Christians MLK and Birmingham

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Injustice

Martin Luther King, Jr., likened himself to the “prophets of the eighth century” in his letter from a Birmingham Jail (King, 1963). Since Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which institutionalized the separate but equal clause, the South had been plagued by Jim Crow, and blacks were being treated unfairly. King had arrived in Birmingham to protest the injustices there. Some of his fellow clergymen objected to his protests, arguing that he was disrupting the peace and that it was un-Christian of him to insert himself into matters that did not pertain to him. However, he argued that not only had he been invited by that he was like the prophets of old who left their home towns to call other people to repent lest God punish them for their wickedness. He argued that “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” (King, 1963). He stated that Christians must be willing to sacrifice themselves to stand up for those who are oppressed and asserted that “the judgment of God is upon the church as never before” and posited that “if the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring…” (King, 1963).

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In other words, according to King, a Christian’s duty is to stand up against injustice and oppression and face the firing line because that is what Christ would have wanted. His philosophy is rooted more in Thoreau (1849) than it is in any doctrine of Christ, but he conflates freedom with Christianity throughout enough to make his point. If one is going to go by King’s argument, a Christian should protest oppression; however, King is not the last word on Christianity—and the evident displeasure that many of his confreres took indicates as much, unless one is going to charge them all with being racist.
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