 'poured upon me like staggering torrents on a cold wintry day'.45 Eventually the pressures proved too great. In 1959 he resigned from Dexter Avenue. He described how five years before he had accepted the pastorate and how as a congregation '(w)e started out at that moment on a great and creative spiritual venture'.46 In some ways this venture was only partially successful, at least as far as Dexter Avenue was concerned, since ultimately they could not cope with having a pastor who was away more often than present. However, King's commitment to rootedness in a local church ministry meant that he did not take a role outside a local church, but instead moved to Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, to work alongside his father.

At Ebenezer, King Jr. was far from a passive ministerial assistant to King Sr. Rather, he proposed to Ebenezer many of the same innovations as he had seen working effectively at Dexter Avenue. One new venture not introduced at Dexter Avenue, which he added at Ebenezer, was a Credit Union, to help with the many financial difficulties people in the congregation experienced. He also set up classes in Christian doctrine, commenting on the tragedy that 'the average member of a Baptist Church has no conception of the doctrines of his faith'.47 King was pastorally involved with the congregation, but, as at Dexter Avenue, he was aware of a calling which did not come from them. Speaking at Ebenezer on 5 June 1966 he emphasised again the prophetic nature of his understanding of ministry: 'No member of Ebenezer Baptist Church called me to the ministry. (No, sir) You called me to Ebenezer, and you may turn me out of here, but you can't turn me out of the ministry, because I got my guidelines and my anointment from God Almighty... The word of God is upon me like fire shut up in my bones, (Yes, That's right) and when God's word gets upon me, I've got to say it, I've got to tell it all over everywhere, [shouting] (Yes) And God has called me (Yes) to deliver those that are in captivity. (Yes, sir)\4S Near the end of his life, King, evidently struggling inwardly, told the Ebenezer congregation: 'I've felt sin-breakers dashing, trying to

44 C. Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol .3: Birth of a New Age, p. 411. 45 C. Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol A: Symbol of the Movement (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), p. 538. 46 Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol 5: Threshold of a New Decade, p. 328. 47 Ibid., pp. 377-380. 48 MX. King, 'Guidelines for a Constructive Church', in C. Carson and P. Holloran, eds., A Knock at Midnight (New York: Warner Books, 2000), pp. 110-111.

14 Journal of European Baptist Studies

conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus, saying still to fight on.' Charles Marsh speaks of how King's preaching invested concepts like the beloved community with 'theological vitality and prophetic urgency', creating pictures of 'God's crashing into the human - a sudden and new social reality appearing quite paradoxically on the streets of Montgomery and Birmingham and Jackson'.50

The Birmingham, Alabama, campaign and the massive march on Washington, DC, in 1963 highlighted even more dramatically the prophetic role of King - as a preacher to the nation. During the struggle in Birmingham, Alabama, King, together with his colleague Ralph Abernathy, was jailed, and from the prison he wrote - and had smuggled out on pieces of paper - his famous 'Letter from Birmingham Jail'. An important part of this letter is the way that King refers to his presence in Birmingham. He was there as an 'outsider', like the prophet Amos, and was preaching the same message as Amos - against injustice. He was also a preacher of the gospel, like Paul, and he felt the same compulsion that Paul felt in his preaching. King was, in his own words, 'compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my home town'.51 King took the Baptist heritage of preaching, expressed it in African American form, and transferred it from the ecclesial to the national setting.

The ideals of the Bible

The pictures that King painted and the themes he expounded were primarily drawn from the Bible. His earliest known recorded sermon, 'Rediscovering Lost Values' was delivered to the large Second Baptist Church in the city of Detroit in 1954, a few weeks before his PhD dissertation outline was approved. This was a period when King was exploring new theological ideas, but his sermon was charged with African American Baptist spirituality. Drawing from Psalm 23, King concluded his message by speaking of God 'who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death, and causes us to fear no evil', and who, as familiar hymns have put it, 'has been our help in ages past, and our hope for years to come, and our shelter in the time of storm, and our eternal home'.52 For King the message of the Bible was first of all a message about God. Preaching at Dexter Avenue after a visit he had made to Europe, he mused on 'the exploitation perpetuated by the British Empire', exploitation which had

49 M. L. King, 'Unfulfilled Dreams', in Carson and Holloran, eds., A Knock at Midnight, p. 199. 50 Charles Marsh, 'The Civil Rights Movement as Theological Drama - Interpretation and Application', Modern Theology, Vol. 18, No. 2 (April 2002), p. 240. 51 'Letter from Birmingham Jail, 16 April 1963*, in M.L. King, Why We Can't Wait (New York: Penguin, 1963), p. 77; McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology, p. 57. 52 Carson, 'Martin Luther King, Jr., and the African-American Social Gospel', pp. 356-7.

The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 15

been sanctioned by the Church of England. He then directed the congregation to God, using often-quoted words from Psalm 46: 'Be still and know that I am God'. The power of Britain, he pronounced, 'is no more'.53 His message directed people to look to God, not to human power.

One of King's favourite sermons, which he often preached from 1954 onwards, proclaimed his traditional Baptist belief that the God of the Bible was to be seen as a friend. The sermon was 'The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life'. In the 1960s he explicitly used this sermon to combat the 'God is dead' theology which was current at the time. 'You may not be able to define God in philosophical terms', said King. 'Men through the ages have tried to talk about him. (Yes) Plato said that he was the Architectonic Good. Aristotle called him the Unmoved Mover. Hegel called him the Absolute Whole. Then there was a man named Paul Tillich who called him Being-Itself. We don't need to know all of these high- sounding terms..,.One day you ought to rise up and say, "I know him because he's a lily of the valley". (Yes) He's a bright and morning star. (Yes) He's a rose of Sharon.... "He's my everything. He's my mother and my father. He's my sister and my brother. He's a friend to the friendless." This is the God of the universe. And if you believe in him and worship him, something will happen in your life.'54 Part of the Black preaching style was the use of phrases that evoked responses, but there is no reason to think that King was using these statements to manipulate his audience while not personally believing in their content. King's God was not 'Being-Itself but was actually 'a friend to the friendless'.

King found much helpful imagery in the Old Testament. Addressing 2,000 marchers gathering to march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, King spoke about going to the 'Promised Land'. He saw the 'Pharaohs of the South' as those who were at risk of their armies being drowned if they did not let the Black people of the South go free. King's historic final speech, with its words 'I've been on the mountaintop', similarly drew from Old Testament language, with its echoes of Moses drawing close to God.55

Yet this language was not 'dreamed up' for great occasions. In his annual report to the Dexter Avenue congregation in which he looked forward to the year 1956-57, King spoke about the 'long, long way to go', the 'gigantic spiritual mountains that we have not climbed', and the church as 'an ever flowing river', all images which had connections with biblical

53 Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol A: Symbol of the Movement, p. 165. 54 M.L. King, 'The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life', in Carson and Holloran, eds., A Knock at Midnight, pp. 138-9. The 1960 sermon is in Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol.6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, pp. 395-405. 55 McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology, pp. 64-5. For Selma see David J. Garrow, Protest at Selma (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).

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stories. King was not simply a Black militant looking for ways to bring about.an end to injustice. Rather, as McClendon puts it, for this Baptist leader (King) the God of the Old Testament was one who called humanity to act, and who acted himself in history.

57

God was also, according to the New Testament, revealed in Jesus Christ. At Morehouse, one of King's teachers was George D. Kelsey, a Morehouse graduate who had recently received his doctorate from Yale. Kelsey commented later: Ί made it my business to present lectures on the most strenuous teaching of Jesus' and added that 'Martin's eyes lit up'.

58

In particular King stressed Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. King was indebted to A.J. Muste, a leading American pacifist who drew from the Quaker and mystical traditions. Although King never became an absolute pacifist he affirmed Muste's approach: 'As far as reading is concerned, what undoubtedly influenced me....to conclude that I could not "bend" the Sermon on the Mount and the whole concept of the Cross and suffering love to accommodate participation in war, was the serious reading of the Christian mystics.'

59 Lerone Bennett suggested that in King

there was a 'deep strain of mysticism'. 60

However, King's experience was always profoundly rooted in the Gospels and was expressed in concrete ways. In his famous 1961 sermon, 'Loving Your Enemies', published in his book, Strength to Love, King spoke of the need for unconditional love in the struggle to see the reality of the beloved community.

61 Here was the

heart of King's spirituality. 62

In another sermon, 'Facing the challenge of a new age', he called for a return to Jesus' teaching in the New Testament: 'There is still a voice crying out in terms that echo across the generations, saying: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you".'

63

In his book on the ethics of King, Ervin Smith stated: 'Perhaps no other American has spoken with such eloquence the moral ideals of the Bible'. King's agenda was, however, not that of the Moral Majority

5 6 Papers, Vol 3 Birth of a New Age 1997, pp. 409-412.

5 7 McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology, p. 65.

5 8 Carson, 'Martin Luther King, Jr., and the African-American Social Gospel', p. 348.

5 9 Staughton Lynd, 'A.J. Muste', in M.J. Buhle, P. Buhle and H.J. Haye, eds., The American Radical,

(New York, Routledge, 1994), p. 262. Lerone Bennett, What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chicago: John

Publishing, 1964), p. 193. 6 1

M.L. King, 'Loving your enemies', in Strength to Love (Philadelphia: Fortess Press, 1963), p. 54. This was preached in 1961 : see Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol.6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, pp. 421-29. 6 2

See Glenn Hinson, 'Baptist Spirituality', Baptist Studies Bulletin (May 2003). Online: www.mercer.edu/baptiststudies//bulletin/may03. 6 3

M.L. King, 'Facing the challenge of a new age', in J.M. Washington, ed., I have a Dream (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1986), pp. 21-2. See Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol 3 .Birth of a New Age, p. 458.

The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 17

movement, with its tendency to focus on issues connected with the individual. Instead King attacked the societal evils of racism, poverty and militarism.

64 Yet the conclusion should not be drawn that King's major

concern was to use the teaching of Jesus to spur people on to greater moral effort. Rather, in line with his Baptist theological tradition, it was in the life and death of Jesus that he found hope. An Easter sermon he preached in 1957 was typical. He was addressing injustice, and the message of the Cross gave him plenty to say about this. But then he continued: 'And I can hear something saying, "King, you are stopping at Good Friday, but don't you know that Easter is coming? (Yeah) Don't worry about this thing....I want you to know, King, that Easter is coming! One day truth will rise up and reign supreme! (Yeah) One any justice will rise u p . '

6 5 As Marsh puts

it, the beloved community was 'the new social space of the Church', and in that space the 'triumph and beat of the drums of Easter' could be heard. This community was established by the 'great event on Calvary', as King exclaimed in his sermon, 'Paul's Letter to American Christians'.

66 This

stress on the power of what Christ has done was a characteristic emphasis in Baptist soteriology.

A Personal God

As well as giving priority to the community, to preaching and to the teaching of the New Testament, Baptist spirituality has also called people to a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Writing in 1960, King spoke about how he had become 'more and more convinced of the reality of a personal God'. This had always been his belief, but now it was, he insisted, 'a living reality which has been validated in the experiences of everyday life'.

67 But King could also approve of the statement: Ά religion

that ends with the individual, ends.' Referring back to his reading of Rauschenbusch, he argued that 'any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried'.

6 It was Rauschenbusch's

Christianity and the Social Crisis that gave him a basis for his commitment to social freedom and racial justice, but he was not prepared to follow

6 4 Ervin Smith, The Ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1981), pp.

158-9. 6 5

Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol6: Advocate of the Social Gospel, p. 289. 6 6

Marsh, 'The Civil Rights Movement as Theological Drama', p. 243. 6 7

M.L. King, 'Pilgrimage to Nonviolence', in Washington, ed., ¡have a Dream, p. 61. See Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol 5: Threshold of a New Decade, pp. 419-25. 68 King, Stride Toward Freedom, p. 91.

18 Journal of European Baptist Studies

Rauschenbusch in lauding American democracy and capitalism. For King the dignity of the individual had its roots in theology, specifically in Protestant theology. He believed that the Reformation doctrine of human nature over-stressed the corruption of humanity but he affirmed 'justification by faith and the priesthood of all believers' as 'towering principles which we as Protestants must forever affirm'.

70

But Baptists went further than some other Protestants in their stress on a deep and growing personal relationship of a believer with God. King testified to this, and to the reality of prayer, most often through his account of his 'kitchen experience'. It was at a time, during the Montgomery bus boycott, when he felt: Ί am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left'.

71

King had been receiving telephone calls, sometimes more than forty a day, threatening his life and the life of his family. For a time he was bold, but as he described it years later, preaching in 1967 in Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago, one night it became too much. 'It was around midnight.... the telephone started ringing and I picked it up. On the other end was an ugly voice... "Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren't out of this town in three days, we're going to blow your brains out and blow up your house".' King couldn't sleep and went to the kitchen to have some coffee. At that moment he found little comfort in philosophical discourse about the reality of evil. He told the Mount Pisgah congregation that he 'bowed down over that cup of coffee...And oh yes, I prayed a prayer and I prayed out loud that night. (Yes)...Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now; I'm faltering; I'm losing my courage. (Yes) And I can't let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak. And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, (Yes) "Martin Luther, (Yes) stand up for righteousness, (Yes) stand up for justice, (Yes) stand up for truth. (Yes) And lo I will be with you, (Yes) even until the end of the world.".... He promised never to leave me, (Never) never to leave me alone.'

72

The use of the name 'Martin Luther' is significant. King saw himself as an individual called by God, as had been the sixteenth-century Reformer. In 1934 King Sr. had attended a Baptist World Alliance Congress in Berlin and on his return from Germany he changed his own name from Michael

6 9 Smith, The Ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr., pp. 3-4.

7 0 M.L. King, The answer to a perplexing question', in Strength to Love, pp. 130-1. See also Carson, ed.,

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol 2: Rediscovering Precious Values, p. 190. 7 1

King, Stride Toward Freedom, pp. 134-5. 7 2

M.L. King, 'Why Jesus called a Man a Fool', in Carson and Holloran, eds., A Knock at Midnight, pp. 159-63.

The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 19

King to Martin Luther King. His son's name was similarly changed.73

King Jr. not only accepted the mantle of a reformer but identified himself as a spiritual and political revolutionary. King's strategies have often been analysed in terms of their indebtedness to Gandhi, and that is valid, but King himself saw the * Gospel of Jesus' as primary.74 Indeed when King was labelled an extremist he retorted that Jesus was 'an extremist for love' when he said: 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you'. Was not Amos, he continued, an extremist for justice, and Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and Martin Luther - with his words 'Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God' - an extremist? To this list King added John Bunyan, the seventeenth- century Baptist who was imprisoned for his beliefs, and Abraham Lincoln, who stated 'This nation cannot survive half slave and half free'.75

Although King could criticise some strands of Protestantism for producing 'a purely other-worldly religion' with a stress only on the soul,76

he saw his work as a Baptist minister as having at its core the call to people to come to Christ for salvation from sin. Thus he urged Dexter Avenue to think about 'unchurched persons in the community who are desperately in need of Christ' and to embark on 'a serious evangelistic campaign'.77 In 1957 King was invited to lead in prayer at a huge Billy Graham mission in New York and he later wrote to Graham saying that this had been 'one of the high points of my life'. He applauded Graham for his significant evangelistic work and 'the stand you have taken in the area of race relations', suggesting that Graham had opportunities to influence this area 'almost above any person we can point to'.78 King himself issued the same 'altar calls' as Graham. Preaching at Dexter Avenue in 1957 he asked: 'Who this morning will accept the Christ...Now is the time to make the decision'.79

King's meetings, in typical Baptist fashion, were also full of songs, many of them stressing fellowship with God. 'What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms' was often sung at mass meetings led by King.80 Among King's favourite songs were 'His eye is on the sparrow' and 'He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone',

73 Lischer, Preacher King, pp. 24-25. 74 David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York, NY: Vintage, 1988), p. 75, cited by Marsh, "The Civil Rights Movement as Theological Drama', p. 242. 75 'Letter from Birmingham Jail, 16 April 1963', in King, Why We Can't Wait, p. 88. 76 M.L. King, "The answer to a perplexing question', pp. 130-1, See also Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol2: Rediscovering Precious Values, pp. 190-1. 77 Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol 3: Birth of a New Age, p. 412. 78 Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol 4: Symbol of the Movement, p. 265. 79 Ibid., p. 258. 80 Lischer, Preacher King, pp. 244-5.

20 Journal of European Baptist Studies

both highly personal in their sentiments. The hymns chosen for King's funeral, reflecting the music that was important to him, included 'Precious Lord, take my hand', 'Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling', and 'There is a balm in Gilead'.

82 These songs were part of his every-day spiritual

experience. Seeing a rock could inspire King to sing 'Rock of Ages, cleft for me; let me hide myself in thee'. As Douglas Weaver puts it in his essay on King's spirituality, such incidents show how King consistently acknowledged his dependence upon, and intimacy with, a personal Creator.

83

Conclusion

Much work has been done on Martin Luther King Jr. as a civil rights leader, a thinker, a social educator, an orator and an African American community leader. Among Baptists, however, he is also honoured as our community's most outstanding twentieth-century spokesperson in the area of action on behalf of justice.

84 Very little has been done that explores

King's specifically Baptist convictions. Yet King viewed himself first of all as a minister, a preacher called of God, standing in a tradition of prophetic Baptist pastors.

5 King's life was deeply rooted in a Baptist congregation,

Ebenezer, Atlanta, and this led to his espousing the core Baptist conviction that the basic unit of Christian commitment is the congregation. The power of Christ is in the church.

86 Here is the beloved community. It was in

communities such as Ebenezer and Dexter Avenue that King found his identity. He was a preacher who was called to leadership, but he believed that both he and the communities he led could only fulfil their mission as they focused on God. In the typical language of the African American Baptist congregations, King called the congregation at Ebenezer to 'be sure that you have a strong boat of faith' anchored in God. Faith, he insisted, would sustain them during the 'storms of disappointment' and the 'anguishes of life'.

87 This faith, in time of pressure, gave King a

'triumphant' peace. 88

The God revealed in Jesus Christ, whose life and death were normative, was actually present in the community. It was this that provided the strength to love the enemies, even those who were vicious

8 1 Ibid., pp. 172,175-6.

8 2 Coretto Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,

1969), pp. 330,350-1. 8 3

C. Douglas Weaver, 'The Spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr.', Perspectives in Religious Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring 2004), p. 58. 8 4

Hewitt, 'Mining the Baptist Tradition for Christian Ethics: Some Gems*, p. 77. 8 5

Weaver, 'The Spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr.', ρ 57. 8 6

Lischer, Preacher King, p. 74. 8 7

King, 'Unfulfilled Dreams', p. 199. 8 8

Richard John Neuhaus, 'Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.', First Things, October 2002, p. 100.

The Baptist Convictions of Martin Luther King Jr 21

in their hatred. As King left Dexter Avenue, and as tributes were paid to him, King's own emphasis in response was on the presence of God, on prayer and on how he had 'felt His power working in my life'.

89 This

personal God of the Baptist tradition, and in particular a God present to the slaves amid their suffering, was the experiential anchor for King's remarkable achievements.

90

The Revd Dr Ian M Randall, Senior Research Fellow, IBTS.

Carson, ed., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Vol 5: Threshold of a New Decade, p. 355. Weaver, 'The Spirituality of Martin Luther King Jr.', ρ 57.

ΛΓΙ^,

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