Davison's Doodle

Dreaming: 50 Years On Now . . .

Today, many remember the now iconic speech that Martin Luther King Jr gave 50 years ago on the Washington Mall calling America to live up to the moral authority of our founding documents, “all are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights.”  That’s my paraphrase, of course, but I think it honors the spirit of the document without needing to parse the meaning of “men” or “creator” in our context.  Remember, at the writing of that document “men” meant all white male landowners.  Many of the founders were “deists,” not Christians, and working to shake off state sponsored religion that justified taxation without representation and “God sanctioned” leaders.  Slaves helped build the south’s wealth.  Indentured servants, called immigrants, built the north and laid train track to connect the continent.  Women could not vote.  There were no child labor laws.  I’ve stood there on the steps of Mr. Lincoln’s monument.  I’ve sat at the MLK Memorial and looked at MLK’s eyes watching, some may say staring-down, the Capitol, even as Mr. Lincoln sits with a watchful eye on what has become of this Nation’s legislative body.  I can imagine them weeping or sarcastically quipping, “really?”

I appreciated the thinking of David Brooks, one of my favorite conservatives, in his latest column in the New York Times, as he reflected on the strategic “why” of the civil rights movement.

It’s also worth remembering that while today we take marches and protests for granted, the tactics of the civil rights movement had deep philosophical and religious roots. The leaders rejected the soft meliorism of more secular activists, the idea that significant progress could be made through consciousness-raising and education campaigns, through consensus and gradual reform. As Rustin put it, African-American leaders like him looked upon “the middle-class idea of long-term educational and cultural changes with fear and mistrust.”

They wanted a set of tactics that were at once more aggressive and at the same time deeply rooted in biblical teaching. That meant the tactics had to start with love, not hate; nonviolence, not violence; renunciation, not self-indulgence. “Ours would be one of nonresistance,” Randolph told the Senate Armed Services Committee all the way back in 1948. “We would be willing to absorb the violence, absorb the terrorism, to face the music and to take whatever comes.”

I watched some of  CSPAN’s coverage of the 50th anniversary of the MOW.  The amount of “God language” claiming that God is on one side or another is troubling to me.  Yes, Dr. King was a preacher.  But, to claim God in a specific “Christo-centric” way limits the power of the message to resonate to those that are not believers or followers.  It is easy to make this more a “Church fight” rather than a secular issue about governing, freedom, and equality.  I think Dr. King was more intentional and careful with his religious language than many are today and he didn’t quote the King James version of the bible.  While writing this, I was able to hear the words of Forrest Whitaker and Jamie Foxx.  If you have a chance to see or hear those, I recommend them.  Mr. Whitaker’s words were particularly thoughtful, inspiring and exactly what this next phase of the “civil rights movement” needs.  Foxx and Whitaker, they are dream catchers.

Tonight, I’ll watch the MLK speech on MSNBC even after I’ve read the dream text and his letter from a Birmingham jail.  It is MLK’s words from jail, in Birmingham, that stir me most given that I serve in Christian ministry.   I’ll watch and think about how Protestant Christianity has changed focus from those days of social justice for all God’s children to the consumer driven narcissism of personal salvation that we have today.  For many, social justice has come to mean an apocalyptic narrow eye of a needle through which religious fundamentalism, be it Christian or other, views the human condition and expects to be raptured.  It has happened across the Christian spectrum.  Where is Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell Jr, Cardinal Dolan, and the other faces of pop-Christianity in this discussion?  Sadly, MLK’s words from the Birmingham jail are relevant today for we who serve in ministry; and are particularly convicting for the icons of pop-Christianity.  Their silence or vocal support for “voter id” laws, have the unnamed intent to suppress the vote of those that do not vote Republican and affirms the pop-evangelical collusion with the patriarchy of white power struggling to hold on for another decade or two.  Their work against equality for all be it marriage, immigrants, economics or women, affirms an institutional orthodox interpretation of Paul and specific Christian traditions, but it also defines what it means to be a follower of the way of Jesus and makes it easier for the “nones” or the “de-churched” or “un-churched” to lump all followers of Jesus, all Christians, into the fundamentalists, theocratic pile.  Believe what you wish about the what Jesus’ crucifixion did or means, but meet other people like you are meeting Jesus or being greeted by Jesus, or being welcomed by Jesus who is said to have reminded folks, “if you are without sin, cast the first stone.”  Note, in this story Jesus doesn’t get out a sin organizational chart to weigh or weight one sin to another.

I look around today for the dream catchers?  Maybe that is what Christianity is to be about in this part of the early 21st century: helping followers of Jesus, believers, and practitioners of Christianity catch the kindom of God dream in our midst, again.  Not an Empire.  Not a pseudo-Christian government or nation.  I think that is what MLK might have been talking about.  Until all Americans can claim an equality and opportunity equal to mine as a white male, there is still a check marked, “insufficient funds” from the bank of justice that was created when the founders of this National experiment first penned extraordinary ideals meant to be a living moral compass.  Dream catching . . . which way?