Martin Luther King, Jr. was perhaps America's greatest civil rights leaders of the twentieth century. Though always conscious of the possibility of death, King was steadfastly dedicated to nonviolence because of its power over violence. Speaking on August 28, 1963, from the Lincoln Memorial, he began the litany that would sound in the hearts of every listener: He dreamed of that day, he said, when "my four little children ... will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character." It was a note that touched the very heart of America. King ended his talk with the stirring lines: "Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" In 1963 he became Time magazine's Man of the Year. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, becoming the youngest recipient of that prize in history. King was assassinated April 4, 1968, on the balcony outside his Memphis motel room. Perhaps no more fitting tribute could be raised to the slain believer in the power of nonviolence than one of his own statements: "If a man hasn't found something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us
is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do
not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in
time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all
the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding
world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in
the case of this dreadful conflict we are always on the verge of being
mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.
Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found
that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We
must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but
we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in
our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have
chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds
of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of
history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its
movement well and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its
guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems
so close around us...
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not
enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I
cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a
commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the
brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national
allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the
meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship
of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at
those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not
know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist,
for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and
conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one
who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the
"Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one?
Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem
ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than
nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions.
We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our
nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make
these humans any less our brothers...
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come
back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful
revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken --
the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up
the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas
investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution,
we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly
begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a
"person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives
and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant
triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being
conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and
justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called
to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial
act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed
so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make
their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to
a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice
which produces beggars needs restructuring. 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 Latin 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 hands on
the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not
just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our
nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate
into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody
battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be
reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after
year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift
is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the
way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish,
to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will
take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from
molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it
into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against
communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of
atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through
their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation
in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm
reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an appeaser who
advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that
hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent
days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive
thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is
to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek
to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the
fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops...
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old
systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new
systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot
people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in
darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these
revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid
fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations
that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now
become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only
Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against
our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we
initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the
revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal
hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we
shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day
when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be
made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places
plain."
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties
must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an
overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their
individual societies.
This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's
tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and
unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted
concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and
cowardly force -- has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man.
When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I
am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the
supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the
door which leads to ultimate reality. This
Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is
beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John:
Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God
and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love
one another God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day. We can no longer
afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The
oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History
is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this
self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says : "Love is the ultimate
force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning
choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the
hope that love is going to have the last word."
We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with
the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there
is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time.
Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity.
The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it
ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is
deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of
numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late."
There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our
neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We
still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace
in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world -- a world that borders
on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and
shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without
compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight. 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. Shall we say the odds are too great?
Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces
of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our
deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of
solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the
cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose
in this crucial moment of human history...