His beliefs seem reasonable and he clearly did a lot of good by using the pulpit as he did. But would fundamentalist Christians approve of his views? Probably not. Would he classify himself as a Christian if he wasn't a minister? Not sure.
Really? Why don't you read every one of his sermons and speeches and listen to recordings of his preaching and come back and tell us if you really believe he "didn't believe Jesus was his savior" and if you're "not sure he was a Christian." That would boggle my mind how you could possibly construe that. Some might even call you a fool. Read them all http://www.kinginstitute.info/ or read these excerpts from Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool, sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King. Delivered at Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago, Illinois, on 27 August 1967. "Now of course I was religious; I grew up in the church. I’m the son of a preacher, I’m the great-grandson of a preacher, and the great-great-grandson of a preacher. My father is a preacher, my grandfather was a preacher, my great-grandfather was a preacher, my only brother is a preacher, my Daddy’s brother is a preacher. So I didn’t have much choice, I guess. [laughter] But I had grown up in the church, and the church meant something very real to me, but it was a kind of inherited religion and I had never felt (My Lord) an experience with God in the way that you must have it if you’re going to walk the lonely paths of this life. (Yeah) Everything was done, and if I had a problem I could always call Daddy, my earthly father; things were solved." But one day after finishing school, I was called to a little church down in Montgomery, Alabama, and I started preaching there. Things were going well in that church; it was a marvelous experience. But one day a year later, a lady by the name of Rosa Parks decided that she wasn’t going to take it any longer. She stayed in a bus seat, and you may not remember it because (I do) it’s way back now several years, but it was the beginning of a movement where fifty thousand black men and women refused absolutely to ride the city buses. And we walked together for 381 days. (Yes, sir) That’s what we got to learn in the North: Negroes have to learn to stick together. We stuck together. [applause] We sent out the call and no Negro rode the buses. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life. And the people of Montgomery asked me to serve as the spokesman, and as the president of the new organization—the Montgomery Improvement Association that came into being to lead the boycott—I couldn’t say no. And then we started our struggle together. (Yeah) Things were going well for the first few days, but then about ten or fifteen days later, after the white people in Montgomery knew that we meant business, they started doing some nasty things. (Yes) They started making nasty telephone calls, and it came to the point that some days more than forty telephone calls would come in, threatening my life, the life of my family, the life of my children. I took it for a while in a strong manner. But I never will forget one night very late. It was around midnight. And you can have some strange experiences at midnight. (Yes, sir) I had been out meeting with the steering committee all that night. And I came home, and my wife was in the bed and I immediately crawled into bed to get some rest to get up early the next morning to try to keep things going. And immediately the telephone started ringing and I picked it up. On the other end was an ugly voice. That voice said to me, in substance, "******, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house. (Lord Jesus) I’d heard these things before, but for some reason that night it got to me. I turned over and I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t sleep. (Yes) I was frustrated, bewildered. And then I got up and went back to the kitchen and I started warming some coffee, thinking that coffee would give me a little relief. And then I started thinking about many things. I pulled back on the theology and philosophy that I had just studied in the universities, trying to give philosophical and theological reasons for the existence and the reality of sin and evil, but the answer didn’t quite come there. I sat there and thought about a beautiful little daughter who had just been born about a month earlier. We have four children now, but we only had one then. She was the darling of my life. I’d come in night after night and see that little gentle smile. And I sat at that table thinking about that little girl and thinking about the fact that she could be taken away from me any minute. (Go ahead) And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted, and loyal wife who was over there asleep. (Yes) And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her. And I got to the point that I couldn’t take it any longer; I was weak. (Yes) Something said to me, you can’t call on Daddy now, he’s up in Atlanta a hundred and seventy-five miles away. (Yes) You can’t even call on Mama now. (My Lord) You’ve got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about. (Yes) That power that can make a way out of no way. (Yes) And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me and I had to know God for myself. (Yes, sir) And I bowed down over that cup of coffee—I never will forget it. (Yes, sir) And oh yes, I prayed a prayer and I prayed out loud that night. (Yes) I said, "Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right. (Yes) I think I’m right; I think the cause that we represent is right. (Yes) But Lord, I must confess that I’m weak now; I’m faltering; I’m losing my courage. (Yes) And I can’t let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak." (Yes) I wanted tomorrow morning to be able to go before the executive board with a smile on my face. And it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, (Yes) "Martin Luther, (Yes) stand up for righteousness, (Yes) stand up for justice, (Yes) stand up for truth. (Yes) And lo I will be with you, (Yes) even until the end of the world." And I’ll tell you, I’ve seen the lightning flash. I’ve heard the thunder roll. I felt sin- breakers dashing, trying to conquer my soul. But I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me, (Never) never to leave me alone. And I’m going on in believing in him. (Yes) You’d better know him, and know his name, and know how to call his name. (Yes) You may not know philosophy. You may not be able to say with Alfred North Whitehead that he’s the Principle of Concretion. You may not be able to say with Hegel and Spinoza that he is the Absolute Whole. You may not be able to say with Plato that he’s the Architectonic Good. You may not be able to say with Aristotle that he’s the Unmoved Mover. But sometimes you can get poetic about it if you know him. You begin to know that our brothers and sisters in distant days were right. Because they did know him as a rock in a weary land, as a shelter in the time of starving, as my water when I’m thirsty, and then my bread in a starving land. And then if you can’t even say that, sometimes you may have to say, "he’s my everything. He’s my sister and my brother. He’s my mother and my father." If you believe it and know it, you never need walk in darkness. Don’t be a fool. Recognize your dependence on God. (Yes, sir) As the days become dark and the nights become dreary, realize that there is a God who rules above. And so I’m not worried about tomorrow. I get weary every now and then. The future looks difficult and dim, but I’m not worried about it ultimately because I have faith in God. Centuries ago Jeremiah raised a question, "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" He raised it because he saw the good people suffering so often and the evil people prospering. (Yes, sir) Centuries later our slave foreparents came along. (Yes, sir) And they too saw the injustices of life, and had nothing to look forward to morning after morning but the rawhide whip of the overseer, long rows of cotton in the sizzling heat. But they did an amazing thing. They looked back across the centuries and they took Jeremiah’s question mark and straightened it into an exclamation point. And they could sing, "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. (Yes) There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul." And there is another stanza that I like so well: "Sometimes (Yeah) I feel discouraged." (Yes) And I don’t mind telling you this morning that sometimes I feel discouraged. (All right) I felt discouraged in Chicago. As I move through Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama, I feel discouraged. (Yes, sir) Living every day under the threat of death, I feel discouraged sometimes. Living every day under extensive criticisms, even from Negroes, I feel discouraged sometimes. [applause] Yes, sometimes I feel discouraged and feel my work’s in vain. But then the holy spirit (Yes) revives my soul again. "There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul." God bless you. [applause]"
Did you read the article I shared? http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/nov_dec_09_scofield I'm not going to debate how firm his religious views were and what was for his audience compared to what was from him. It's also hard to tell the difference between what a man feels and what a man thinks... anyways, I don't mean to offend anybody who feels the need to support their own worldview by finding famous people who believed the same thing. I was just saying that I found MLK's views were reasonable based on his culture and time. He was a bright man and a highly influencial leader (one of the greatest ever)... and he would have been whether or not he believed in god. MLK was great.
Nope and I don't plan to at least for this particular topic (though I read the one above and I'm sure I'll read some of them later) because I really don't care whether or not MLK believed in God. He was great either way and his belief or disbelief plays absolutely no role in whether or not I believe or don't believe. It's a non-issue.
I've always found "does ___ believe in God?" to be a weak question. The better one is "why does ___ believe or not believe in God?"
Out of curiosity...how much does a conservative like yourself agree with Martin Luther King's politics? I'm just wondering because many conservatives I talk to these days seem to cherry pick MLK Jr.'s ideas. For example, conservatives all love that he represented social equality and consistent rights for all Americans. However, they seem to forget that he advocated the guaranteed income. He also believed the distribution of wealth was too skewed and that the U.S. may need to move toward "Democratic Socialism." For a bunch of people who are quick to denigrate the Obama administration's policies as far left, it strikes me as strange that they don't say the same things about MLK Jr.
If indeed the link is an accurate representation of MLK's views, then I'd agree that many of his views run counter to mainstream Christianity, at least in any conventional sense. Reality may be that MLK living in the modern age would likely have been castigated from many churches due to an adherance to heterodox opinions. That said, I hardly find his views 'palatable to an atheist.' Perhaps more palatable than orthodox Christianity, but certainly not palatable in its entirety- belief in God, adherance to the bible, consistent invocations of Jesus in his sermons, belief in a miraculous birth, a belief in past miracles (Noah, Moses, etc.), and other beliefs are ones that most atheists mock, and although MLK may have metaphorically interpreted them to make them more 'realistic', they would still be far from palatable to an atheist. On a side note, the thread is an obvious attempt at counteracting the previous 'view of religious people' thread that garnered substantially negative views of religious people. Although the OP may not have intended it, I think the thread does demonstrate that people's perceptions of a given group can differ vastly when compared to specific individuals within said group. So for example, polls guaging public perception of atheism tend to run quite low, but a poll about Christopher Hitchens is likely to produce positive results (especially at this time). Conversely, public perceptions of Christianity and the church are negative, but people like MLK and Jesus will undoubtedly poll well for what they represented in their lives (or the abstract belief they represent in peoples minds). I also find the claim that his Christianity was some sort of ploy for MLK, or a product of larger circumstances that he was forced to work within, historically unsustainable. MLK may have expressed skepticism regarding certain Christian beliefs, but at the end of the day he was a reverend and his body of work definitely demonstrates a commitment to church and belief.
MLK is not a national hero because he opposed Vietnam or supported welfare. In fact, you're ignoring the very reason he was effective at advocating Civil Rights, because he was able to bring politically and socially disparate people together to embrace a concept and tackle an issue that Presidents couldn't (Truman, JFK) or wouldn't (Eisenhower) figure out. Something non-black liberals don't seem to get is that it's ultimately in everyone's best interests that white conservatives' kids, employees or parishoners see them celebrating MLK and basic Civil Rights; there are alot more of them than there are of "us," and theoretically they can subvert or basically undo practical integration anytime they want.
That really wasn't my point at all. It's one thing to admire him for his ability to bring people in all walks of life together to fight for civil rights. I think everyone in their right minds should revere MLK for his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. It's another matter altogether to agree with some of his political commentary. A few of conservative co-workers I've talked to (particularly around the time Glenn Beck was hosting his "Restoring Honor Rally"), actually seemed convinced that MLK was a staunch conservative. I remember one guy even pointed me to an article where Alveda King (MLK's niece) said he'd be a modern-day social conservative...as if it were proof that MLK would disapprove of Obama's "leftist" policies. Clearly the guy didn't realize there's a distinction between social and fiscal conservatism. In light of basso's usually right-leaning views, I was just curious about his opinions on MLK's politics.
Your point is valid, but it neglects the fact that the majority of the Africans stolen from the continent via the Trans-Atlantic slave trade were from West and Central Africa. Very few came from the Eastern portion of the continent where Ethiopia lies. MLK was in all likelyhood a man of West African/Central African descent. As for the poll.......he was a product of his environment. For whatever reason, spirituality has always been big within this community.
King biographer David Garrow coming out with a new article this week that won't be very flattering of Dr. King: https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-tapes-allege-mlk-watched-rape-2019-5 Jonathan Turley comments: There is no question that the FBI was hostile to MLK and J. Edgar Hoover viewed him as a threat. For that reason, I would not be inclined to simply accept a 302 form or internal memo on its face value. There is also the question of why the FBI would sit next door to a rape scene and not take any action. However, this is news either way. If it is false, it is an elaborate effort to frame MLK and a failure by a leading MLK biographer. If true, it means that an American hero was hiding a despicable and contempt-worthy life. So why the limited coverage? These files are now available for review. https://jonathanturley.org/2019/05/...hed-as-follower-was-raped-by-fellow-minister/ The next couple of weeks are going to be interesting. on edit: the Garrow article is out https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/june-2019/the-troubling-legacy-of-martin-luther-king/ discussion of the Garrow article: https://thebulwark.com/what-are-we-supposed-to-think-of-martin-luther-king-jr-now/
Memos from J Edgar Hoover’s FBI would be the context we are evaluating this evidence under... mind you. Not really context that commands it to be taken as gospel truth. But that being said it’s certainly possible that it is true. Great people are capable of terrible things and Terrible people are capable of doing good things. As writer George RR Martin always says... Hitler was a dog lover. I think figures in history like MLK all have complex stories and MLK was human with human faults. However the ultimate negative thing that would be shameful to happen would be for political forces opposed to civil and human rights become accustomed moving forward to use MLK’s potential faults and character traits as a way to mobilize against human and civil rights. The fact is the Civil Rights Movement was bigger than MLK. He’s just a man who was made into a figurehead of the movement but the movement was about a larger collective and the movement was pure while human beings involved might not all have been in their own personal lives. Important to keep that in perspective if MLK’s personal flaws become a talking point of those looking to use whatever they can to further their power in our country.
