Psst...MLK was a Christian
By Nathan Porter
BSNN.net
If there were no Attorney General John Ashcroft, what would the self-proclaimed civil rights establishment do on Martin Luther King Day? Last year we were mired in the “controversy” surrounding the Ashcroft nomination and many black leaders used MLK Day as an opportunity to advance their anti-Ashcroft agenda. This year is no different. From Al Shaprton to Maxine Waters, many leftist blacks are using the King holiday to attack, yet again, John Ashcroft.
So as America pauses to reflect on the life and accomplishments of Martin Luther King, I cannot help but wonder what King would think of today's civil rights establishment. What would King think about the reality of an African-American secretary of state and national security advisor...in a Republican administration? Would he be disappointed? Would he be disappointed that the civil rights movement never progressed beyond the "no boots" strategy? Compare the current crop of civil rights "leaders" to Dr. King.
As Los Angeles burned during the Rodney King riots of 1992, Maxine Waters said: “People want to know why I'm not saying exactly what they want me to say. They want me to walk out in Watts, like black people did in the Sixties [Now who could that be?], and say, 'Cool it, baby, cool it.' Well, I'm sorry the fact of the matter is, whether we like it or not, riot is the voice of the unheard. These were mothers who took this as an opportunity to take some milk, to take some bread, to take some shoes...One lady said her children didn't have any shoes. She just saw those shoes there...God Damn it! It was such a tearjerker. I might have gone in and taken them for her myself.”
Dr. King also spoke of riots: “The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.”
Whose words should African-Americans heed?
Jesse Jackson says, “New York is Hymietown...Stay out da Bushes...What we have is a coup d'etat led by the U.S. Supreme Court.” Dr. King said, “Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. “
Perhaps before acting or speaking, civil rights "leaders" such as Uncle Jesse, Reverend Al, and Aunt Maxine should ask themselves, "What would MLK do?" Would Dr. King be anti-Ashcroft because – as liberals have claimed – the AG’s Christian beliefs are “far outside the mainstream and he is not the kind of person to set aside his deeply held personal views?” Would Dr. King be concerned that a man who believed we "have no king but Jesus" is the US Attorney General? Would Dr. King disagree with John Ashcroft's stated belief that it is against his religion to impose it on anyone? Using their own standard, today’s civil rights establishment would oppose appointing Dr. King to any government post as well.
A tale of two Martins
I think it's fitting on this Martin Luther King Day to also remember another reverend named Martin, and in the current climate I want to look at the two men not as political leaders but as pastors, as men of God and as men of their words. Martin Niemöller was a German U-boat Captain during WWI. After WWI he became a Lutheran pastor who risked it all by speaking out against the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler. Niemöller is credited with saying the following in a speech in 1945, and many times thereafter:
"In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up."
It was under these circumstance that Martin Niemöller gave a sermon based on Matthew 5: 13-16 ("You are the salt of the earth...You are the light of the world."). Two weeks after giving this sermon, Niemöller was arrested and sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen and then Dachau. He survived eight years in the concentration camps before being freed in 1945. And while he became unpopular with many Western leaders for later preaching disarmament, his words from 1937 still ring true today. He said the Christian world was in danger of losing its distinctiveness from the rest of the world:
“We have come through a time of peril when we were told: 'you really must suit your message to the world; you really must bring your creed into harmony with the present. Then you will again become influential and powerful.' …It has come to this: we are being accosted on all sides, by statesmen as well as by the man in the street, who tell us: ‘For God's sake, do not speak so loudly or you will land in prison. Do not speak so plainly: surely you can also say all that in a more obscure fashion!’ …The Gospel must remain the Gospel and the Church must remain the Church. And we must not--for Heaven's sake--make a German Gospel out of the Gospel; we must not--for Heaven's sake--make a German Church out of Christ's Church!”
By insisting that to hold public office Christians must "hide their light," leftist Democrats and civil rights leaders are hoping to ensure that no earnest Christian is willing to take such a position. As another Martin (Martin Bormann, private secretary to Hitler) said in 1941, "National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." It has always been my experience that truly spiritual people, regardless of their faith, are more tolerant of other people’s faith than those who have none.
Like Martin Niemöller, Martin Luther King was an outspoken opponent of government-led oppression, and a man of God. MLK once gave a sermon called Our God is Able. His words also ring true today:
“God is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. This ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able…There are those who seek to convince us that only humanity is able. Their attempts to substitute a human centered universe for a God centered universe is not new. Not a few joined Swinburne in singing a new anthem: ‘Glory to Man in the highest! For Man is the master of all things.’ …Let us notice that God is able to subdue all the powers of evil… History is the story of evil forces that advance with seemingly irresistible power only to be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. There is a law in the moral world - a silent, invisible, imperative, akin to the laws in the physical world - which reminds us that life will work only in a certain way. The Hitlers and the Mussolinis have their day, and for a certain period they may wield great power, but soon they are cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb… Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.”
It seems that Ashcroft and King have much in common: the belief that God is able. It sucks that so many who claim to carry the mantle of MLK continue using Ashcroft's faith to discredit him. So to those who are angered by the actions of the modern civil rights movement, and to those young blacks who want to honor the memory of MLK, I say do what Reverend Al, Uncle Jesse, and Aunt Maxine refuse to do; heed the words of Martin Luther King. Remember that God is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. Remember that hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. Remember that hate causes man to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. So don’t be hateful or anxious. Come what may, God is able. MLK just wanted you to know. |
