Dr. King, The Preacher
Martin Luther King Jr. is often remembered primarily as a leader of the Civil Rights movement. But Dr. King was a member of the clergy first.
MLK was christened “Michael” when he was born in 1929. His parents came from sharecropping and country-church backgrounds in Georgia. In Atlanta, the Kings were active in movements to secure equal rights for African Americans during the 1930's. In the King household, social justice and faith went hand in hand. King Sr. was, himself, a Baptist minister.
In 1934, when "Michael" King was 5-years-old, his dad traveled with the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) to witness the rise of Nazi-ism in Germany. Observing how Nazi's used America's Jim Crow playbook to disenfranchise and harass Jews, the BWA issued a resolution stating, “This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the law of God the Heavenly Father, all racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair discrimination toward the Jews, toward colored people, or toward subject races in any part of the world.”
On this tour with the BWA, King Sr. was so inspired by Martin Luther's (1483-1546) 16th Century theology that he changed his name and his son's to honor the radical Protestant.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s roots in faith are the foundation for his Civil Rights activism. King received a Divinity degree from Crozer Theological Seminary and his PhD from Boston University. His PhD thesis is called A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.
Reading Dr. King's sermons or listening to recordings of his speeches today, it's impossible to separate King's Civil Rights leadership from his Christian roots. He was more than a leader in the Civil Rights movement because he organized liberation, equality, and justice for all people from Christian Gospel. His activism is built on faith.
A note from the editor - Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. always reminds me of my dad and the impact MLK had on my dad's ministry. My dad grew up in rural/small towns on the Minnesota/Iowa border. He was called to be a minister when he was about 22. He served 4 rural parishes in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, 1960's-2000's. In his office, he always had this poster (see above) of Martin Luther King Jr. taped on a wall near his typewriter.
