Abstract
Sometimes I feel discouraged and feel my work’s in vain; but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul. 1
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Notes
James W. McClendon, Jr., Biography as Theology: How Life Stories Can Remake Today’s Theology (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1974). The theological method employed by McClendon, which he describes as “biography as theology,” is a useful tool for our purposes here since King’s thought encompassed more than the theological insights he received at Crozer Seminary and Boston University as a student. His theology was also deeply rooted in his experience with family, community, and the radical dimensions of the Black Church tradition.
Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1984).
Henry J. Young, Major Black Religious Leaders, 1755–1940 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1977).
Herbert Aptheker, David Walker’s Appeal: Its Setting and Its Meaning (New York: Humanities Press, 1965); See also his “Our Continual Cry,” David Walker’s Appeal (New York: Humanities Press, 1965), 45–62. See also Charles M. Wiltse, ed., David Walker’s Appeal (New York: Hill and Wang, 1965).
Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States (New York: Citadel Press, 1951), 9–39. Robert Alexander Young presented his Ethiopian Manifesto in 1829, proclaiming that a black Messiah would redeem the “degraded of the earth.”
Henry Highland Garnet, The Past and The Present Condition, and the Destiny of the Colored Race: A Discourse, delivered at the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Female Benevolent Society, Troy, NY, February 14, 1848 (Miami, FA: Mnemosyne Publishing Inc., 1969).
Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., Exodus! Religion, Race and Nation in the Early Nineteenth Century Black America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
Ibid., 146.
Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 105–125.
Eddie S Glaude, “Race, Nation and Ideology of Chooseness,” in Exodus! Religion, Race and Nation in the Nineteenth Century Black America, 2nd edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
Alexander Crummell, Africa and America (Springfield, MA: Willey and Company, 1891), 278.
James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), 58–75.
Ibid., 59.
Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, with Alex Haley (rpt., New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), 3; see also Ted Vincent, “The Garveyite Parents of Malcolm X,” Black Scholar (March/April 1989): 10–13; Yael Lotan, “ ‘No Peaceful Solution to Racism’: An Exclusive Interview with Malcolm X,” Sunday Gleaner Magazine, July 12, 1964, 5–6; Kenneth B. Clark, King, Malcolm, Baldwin: Three Interviews, rev. ed. (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1985), 33–48.
“Ballot or the Bullet,” in George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1965), 41.
C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, 3rd edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 32–43.
Ibid., 33.
Malcolm X, 1964,Autobiography of Malcolm X, (New York: Ballantine), 275.
Michael Eric Dyson, Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 79–106.
J. Deotis Roberts, Bonhoeffer and King: Speaking Truth to Power (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 111.
Cf. Esther M. Smith, A History of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia (Atlanta, GA: Ebenezer Baptist Church, 1956), 3; Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 30–40; Lerone Bennett, Jr., What Manner of Man: A Memorial Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Pocket Books, 1968), 7; Lewis V. Baldwin, “Understanding Martin Luther King, Jr. within the Context of Southern Black Religious History,” Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, (Fall 1987): 8.
Clayborne Carson, ed., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Warner Books, 1998), 5.
Martin Luther King, Sr., with Clayton Riley, Daddy King: An Autobiography 1st edition (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1980), 25; see also Coleman B. Brown, “Grounds for American Loyalty in a Prophetic Christian Social Ethic—With Special Attention to Martin Luther King, Jr.” (Ph.D. dissertation, Union Theological Seminary in New York City, April 1979), 66; Walter E. Fluker’s They Looked for a City: A Comparative Analysis of the Ideal of Community in the Thought of Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1989), 81–107; Read Martin Luther King, Jr., 1950. “An Autobiography of Religious Development” (Unpublished document, the King Papers, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University, Boston, MA, c. 1950), 8.
Lewis Baldwin, There Is a Balm in Gilead: The Cultural Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991). See also King, “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” 1–15; and Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Early Days,” excerpts of a sermon delivered at the Mt. Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago, IL (The King Center Archives, August 27, 1967), 9–12.
Lawrence Edward Carter, ed., Walking Integrity: Benjamin Elijah Mays, Mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998).
Ibid., 1.
Ibid., 6.
Mays’ dissertation, “The Idea of God in Contemporary Negro Literature” (for his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago) would be later published as The Negro’s God: As Reflected in His Literature (New York: Atheneum, 1938).
See Henry J. Young, Major Black Religious Leaders: 1755–1940 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1977).
Sylvia F. Cook, “Memories of Dr. Benjamin Mays,” 494. Cf., Benjamin E. Mays, 1983, Quotable Quotes of Benjamin E. Mays (Atlanta, GA: Vintage Press). See also Otis Moss, Jr., “Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays: A Voice for the 20th Century and Beyond,” 497.
Lerone Bennett, Jr., What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chicago, IL: Johnson Publishing Co., 1968), 26; “Benjamin E. Mays: A Great Georgian.”
Fluker, They Looked for a City; see also Carlyle Fielding Stewart III, God, Being and Liberation: A Comparative Analysis of the Theologies and Ethics of James H. Cone and Howard Thurman (New York: University Press of America, 1989); and George K. Makechnie, Howard Thurman: His Enduring Dream (Boston, MA: The Howard Thurman Center, Boston University, 1988).
Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1979).
See David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: Vintage Books, 1986), 60; John J. Ansbro, Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Making of a Mind (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1982); Kenneth L. Smith and Ira G. Zepp, Jr., Search for the Beloved Community: The Thinking of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press).
Howard Thurman, The Creative Encounter: An Interpretation of Religion and the Social Witness (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1954).
Ibid., 20.
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1949), Forward by Vincent Harding.
Ibid.
Howard Thurman, Disciplines of the Spirit (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1963), 104–105.
Luther E. Smith, Jr., Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1991), 53. See also Howard Thurman, “Mysticism and Social Action,” in Lawrence Lecture on Religion and Society (First Unitarian Church of Berkeley), October 13, 1978; “Mysticism and Social Change,” Eden Theological Seminary Bulletin, IV (Spring Quarter, 1939), 27.
See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Geneology of Morals in the Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Francis Golffing (New York: Doubleday, 1956); The Antichrist in the Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Viking Press, 1954), 570–573; The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollindale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 129. For the essence of spiritual love, see also Miguel de Unamuno, Tragic Sense of Life, trans. J. E. Crawford Flitch (New York: Dover Publications, 1954), 135–155; Paul Tillich, Love, Power, and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, Galaxy Book, 1960), 11, 49–50. First published in 1954; Systematic Theology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1951), vol. 2, no. 1: 280.
Noel L. Erskine, King among the Theologians (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 1994), 47.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman” (Dissertation from Boston University Graduate School, submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1948).
DeWolf, A Theology of the Living Church, rev. ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 46. First published in 1953.
Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 60.
Edgar S. Brightman, The Problem of God (New York: Abingdon Press, 1930), 191.
Ibid., 192.
Mozella G. Mitchell, Spiritual Dynamics of Howard Thurman’s Theology (Bristol, IN: Wyndham Hall Press, 1985), 6.
Watson, Melvin, “Concerning Theology Today,” in Common Ground: Essays in Honor of Howard Thurman, ed. Samuel L. Handy (Washington, DC: Hoffman Press, 1976), 64–72.
Ibid., 64.
Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip Watson (New York: Harper & Row, 1969). Part I was first published in England in 1932; Part II, Vol. 1 in 1938; Part II, Vol. 2 in 1939; and it was revised, in part retranslated, and published one volume in 1953 by the Westminster Press.
Ibid., 92.
Ibid., 115.
Howard Thurman, Mysticism and the Experience of Love, Pendle Hill Pamplet, No. 115 (Wallington, PA: Pendle Hill, 1961), 13.
Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis Beck (New York: The Library of Liberal Arts Press, 1959), 52; See also Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis Beck (New York: The Library of Liberal Arts Press, 1956), 90; Kant, “On the Common Saying ‘This May Be True in Theory But It Does Not Apply in Practice,’” Kant’s Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 74. In The Metaphysics of Morals (1797) Kant emphasized a particular principle of freedom in his proclamation of “The Universal Principle of Right,” “Every action which by itself or by its maxim enables the freedom of each individual’s will to co-exist with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a universal law is right” (Kant’s Political Writings, 133).
Henry Thoreau, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience,” in Social and Political Philosophy, ed. John Somervill and Ronald Santoni (New York: Doubleday, 1963), 287.
Ibid., 289. See also Civil Disobedience, Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau (New York: The Modern Library, 1937), 669. Hannah Arendt maintained that Thoreau did not believe that an individual has any obligation to improve, and she quoted from his essay on civil disobedience. “I came into this world not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad” (Crises of the Republic [New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969], 60, 290). While Thoreau did not regard the reform of society as his primary concern, he did support the notion of individual responsibility in moral reform and argued that if individuals withdrew their support, the system of slavery would be abolished.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), 87; See also “Memo to Martin Luther King,” editorial, National Review 19 (December 12, 1967): 1368; Crito 50b, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, 35; Apology 29b, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, 15. S. M. Tewari noted that Gandhi admired Socrates’ sacrifice for the sake of truth using nonviolence.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 99.
Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics, rpt. 2001 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1932).
Ibid., xvi.
Ibid., 257.
Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation, Vols. 1 and 2 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941). This following study was presented at the Gifford Lectures in a two part series on Human Nature and Human Destiny.
Russell also contends “every man [human] would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.” Bertrand Russell, Power, a New Social Analysis (New York: Routledge, 1938), 11.
Martin Luther King, Jr, “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” Phylon, vol. 18 (April, 1957): 30.
Francis L. Broderick and August Meier, eds., Negro Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1965), 272.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Ethical Demands of Integration,” Religion and Labor (May, 1963): 4. See also King, Negro History Bulletin, vol. 31, no. 5, (May, 1968): 22.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 181.
John Howard Yoder, For the Nations: Essays Evangelical and Public (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 125–137. See also Herbert Warren Richardson, “Martin Luther King—Unsung Theologian,” Commonweal, March 3, 1998; reprinted in New Theology No. 6, ed. Martin Marty and Dean Peerman (New York: Macmillan Co., 1969), 178–181. Yoder describes the vision of the American dream as a “deep optimism about the course of history, but also (more precisely) about the adequacy of the American social system and its ideals to become an effective vehicle of that historical process.” Other factors in the conception of this idea are found in philosophical evolutionism of the style of Hegel or Spencer, biological evolutionism from Darwin, cando pragmatism from the American frontier experience, pedagogical humanism by Dewey, and hopes of new immigrants at the turn of the century.
Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousness,” The YMCA Magazine (December, 1960): 3. Cf. Negro History Bulletin, vol. 31 (May, 1968), or Bradford Chambers, ed., Chronicles of Black Protest (New York: Mentor Books, 1968), 185–186. These materials offer full text of the “I Have a Dream” speech. See also, “A Testament of Hope,” Playboy (January, 1969): 234; John Dixon Elder, “Martin Luther King and American Civil Religion,” Harvard Divinity School Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 3 (Spring, 1968): 17; Waldo Beach, Christian Community and American Society (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1969), 149–159; Harvey Cox, On Not Leaving It to the Snake (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 133–137.
Harold L. DeWolf, Crime and Justice in America: A Paradox of Conscience (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 144; A Theology of the Living Church, rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), first published in 1953. See also Niebuhr, An Interpretation of Christian Ethics (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935), 140; Edgar S. Brightman, “A Personalistic View of Human Nature,” Religion in Life, vol. 14: 216–227.
Of course there were other major figures representing the schools of Boston personalism and Protestant liberalism. However, Bertocci, Brightman, and DeWolf were among the chief contributors to King’s thought. DeWolf and Brightman are noted as being close friends and mentors to King. See also Peter Anthony Bertocci, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Prentice Hall, 1951); L. Harold DeWolf, The Case for Theology in Liberal Perspective (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1959); Edgar S. Brightman, Person and Reality: An Introduction to Metaphysics (New York: Ronald Press, 1958).
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© 2007 Johnny Bernard Hill
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Hill, J.B. (2007). From Every Mountainside: Reconciliation and the Beloved Community. In: The Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Desmond Mpilo Tutu. Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230608856_3
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