Britain honors Martin Luther King, Jr. with statue at Westminster Abbey

Jet, August 24, 1998

At a recent celebratory service at Westminster Abbey in London, church head Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey unveiled a full-length statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., along with statues of nine other 20th-century Christian leaders from around the globe.

No other American has been given a place as prominent as that ancient niche newly assigned to King-above the center door of the royal church.

The Baptist minister is depicted in his robes, with a child seated at his feet. His statue, done in the realistic style according to a design by the British sculptor Tim Crawley, is in the center niche above the door. The name "King" is carved on the pedestal.

At the service unveiling the statues, Canon Anthony Harvey of Westminster Abbey said King "combined an explicitly Christian language of freedom and justice with an appeal to American democracy."

"On April 4, 1968, he was shot dead in Memphis. He was 39 years old. Today he is widely celebrated as one of the great prophetic leaders of the later 20th century, and his name still inspires those who follow his call for justice," he said.

Harvey said the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was the "obvious" American choice for inclusion in a collection of contemporary Christian leaders who suffered violent death.

Several Americans are honored within the church, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry James and James Russell Lowell.

Harvey explained that "we decided to use the empty niches to proclaim a message that the 20th century has been by far the greatest period of Christian martyrdom.

In addition to King, the Christians whose statues were placed this summer include the Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister who worked in the anti-Nazi resistance in wartime Germany; Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the Roman Catholic archbishop of El Salvador who was gunned down while celebrating mass in 1980; Wang Zhiming, a Chinese missionary who was executed during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in 1973; and Manche Masemola of South Africa, who was killed at age 14 in 1928 by her parents after they discovered she had become a Christian.

Westminster Abbey, which began life 1,000 years ago as a Roman Catholic monastery, was transformed to the Anglican faith, and nearly every British monarch has been coronated there since 1066. It is Britain's standard venue for great state funerals, including that of Princess Diana last September.

In terms of familiar U.S. national institutions, it roughly combines the roles of the Smithsonian, Washington National Cathedral and Arlington National Cemetery.