The real tragedy of such narrow provincialism is that we see people as entities or merely as things. Too seldom do we see people in their true _humanness_. A spiritual myopia limits our vision to external accidents. We see men as Jews or Gentiles, Catholics or Protestants, Chinese or American, Negroes or white. We fail to think of them as fellow human beings made from the same basic stuff as we, molded in the same divine image. The priest and the Levite saw only a bleeding body, not a human being like themselves. But the good Samaritan will always remind us to remove the cataracts of provincialism from our spiritual eyes and see men as men. If the Samaritan had considered the wounded man as a Jew first, he would not have stopped, for the Jews and the Samaritans had no dealings. He saw him as a human being first, who was a Jew only by accident. The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers. Martin Luther King Jr. ☀
We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians, who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word and refused to shape their witness according to the mundane patterns of the world. Willingly, they sacrificed fame, fortune, and life itself in behalf of a cause they knew to be right. Quantitatively small, they were qualitatively giants. Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ. Gradually, however, the church became so entrenched in wealth and prestige that it began to dilute the strong demands of the gospel and to conform to the ways of the world. And ever since the church has been a weak and ineffectual trumpet making uncertain sounds. If the church of Jesus Christ is to regain once more its power, message and authentic ring, it must conform only to the demands of the gospel. Martin Luther King Jr. ☀
Historians have very little use for the idea of American exceptionalism and its supporting religious rhetoric. The historical record points not to the exceptional experience of America but to its common history with other nations. America is, after all, a nation of immigrants, and it is one shaped by both transatlantic and transpacific exchanges. Apart from this historical challenge to American exceptionalism, insistence upon the nation’s unique greatness raises the specter of America’s exceptionally violent history and culture. Not only was America among the slowest of nations to abolish slavery, it is well known that America’s violent crime rate and prison population exceed that of any other industrialized country on the planet.
Yet these are not the only problems with the exceptionalism narrative. Exceptionalists like Beck claim that colonial America was a haven of religious practice and freedom that anticipated the founding of the United States on Christian principles and religious tolerance. While respected historians affirm the importance of Christianity in early America, they have also demonstrated that both colonists and the first citizens of the new United States subscribed to a variety of faiths—or none at all. They have shown that figures such as George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin may have been sympathetic to Christianity, but they were hardly orthodox Christians.
Colonial Americans, moreover, were not exceptionally tolerant of religious dissenters. Prior to the writing of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Puritan and Anglican state churches dominated colonial religious life, and they actively limited the free expression of groups such as the Quakers and the Baptists. Even with the free exercise clause in place, Americans practiced toleration fitfully. This is why Catholics were considered by a substantial number of Americans to be un-Christian and un-American well into the 1960s and why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. The recent controversy about the proposed mosque near Ground Zero is simply the latest episode in America’s checkered history of religious freedom and “tolerance.”
These historical realities have no effect on Beck and other proponents of exceptionalism because their vision of America depends upon a combination of historical amnesia and revisionist history. For example, Beck repeatedly implored Americans to focus not on the “scars” of history but on the good America has done and will do. It was the height of irony for Beck to ask Americans to forget the scars of our past on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech—and in the shadow of memorials to Abraham Lincoln, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War. Americans visit these sites precisely to remember, to grieve, and to honor the scars left by the horrors of assassination, slavery, and war.
As for the incredible gall of Glenn Beck arrogating the mantle of “Heir of Martin Luther King?” I have one response that may seem unfair, regionalist, even a bit snippy. On the other hand it says a lot, in a visually powerful way. Find a map showing those states that were most opposed to Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Act. Now compare that map to one showing the regions where Glenn Beck is most popular today. I mean, geez. Some things ain’t complicated. David Brin ☀
I find it helpful to remember that contemporary Christians are not the first to acknowledge that the Bible has inconsistencies and errors. Many important Christian leaders in history acknowledged that the Bible is not inerrant.
Take the great 16th century reformer Martin Luther, for instance. Most would argue that Luther — who argued for “scripture alone” — had a high regard for the Bible. Yet, he was quite critical of some of it.
For instance, Luther argued …
(1) God’s prophets in the Old Testament were sometimes in error,
(2) the book of Kings is more reliable than the book of Chronicles,
(3) the book of Esther should have probably been left out of the Bible,
(4) not all the Gospels are of equal value,
(5) the writer of Hebrews erred when he said that there is no possibility of a second repentance,
(6) the author of James “mangles scripture” and the whole book should be burned like worthless straw,
(7) the book of Revelation reveals nothing.
Luther does not stand alone in these criticisms. Most well known Christian theologians from the past join him in at least some.
When confronted with this information and the information I presented in an earlier blog, some of my fundamentalist Christian brothers and sisters argue that the original manuscripts of the Bible are without error. They admit that the Bibles we use today have errors. But they cling to the claim that the originals were inerrant.
This, of course, is a claim that is impossible to verify. As far as we know, the originals do not exist.
Here come the Corn Pone Nazis! Fox News entertainer, former drug addict, and professional weeper Glenn Beck took center stage at the Lincoln Memorial exactly forty-seven years to the day after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech for a rally dedicated to “restoring honor,” which is tea party code for the otherwise unutterable idea: get that nigger out of the White House! (despite the attendance of a few African-American shills on the scene). Eighty-seven thousand disoriented citizens lined the DC Mall reflecting pool and adjoining lawns to witness Beck overstep his role as a television clown and don the mantle of an evangelist-savior battling the dark forces working insidiously to put the America of WalMart, Walt Disney World, Nascar, and Burger King into the Collapsed Society Hall of Fame — where it’s heading anyway, due to the bad choices these self-same citizens made during an extraordinary bonanza era of cheap oil that is now drawing to a close whether anyone likes it or not. Naturally, Beck invoked prayer against this prospect, which is what people resort to when they don’t understand what is happening to them. James Howard Kunstler ☀
The United States has a startling ability to take its most angry, edgy radicals and turn them into cuddly eunuchs. The process begins the moment they die. Mark Twain is remembered as a quipster forever floating down the Mississippi River at sunset, while his polemics against the violent birth of the American empire lie unread and unremembered. Martin Luther King is remembered for his prose-poetry about children holding hands on a hill in Alabama, but few recall that he said the U.S. government was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” But perhaps the greatest act of historical castration is of Jack London. This man was the most-read revolutionary Socialist in American history, agitating for violent overthrow of the government and the assassination of political leaders—and he is remembered now for writing a cute story about a dog. It’s as if the Black Panthers were remembered, a century from now, for adding a pink tint to their afros. Johann Hari ☀
We’re caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly…I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. Martin Luther King Jr. ☀
At the end of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, he was in the midst of organizing a Poor People’s March on Washington. He had come to recognize that poor people of every race were suffering the same injustices and living economically marginal lives. It is time to begin again where King ended and refuse to let race divide us as we work for economic justice in the United States and in the world. Valerie Elverton Dixon ☀
[Nonviolence] is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by evil. Martin Luther King Jr. ☀
…I encounter a lot of comments that are directed at me, personally, and can get quite insulting. A year or more ago, these bothered me a lot more than they do now. Sometimes I’d spend ten minutes or more feeling frustrated or even angry. But about two months ago, I realized something that changed my attitude all together. I realized many of the leaders who changed the world learned to love their enemies. Our greatest example, of course, is Christ. And Tolstoy learned from Christ and then Ghandi and Martin Luther King and so on. If a leader doesn’t learn to love his critics, his critics will destroy him. Or really, the leader will destroy himself through his built-up bitterness. So now, when I get criticized, I literally process the criticism as a blessing. I feel like it’s God’s way of giving me a little education, a little practice at being like Christ, like Ghandi or King. And believe me, loving your enemy takes practice. People who lead get criticized, period. You are being criticized because you have not been silent and you have not been passive and that’s a good thing. When somebody criticizes you, it’s a compliment of sorts. Passive people avoid criticism. When you get criticized you are given the opportunity to show kindness in return, which is a character trait of some of the greatest leaders in the history of the world. In other words, you are being thrown a knuckle ball that few batters can hit, but you can hit it, and sooner or later, people are going to be amazed at how well you hit the knuckle ball. If nobody criticized you, you’d never be given the opportunity to return kindness to an insult, and thus never be given the opportunity to shine as a leader. Donald Miller ☀
There is nothing more dangerous to the world than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King ☀
Between the early 1930s and the early 1970s, the American social experiment was shaped by a moral vision that was virtually the obverse of everything Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement subscribes to. Lets call it the social justice movement.
There were three parts to the program: religious, economic and (in the later stages) racial. The religion was liberal, moral and ecumenical. The economic program was New Deal orthodoxy. By the 1950s, ridding the world of Jim Crow apartheid had become the movement’s primary goal. Picture liberal Protestant clergymen, radical Roman Catholic priests and Jewish Rabbis marching arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy and you’ve got the idea.
The civil rights movement couldn’t have succeeded without this movement. As every white southerner realized, it took progressive rulings from the Supreme Court, progressive legislation from Congress and powerful intervention from the White House and the Justice Department to drive Jim Crow to his knees. In short, it took the government.
Why are the Tea Party people and Glenn Beck’s fans are so upset about the federal government? Because, in their view, integration was forced down their unwilling throats by judicial and legislative fiat.
The lunatic fringe conservatism that Mr. Beck espouses with such goofy eloquence is driven, among other things, by southern white resentment. Remember Beck’s weird comment about President Obama having it in for white people and white culture?
Between the early 1930s and the early 1970s, the American social experiment was shaped by a moral vision that was virtually the obverse of everything Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement subscribes to. Lets call it the social justice movement. There were three parts to the program: religious, economic and (in the later stages) racial. The religion was liberal, moral and ecumenical. The economic program was New Deal orthodoxy. By the 1950s, ridding the world of Jim Crow apartheid had become the movement’s primary goal. Picture liberal Protestant clergymen, radical Roman Catholic priests and Jewish Rabbis marching arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy and you’ve got the idea. The civil rights movement couldn’t have succeeded without this movement. As every white southerner realized, it took progressive rulings from the Supreme Court, progressive legislation from Congress and powerful intervention from the White House and the Justice Department to drive Jim Crow to his knees. In short, it took the government. Glenn Beck, the voice of white resentment ☀
Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary. Martin Luther King Jr. ☀
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