I have a Dream

Anne Farris Rosen 4-02-2018

As the nation recognizes the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, we are poised at the threshold of a new national movement for racial justice that may or may not prove successful in fulfilling King’s ultimate vision.

Charles L. Howard 8-28-2017

Fifty-four years ago today (Aug. 28), the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared in his baritone voice, which still hangs in the air all these years later, “I have a dream.” A forgotten aspect of King’s witness was his ability to move and bring about change from the “prophetic middle.” The prophetic middle is not about being politically indecisive, indifferent, or even about being a political moderate, as King was none of those. In fact he was far more radical than the domesticated version of his life that is paraded about each January.

Christopher Hale 8-26-2016

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington in 1963. Image via Rowland Scherman; restored by Adam Cuerden (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)/Wikimedia Commons

Augustine’s proclamation, that “charity is no substitute for justice withheld,” helped form Catholic moral law and inspired the young Baptist preacher to pursue his ministry with a particular eye on the public sphere.
 
Augustine is some ways a perfect patron for King. As the fourth-century bishop of Hippo (modern-day Annaba Province, Algeria), many claim Augustine and his mother Monica as the church’s first black saints. And just as Augustine spoke to King, he speaks directly to today’s Christians. 
2-07-2014
This article was originally published in the January edition of Sojourners and is reprinted here by permission of the author.
Kathy Kelly 1-21-2014
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., Atomazul / Shutterstock.co

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., Atomazul / Shutterstock.com

Week after bloody week, the chart of killings lengthens. And in Afghanistan, while war rages, a million children are estimated to suffer from acute malnourishment as the country faces a worsening hunger crisis.

Around this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we can and should remember the dream Dr. King announced before the Lincoln Memorial, the dream he did so much to accomplish, remembering his call (as the King Center asks) for nonviolent solutions to desperate concerns of discrimination and inequality within the U.S. But we shouldn't let ourselves forget the full extent of Dr. King's vision, the urgent tasks he urgently set us to fulfill on his behalf, so many of them left unfinished nearly 46 years after he was taken from us. 

QR Blog Editor 1-20-2014

This Martin Luther King Day, the SALT project has created a short, inspiring film retelling the famous last four minutes of King’s, “I Have A Dream” speech. Enjoy!

https://vimeo.com/64079741

Joe Kay 1-17-2014
spirit of america / Shutterstock.com

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., spirit of america / Shutterstock.com

Prophets are always asking questions. Tough questions. Unsettling questions. Questions that they pose to themselves, then try to answer by how they live.

Questions such as:

What’s in our hearts? Are we concerned too much about ourselves and too little about others? Do we believe in love? Why do we give in so readily to bitterness and hatred?

Why do so few have so much, while so many have so little? Aren’t we all diminished by the poverty, discrimination, violence, and the various injustices in our world? Why do we glamorize violence and weapons as solutions to our problems?

Jim Wallis 8-29-2013
Martin Luther King, Jr., photo: public domain. Illustration by Sandi Villarreal

Martin Luther King, Jr., photo: public domain. Illustration by Sandi Villarreal / Sojourners

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of a day that changed America, changed the world, and changed my life forever. I was fourteen years old on Aug. 28, 1963, in my very white neighborhood, school, church, and world. But I was watching. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., became a founding father of this nation on that day, so clearly articulating how this union could become more perfect.

He didn’t say, “I have a complaint.” Instead, he proclaimed (and a proclamation it was in the prophetic biblical tradition), “I have a dream.” There was much to complain about for black Americans, and there is much to complain about today for many in this nation. But King taught us that day our complaints or critiques, or even our dissent will never be the foundation of social movements that change the world — but dreams always will. Just saying what is wrong will never be enough the change the world. You have to lift up a vision of what is right.

The dream was more than the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which both followed in the years after the history-changing 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It finally was about King’s vision for “the beloved community,” drawn right from the heart of his Christian faith and a spiritual foundation for the ancient idea of the common good, which we today need so deeply to restore.

the Web Editors 8-28-2013
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Editor's Note: The following is a transcript of President Barack Obama's speech from the Lincoln Memorial on the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington.

We rightly and best remember Dr. King’s soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions; how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike.  His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.

But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books, never got on TV.  Many had gone to segregated schools and sat at segregated lunch counters.  They lived in towns where they couldn’t vote and cities where their votes didn’t matter.  They were couples in love who couldn’t marry, soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found denied to them at home.  They had seen loved ones beaten, and children fire-hosed, and they had every reason to lash out in anger, or resign themselves to a bitter fate.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Rev. Fred Shuttleworth; Rev. Ralph Abernathy. Phot

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Rev. Fred Shuttleworth; Rev. Ralph Abernathy. Photo courtesy RNS.

It may be the most famous speech of the 20th century.

Millions of American schoolchildren who never experienced Jim Crow or whites-only water fountains know the phrase “I have a dream.”

And many American adults can recite from memory certain phrases: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of the prophet Amos’ vision of justice rolling down “like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream,” or the line about children being judged not by “the color of their skin but the content of their character.”

To many in this country, “I have a dream” has a place of honor next to the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address. It celebrates the lofty ideals of freedom.

But scholars say it would be a mistake to celebrate the speech without also acknowledging its profound critique of American values.

 
Larry Copeland 7-31-2013
Photo courtesy RNS.

On Aug. 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the crowd gathered during the March on Washington. Photo courtesy RNS.

The King Center is urging communities around the world to participate in a bell-ringing ceremony next month to help commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech.

King Center officials say they have reached out to all 50 governors and to cities across the globe asking them to participate in the bell ringing at 3 p.m. ET on Aug. 28, or at 3 p.m. in their respective time zones.

“My father concluded his great speech with a call to ‘let freedom ring,’ and that is a challenge we will meet with a magnificent display of brotherhood and sisterhood in symbolic bell-ringing at places of worship, schools and other venues where bells are available from coast to coast and from continent to continent,” said Bernice King, King’s daughter and CEO of the King Center.

Martin Witchger 6-14-2013

A statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. stands on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Photo via Brandon Bourdages/shutterstock.com

If there was ever a fear that the church is splintered, apathetic or dull, the passion and unity on display at the “Why We Can’t Wait” May Revival on Pentecost Sunday earlier this month proved a direct contradiction to that assertion. 

The second of five events of Washington DC’s Church-Wide Response to the New Jim Crow brought a diverse group of 50 faithful people to Capitol Hill’s Lutheran Church of the Reformation for an afternoon of song, prayer, worship, education on nonviolence and mass incarceration, and call-to-action to work and pray for a better church and a better world.

Eric Martin 4-04-2013
World Telegram & Sun photo by Dick DeMarsico. / Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1964, World Telegram & Sun photo by Dick DeMarsico. / Wikimedia Commons

This August will mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and there will rightly be much remembrance and celebration of its place in American history. But there is another anniversary that our nation, and especially its Christians, would do well to acknowledge, investigate, and ruminate.

Forty-five years ago yesterday, Dr. King arrived in Memphis, Tenn., to support a sanitation workers’ strike seeking to unionize. He was assassinated the next day — the anniversary we today remember — and in a sad irony our nation began the sanitation of his legacy. Indeed, King’s decision to join the Memphis struggle was just one of many acts that clash with what David Sirota calls the “Santa Clausified” image of King that we pass to our youth. 

Rev. Billy Talen 8-10-2011

The Christianized Jesus -- the turning of a radical into a conservative shadow of his former self -- explains our problem of establishing and celebrating freedom fighters today. It is important that our progressive heroes be given their deserved fame, an accurately reported fame, and this is crucial in ways that impact our own activism.

Jesus of Nazareth was not a Peak Performance Strategist as the prosperity preachers would have it. Nor was he a foreigner-hating patriot as the tea party would argue. Obviously American politicians and their lobbyists pursue so many policies that are against the teachings of Jesus but are supported by mainstream Christian opinion. In fact, Jesus' parables and sayings push the spiritual revolution of gift economies, and of justice through radical forgiveness.

We set aside a national holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because he welded an ethos of agape love onto the founding principles of the United States.
Johnathan Smith 1-17-2011

In his "I Have a Dream" speech, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Troy Jackson 1-17-2011
Over the years, I have read thousands upon thousands of pages on the life of Dr.
Eugene Cho 1-14-2011

In anticipation of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (this coming Monday, January 17, I'm sharing one of my favorite MLK Jr. quotes:

Troy Jackson 12-07-2010
Last Wednesday, December 1 marked the 55th anniversary of the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott and a movemen
Johnathan Smith 9-03-2010

Last weekend, the nation had an opportunity to reflect, commemorate, and celebrate the March on Washington and Dr.