Friday Night Theology

Remembering Martin Luther King

4 April 2008

As they say in politics and media, "timing is everything". So I was pleasantly surprised to see the BBC 2 documentary last Saturday night on Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, coming a week before the 40th anniversary of King's death today. The programme, "Martin Luther King: American Prophet," lasted for a good hour during prime time TV. But I had a question.

Why is Oona King (the same beloved Oona King who lost her Bethnal Green Parliamentary seat to George Galloway of the Respect Party) doing a major piece on Martin Luther King? Of course, within the first five minutes of the programme you get the autobiographical connections: Oona King's father, Preston King, met Dr King in the sixties; and her uncle acted as one of King's lawyers. These autobiographical fragments certainly add a touch of authenticity and poignancy to the programme's narrative. Now with my initial surprise receding, I was intrigued with parts of Oona's opening thesis: the removal of Martin Luther King's religious roots and Christian identity. She put the question bluntly:

"Are we airbrushing King the preacher out of our history because his faith embarrasses and disturbs us in our own religiously uncertain and fearful times?" Given the fact that Oona, a professed atheist, admits that she never really thought of King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech in religious terms, I was pleased that she recognised King the Baptist Preacher, King the follower of Jesus Christ. Of course, there are many interpretations of the significance of King the man, his message and his non-violent method. However, to minimise his church background and the Christian faith from which he drew his inspiration may make it easier for some to own him as an "icon of human rights" and a "champion of racial justice", but it is historically inaccurate.

"You cannot have King", as Joel Edwards will remind the audience at a Westminster Abbey remembrance service today "without King's God." At a time when there is a seductive tendency to expunge religion from the public square, I was pleased to hear Oona King's sober and salutary assessment of the "preacher King" and how we should remember him as we mark the anniversary of his brutal murder. We should not allow his personal faith, and the Christian convictions that inspired his social action and the Civil Rights Movement he came to symbolise, to fade into obscurity or be "reduced to a few secular sound bites." Good on you Oona.

Read Joel Edwards' speech Keeping the dream alive, delivered at the Martin Luther King memorial service, Westminster Abbey on 4 April 08.  

Dr R David Muir, Public Policy Director, Evangelical Alliance

FNT will be taking a break next week, but will return on Friday 18th April.