LETTER FROM THE CHURCH OF CHRIST SHELL:
Martin Luther King, Christianity, And The Law
By DAVID REAGAN

Dear Leroy:

I am writing in response to your thought provoking article, “Martin Luther King, Jr.: Symbol of Peace or Violence?”

I think you hit the nail on the head when you indicated in response to your own title that King was really a symbol of neither, but was instead a symbol of a people’s struggle for dignity.

Still, for many he was synonymous with violence, and thus—as you noted from many his tragic assassination elicited only the thoughtless and cold response that “He got what was coming to him.”

I think this response is a tragedy, and I’m convinced that it is rooted in a basic misunderstanding of King’s methods. The misunderstanding stems in turn from our natural human tendency to oversimplify all issues and people, particularly those that are unpopular. Thus we flippantly deny any difference between communism and socialism, arguing that socialism is “creeping” or “crawling” communism or simply communism in disguise. Or we view communism and Catholicism as monolithic movements devoid of internal, national variances (Russian communism is as terrible and as threatening as Chinese communism or American Catholicism is as debased as the Spanish variety). Or we lump together such diverse groups as the hippies, the beatniks, the California motorcycle cults, the radical student political activists, and anyone else with long hair and give them simplistic collective labels like “Dropouts” or “Bums.”

In like manner we have tended to view the black freedom movement in this country as a monolithic conspiracy and have steadfastly refused to recognize the very fundamental differences which separate its leadership. Accordingly, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, an organization committed to progress through legal tests in the courts, is condemned with the same righteous indignation as the Black Panthers, a conspiratorial group committed to terroristic violence. The same logical tendency led many to lump Martin Luther King together with black militants like Stokeley Carmichael and Rap Brown”After all, they’re all black, aren’t they?”

This is not to say, of course, that King and Carmichael did not share many of the same goals—they did. But common goals do not necessarily produce cohorts. Men can also be separated by means. Senator Barry Goldwater and Lee Harvey Oswald both desired the removal of President Kennedy from power. Some of the bitterest of enemies can be found in the religious world where Christian leaders often denounce each other with vehemence, yet are committed to the same goal, namely the salvation of men’s souls. Both the Republican and Democratic parties in this country seem to me to be dedicated to the same goal—the creation of a society of maximized freedom in which every individual will have an equal opportunity to fulfill his potential—but they fight like tigers over the means to be used in attaining that goal. Similarly, Martin Luther King shared with many of the Black Power militants the goal of equal justice and opportunity for Negroes, but King was profoundly separated from the Browns and Carmichaels over the question of means.

King was a revolutionary. But the crucial point that made all the difference in the world is that King was a Christian revolutionary. He was a Christian revolutionary in the sense that his motives and methods were rooted in Christian ethics.

I know that there are some of our brethren who would be repulsed at this idea, who believe that the words “Christian” and “revolution” are incompatible, and who would run immediately to their New Testaments to quote the Apostles’ emphasis on the Christian’s duty to obey the law (Romans 13:18 and I Peter 2:13 and 14). But I feel that they fail to realize that the principle of Christian obedience to legal authority has its exceptions.

Jesus Himself stated one of these exceptions in no uncertain terms when He exhorted His followers to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21) All would surely agree therefore that a Christian would be bound to violate a state law requiring the worship of the chief of state or a law prohibiting worship entirely. It was such an attitude that brought the Apostle Paul into almost constant conflict with the law during his ministry and which resulted in his spending many a long night in prison. It is interesting to note too that violence seemed to follow Paul everywhere he went, despite the fact that he did nothing except preach a message of love. Because of this, I’m quite convinced that the good, law-abiding citizens of the Roman Empire must have viewed Paul as a militant advocate of violence and probably sighed with relief over the news of his death, muttering to themselves something like “He got what was coming to him.”

Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not attempting to deify Martin Luther King or even to sanctify him by comparing him to Paul. I’m simply pointing to some important parallels which characterized the activities which they both performed in the name of Christianity.

But to return to the point, the admonition of Jesus in Matthew 22 is not the only exception to the New Testament principle of respect for legal authority. Equally important is the principle of Christian ethics (see Romans 14) which teaches that it is a sin to violate one’s conscience regardless of the innocence of the particular act. To illustrate, playing card games like Old Maid or Canasta may be as innocent a past time as one could find, but to the person who is convinced that all card games are evil, participation is ruled out, and rightly so, for to participate would require the violation of conscience, and that would be a sin. By the same token, I would not object to a school board requiring my children to begin each school day by saluting the flag and repeating the Pledge of Allegiance—unless I felt that such an action constituted idolatry or blasphemy, in which case I would strenuously object and would even instruct my children to refrain from obeying the rule. To do otherwise would constitute a violation of my conscience and would put me in the intolerable Christian position of condoning a sin. This, of course, is precisely the position that the Seventh Day Adventists have taken on this issue, and the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld their refusal to obey the law.

The crucial point that we cannot escape is that Christian ethics erects the individual conscience as a barrier to an indiscriminate obedience to all laws. So does the whole heritage of Western thought, for even the Greek root of Western civilization, with its emphasis upon reason rather than faith, advocated through the Stoics the concept of a higher law of nature which is binding upon every intellect.

This is precisely what the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials were all about. The Nazi criminals who stood before that bar of justice argued their innocence on the grounds that their heinous crimes were performed in obedience to state law—in other words, they were simply “following orders.” Our resounding response was a refusal even to consider the argument. We rejected it because we counter argued that man’s conscience is ultimately responsible to a higher law, and that when the state orders a man to commit an act that is in violation of that higher law, he has an obligation to disobey that order. In short, we hanged men at Nuremberg because they loyally obeyed all the laws of their state.

To summarize, there are at least two situations in which a Christian may justifiably refuse to obey the law: 1) where obedience would constitute a violation of his obligations to God, and 2) where obedience would constitute a violation of his conscience.

A third situation emerges from a unique aspect of the American legal system. The United States Constitution specifies that any legal suit brought before the Supreme Court must constitute “a real case or controversy” (Article III, Sec. 2). In practice this has meant that the Supreme Court will not accept theoretical or hypothetical cases. In other words, to test the constitutionality of the law it is usually necessary to violate the law. For example, when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 requiring restaurants to serve all customers regardless of race, many law-abiding, white Americans felt that the law was unconstitutional. Yet, to test the constitutionality of this law presented a cruel dilemma to these Americans, for the only way to get the law before the Court was to violate it. This is exactly what several did, and one of these law breakers, Lester Maddox (who was not sustained by the Supreme Court) was almost immediately rewarded for his violation of the law by being elected the Governor of Georgia. The point of this story is that our constitutional system contains a curious paradox: it is based upon respect for the rule of law, yet it requires that one violate that law in order to test its compatibility with our basic constitutional principles. The moral of the story is that law breaking is often sanctioned by society when the law breaker is acting according to the wishes of the majority.

The third situation in which a Christian may justifiably violate the law may thus be characterized as one which is peculiarly American. In summary, it is the situation where an American citizen decides to exercise his right to violate the law for the purpose of testing its constitutionality. In this case, obedience to the law might not violate either his obligations to God or his conscience. He may simply feel that the law is unfair or unjust.

This does not mean, however, that a Christian can resort to any method in his violation of the law. Just as his motive for violating the law must be proper, so also must his means be compatible with Christian principles. This, of course, raises the whole controversial question of pacifism. Although I personally believe that a Christian may resort to violence in certain exceptional circumstances (personal or national self defense), I think we can avoid this entire issue, for Martin Luther King—the focal point of our concern—never advocated violence. Instead, he taught the strategy of nonviolent resistance, a strategy that should be acceptable to every Christian who recognizes the right of civil disobedience in certain situations.

However, the concept of acceptable nonviolent resistance must be defined carefully lest it be used as a subterfuge for clandestine violations of the law that are motivated by a sense of selfishness. Martin Luther King clearly recognized this problem and attempted to deal with it in his famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” This letter was written in 1963 after his arrest for civil rights activities in Birmingham, Alabama. It was written in response to criticisms directed against him and his movement by eight Alabama clergymen who had publicly condemned his demonstrations and had called for a return to “the principles of law and order and common sense:’ “When rights are consistently denied,” the clergymen argued, “a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets.” It was a call to return to the strategy of hopeful patience.

Martin Luther King responded patiently, attempting to show that his resort to civil disobedience in Birmingham had been a last resort after all negotiations had become hopelessly deadlocked. Then, in moving words charged with emotion, he addressed himself to the broader question of patience by the Negro people:

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Fun-town is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing bitterness toward white people; . . . when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” men and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John”, and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; . . . when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.

With this eloquent backdrop, King proceeded to define in detail his concept of civil disobedience. He emphasized that for civil disobedience to be acceptable to the Christian, it must be performed openly, lovingly, nonviolently, and with a willingness to accept the penalty.

What a contrast this approach offers to that of the Black Power militants! Motivated by hatred, their disobedience of the law is covert and violent, with no willingness whatsoever to pay the consequences. Their attitude toward the law is essentially the same as the white supremist who masquerades at night under a white sheet spreading terror through Negro communities. King had utter contempt for such an attitude and approach. “In no sense,” he wrote, “do I advocate evading or defying the law as the rabid segregationist would do. This would lead to anarchy.”

Still, the problem remains that a nonviolent, Christian act of civil disobedience may lead to violence as it did in Selma, Alabama, when police and state troopers attacked the civil rights marchers. This is a difficult and cruel dilemma for the Christian protestor who abhors violence, but it is an issue that King met head-on in his Birmingham Letter:

In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn’t this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because His unique God consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion?

Needless to say, these are not the words of an apostle of hatred and violence. They are instead the words of a committed Christian whose conscience has been pricked by injustice but whose heart is overflowing with love.

This is the man who “got what was coming to him.”

This is the man our brotherhood colleges could not bring themselves to honor with memorial services.

This is the man whose tragic death was so adroitly ignored by our ministers in their usual sermons on “the plan of salvation.”

And this is the man that we who sneered may someday respect as we stand in the ashes of our cities and homes and long for a Negro leader of compassion and dignity.

Yours in Christ,  

DAVID            

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—David Reagan is professor of government at Austin College, Sherman, Texas.