Inside
NCR
Getting your own national holiday is
something like being named a saint. Some of the edge comes off.
If, as in the case of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the culture
he criticized is the one now closing federal offices and the postal service in
his honor, one might find it a little awkward to continue to critique that
culture in his name.
That is, of course, unless one digs beneath a few iconographic
moments of protest (why not reread David J. Garrows biography Bearing
the Cross?) into the whole of Kings life and the prophetic insights
that propelled him, with human flaws and fears intact, to organize and to
march, to preach and to land in jail.
In the wake of his life and of his assassination in 1968, we were
a changed country. Never again would the eloquence and the wisdom of the
African-American community be as hidden as it was. Yet, much of the story
remains untold. Racism and the lingering effects of slavery, despite the leaps
of progress since the Civil Rights era, remain nagging illnesses in the
culture.
The spiritual dimensions of that illness and how to deal with it
are outlined in the report on Page 10 about Fr. Clarence Williams Jr.s
course, Recovery from Everyday Racisms.
The attitudes in need of changing run deep, embedded in a history
that often goes unnoticed. And the fallout continues to affect us today. As Fr.
Joseph Brown argues in an accompanying piece, the wider culture does itself a
great disservice by ignoring the disturbing details of the story of blacks in
America. We will be looking in on some of those themes in greater depth in
February, Black History Month.
If recent history is any guide,
Kings holiday will be celebrated with moving scenes of interracial
harmony and pledges to continue to fight the crippling disease of racism.
Unfortunately, few will also celebrate Kings deep conviction, a
conviction that grew during his life, of the necessity for nonviolent action
and his deep revulsion toward war.
Returning to a heros welcome after receiving the Nobel Peace
Prize, he said, I am returning with a deeper conviction that nonviolence
is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our
time.
A recent Kansas City Star article, reviewing Mervyn A.
Warrens new book King Came Preaching, contained this clip of a
King sermon on the church and war: In the terrible midnight of war, men
have knocked on the door of the church to ask for the bread of peace, but the
church has often disappointed them. What more pathetically reveals the
irrelevancy of the church in present-day world affairs than its witness
regarding war? In a world gone mad with arms buildup, chauvinistic passions and
imperialistic exploitation, the church has either endorsed these activities or
remained appallingly silent.
A weary world, pleading desperately for
peace, has often found the church morally sanctioning war.
-- Tom Roberts
My e-mail address is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, January 18,
2002
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