Rev Martin Luther King’s Christian Conscience

While imprisoned inBirmingham, Alabamain April 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. received a statement from members of Alabama’s white clergy criticizing his active opposition to Birmingham’s racial segregation. Although he rarely responded directly to his critics, Rev. King sent a letter from the Birminghamjail that eloquently defended his views on segregation and his tactics for combating it. His belief in Christ led him to write to these men, with whom he felt a sense of brotherhood as a fellow Christian minister. Rev. King brilliantly combines religious and social reasoning to support his actions in Birmingham and clearly shows why a Christian should support that civil rights movement.

Rev. King says that his critics believe that “outsiders” should not have an interest – let alone an active one – in the policies of Birmingham. He immediately responds with a Biblical argument showing that major figures, from Old Testament prophets to the Apostle Paul, were more concerned with those outside of their native towns than within them. Rev. King also claims that despite the fact that he is not a native of Birmingham, or even of Alabama, injustice in Birmingham has a direct effect on him. He rejects the view that segregation in one city has no effect on segregation in other cities. In more general terms, Rev. King says, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He takes a broader, more modern view of the relationships between the states and cities of the , believing that he is not an interloper anywhere in the country.

Rev. King is also criticized for breaking laws in an attempt to uphold other laws. He responds by differentiating between laws, calling certain laws unjust and others just. Rev. King argues that human law should be rooted in God’s eternal law. He sees no relationship between eternal law and the human laws promoting segregation. After showing the difference between just and unjust laws, he proceeds to show why ignoring unjust laws is a better policy than accepting them. Rev. King uses examples ranging from the Hebrew exile to

Babylon in the Old Testament to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany to illustrate times when unjust laws should be broken.

The letter also shows Rev. King’s disappointment with the state of white Christianity. King takes the view that each person is inherently good, but as a group, people tend toward decisions that are unjust – contrary to God’s eternal law. He sees the church as a way to prevent people from making decisions against God’s will. He writes concerning the early church, “In those days, the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion.” He says that early Christians were seen as social agitators, standing proudly for their views in the face of injustice. “They obeyed God, rather than man,” he says, illustrating his belief that the modern church – both black and white Christians – should proudly stand for God in the face of the injustice of segregation. He uses white ministers who have come to his aid, and lost support of their churches, as examples of true Christians. He calls them members of the “inner spiritual church.”

It is Rev. King’s view that Christians should be the first group to spring to the aid of the country’s black people. In his letter to the clergymen who had criticized him, he outlines a clear religious and social argument for the end of segregation and powerfully defends his strategy for ending segregation. Rev. King shows that whether or not his actions are legal in the eyes of the government of a segregated state, they are legal in the eyes of God.