Dr. Martin Luther King

Happy Martin Luther King Jr day! Do yourself a favor and read or listen to one of his speeches/letters in its entirety. Here are a few quotes to get you started.

In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists...
So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo.

Letter from Birmingham Jail. April 16, 1963

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just."...
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence. April 4, 1967

The great tragedy of life is that too often we allow the means by which we live to out-distance the ends for which we live… We have allowed our civilization to outrun our culture. We have allowed our technology to out-distance our theology. And for this reason, we find ourselves caught up with many problems. Through our scientific genius we’ve made of the world a neighborhood, but we’ve failed through moral commitment to make of it a brotherhood. And so we’ve ended up with guided missiles and misguided men.

Sermon at Temple Israel of Hollywood in 1965.
Listen to the sermon at: http://jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=17060

For more audio and text of MLK speeches and letters, see http://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/