If Martin Luther King, Jr., were still alive, he would be celebrating his 85th birthday today. It’ s hard, if not impossible, for us to imagine King as an old man, because he never got that chance. An assassin’s bullet deprived us of his continued leadership, but also ensured that King would always be remembered as a charismatic young man wise beyond his years.
Over the last generation since his birthday was adopted as a national holiday, King has been elevated to the same American pantheon of near-gods that includes Washington and Lincoln. On the one hand, I am grateful that his legacy has been rescued from the crude efforts of his detractors to discredit him with attacks on his character and his politics. On the other hand, our veneration of King has allowed us to polish his image and remove the sting of his message, which, if taken seriously, still challenges us where we fail to live up to our founding ideals.
Because King is now an American icon, people on all sides of every cultural issue can cherry pick his sayings and writings to support their own agendas. Political progressives project confidence that they are faithfully advancing the work he began. Political conservatives appeal to King’s strong family ethic and claim that, were he alive today, he would be horrified by the results of some of the government initiatives he supposedly inspired.
For me, the memory of Dr. King is much more personal.
I was only a toddler when King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I wasn’t even born when the Montgomery Bus Boycott catapulted him to the forefront of the Civil Rights movement. But when I see the grainy black-and-white newsreels of King, especially when he’s speaking from the pulpit of a black Baptist church, I am instantly transported to a place that seems far away and yet, judging from how deeply his words and cadence move me, is still very close to my heart.
You see, I grew up in a typical Southern town. Except for the public schools, which were integrated the year I entered first grade, every aspect of life was racially segregated, especially the churches. My family attended the First Baptist Church on Main Street, right at the major crossroads downtown. But, as in many other Southern towns, there was another First Baptist Church – the one for the black folks. Their church was located on Cordell Street, far off any path my family or any other white residents ever traveled.
Our pastor at First Baptist on Main Street, however, had the courage to venture across that racial chasm. He was an outspoken advocate of Civil Rights, which frequently put him at odds with the major lights of the community, some of whom attended our prestigious church. For 21 years, he labored faithfully in our divided town, never shying away from opportunities to challenge our cultural apartheid with the truth of the gospel. Early in his tenure, he reached out to the pastor of First Baptist on Cordell Street and arranged an annual joint revival. Every August thereafter, our two churches met together nightly for a week, alternating between churches. The choice of preachers to lead the revivals also rotated between Southern Baptist (the white denomination) and National Baptist (the black denomination).
I vividly recall the services at “First Cordell,” as we came to call it. Their handsome brick building was not air-conditioned, so funeral home fans were passed out along with worship bulletins. The sanctuary lamps were dim, but behind the baptismal pool, a large mural of the Jordan River was bathed in light. I remember how different the Hammond B3 sounded from the stately pipe organ my father played at our church. For these revivals, our choirs combined. The reserved middle-class men and women from our church choir looked awkward and uncomfortable and could hardly be heard over the jubilant voices of their host choir. I marveled at the call-and-response sermons, especially in those years when the revival preacher was black. The preacher started softly. Little by little, responses of “that’s right,” “well?” and “mm-hm,” became more frequent. As the preacher warmed to his theme, he was encouraged by his congregation. “Preach it!” “Come on, now!” “Tell the story!” I distinctly remember one elderly gentleman sitting in the back row who, upon hearing a word that spoke to his heart, threw back is head and loudly exclaimed, “Yes, Lord!” This elder’s affirmation invariably touched off a chorus of “amens” and smattered applause. Carried along by the energy of the congregation, the sermon swelled to a crescendo and swept worshipers into a frenzy. By the time the preacher had finished his message, the white folks weren’t quite sure what had happened, but were as thrilled as they were confounded.
As a youngster, I didn’t understand that our different worship styles sprang from different historical experiences. I knew nothing of the secret midnight worship services on Southern plantations where slaves had engaged in spiritual catharsis. I was only beginning to learn about how the black church was a major source of strength for an oppressed community, and how its emotive worship expressed an unbridled hope for freedom and justice in the midst of great suffering. I was too young to comprehend how the black church’s commitment to liberation of the total person in this life and the next stood in stark contrast to white Southern Christianity’s narrow focus on saving individual souls for eternity in heaven.
And yet, despite the gaping chasm between us, we were viscerally connected to each other. We read the same Bible, sang the same hymns, believed the same gospel, and our common Southern experience yielded similar spiritual impulses. This wasn’t as obvious in church as it was in our music. The blues and jazz that emerged from the black community gave birth to the country and rock music popular among Southern whites. The Sacred Harp collection and black gospel music sprang of the same spiritual soil.
So when I hear Dr. King’s speeches, I don’t just hear the soaring words of an American hero or a famous voice from a subculture of America. I hear the voice of a Baptist preacher from the South. I hear the same phrasing, vocabulary and style that often emanated from the pulpit at First Baptist Main Street. King read and quoted the same theologians and biblical scholars that inspired my own courageous pastor who dared to challenge Southern apartheid. In King’s sermons I hear a fellow Southerner who gave expression to the deepest longings and the highest aspirations of people from my native region who claimed the same gospel that saved me. His prophetic preaching floods my mind with images from my childhood. I see the people of First Baptist Cordell Street. I also see the faces of schoolmates with whom I became fast friends, but with whom I was not allowed to play anywhere outside of school. I see both sides of the railroad tracks in my hometown – the crumbling streets and simple houses (including many shacks) on one side, the beautiful lawns and attractive homes on the other. The deep wound of racism scarred all of us. It trapped my black brothers and sisters in poverty, but it diminished the humanity of blacks and whites alike. Everything about life in the South is tinged with the bloody, shameful history of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation. On one level, our lives were so utterly separated that we had two First Baptist Churches in the same town. But at a deeper level, the primal, emotive nature of Southern religion reached down below the cultural terrain and bound us together.
It would be wrong to claim that Martin Luther King liberated African-Americans – and King would be the first to say so. He lived the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, he gave his life for it. The Civil Rights movement was essentially a religious revival carried along by nightly prayer meetings all across the South. The gospel that inspired this movement liberates everyone who responds to it. It liberated me.
Several years ago, on the Sunday of the King holiday weekend, I delivered a children’s message in worship. I held up a picture of Dr. King standing in a church pulpit, donning a preacher’s robe with three chevrons on each sleeve indicating his doctoral degree. I pointed those out to the children, and then showed them the same chevrons on my own robe. I told them that Dr. King and I had both answered God’s call to church ministry and gone to seminary, and that we earned the same degrees. My purpose was not to draw a comparison between King and myself (which would be the height of arrogance!) but rather to point out how King’s work was inspired by the same gospel that gathers us together as a community of faith. I spoke of him as my brother in Christ. That’s how I choose to remember him.
Copyright 2014 by J. Mark Lawson
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