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Martin Luther King Jr.

King (Left) was only 39 before he was killed.

On 40th King Anniversary,
Black Theology Attacked

Leonard E. Colvin
Chief Reporter
New Journal & Guide
 
      Next Friday,  April 4th, the world will be observing the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
      Dr. King was shot to death while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was leading an effort to support improvements  in the working  conditions of black sanitation workers in that city.
       Dr. King was also making plans  for his Poor People’s Campaign which called for thousands of poor—black and white—to converge on Washington, D.C., from all corners of the nation to highlight the plight of low-income Americans.
       Dr. King, until his death and especially four decades after his demise, is regarded as one of the most revered advocates of peace and racial harmony. His “I Have A Dream” speech in 1963 is used repeatedly to distinguish him as a man who called for defining each of us by our character and not by the skin tone,
      In his challenge to racism and injustice in the United States, Dr. King, the social activist, adopted the non-violence philosophy promoted in India by activist Mohandas Gandhi. Significantly, Gandhi, like King, died at the hands of an assassin.
But Dr. King, an ordained Baptist minister, like many black preachers with a calling to social activism, was a skilled orator in what has come to be known as Black Liberation Theology.
      Recent declarations from the pulpit by a modern-day proponent of Black Liberation Theology, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago, have given rise to a discussion in America of this brand of religion and its intent.

Posted March 26, 2008

     Sermons and secular speeches generated from the concept of Black Liberation Theology, according to Jonathan Rieder, who was cited in a recent editorial by Columnist E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post, have a tone of anger rather than calm persuasion.
      Dr. Rieder, a Professor of Sociology at Barnard College  in New York and an admirer of Dr. King,  in an upcoming book about the civil rights leader’s speeches,  said that King and other advocates of  Black Liberation Theology were devout Christians, whose rhetoric would sound angry about the injustices heaped on minorities and  by an insensitive government.
       In Dionne’s editorial,  he said, “Listen to what King said about the Vietnam War at his own Ebenezer Baptist Church  in Atlanta on February 4, 1968:
     “God didn’t call America  to engage in a senseless,  unjust war...and we are criminals in that war.  We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation.  But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.”  
King then predicted this response from the Almighty:  “And if you don’t stop your reckless course, I’ll rise up and break the backbone of your power.”

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