Will the real Martin Luther King please stand up

Humanist, May-June, 2005 by Jeff Nall

Today it's fashionable to recall Martin Luther King Jr. as a civil rights hero and passionate reverend. But sadly, amidst his legacy the entirely of his intellectual prowess and vast philosophical wisdom continues to go unrecognized. Particularly troubling, King has become a tool for a variety of causes wrongly associated with him, including the attack on the separation of church and state. In 2003 George W. Bush said, "There's still a need for us to hear the words of Martin Luther King to make sure the hope of America extends its reach into every neighborhood across this land." But considering the president's efforts to combine God and government, it seems that Bush himself is ignorant of King's words and at least two of his salient ideas. King was a proponent of the separation of church and state and also one of religion's most ardent critics.

In a 1965 interview with Playboy, King was asked how he felt about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision ruling school prayer unconstitutional. In response he said:

   I endorse it. I think it was
   correct. Contrary to what
   many have said, it sought to
   outlaw neither prayer nor
   belief in God. In a pluralistic
   society such as ours, who is
   to determine what prayer
   shall be spoken, and by
   whom? Legally, constitutionally,
   or otherwise, the
   state certainly has no such
   right. I am strongly opposed
   to the efforts that have been
   made to nullify the decision.

In another clear endorsement of church-state separation, King stated that the church "is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool."

Though King's legacy is often inextricably linked to his faith in God, he was hardly a cheerleader for the church as he found it and is best understood as a philosopher and social leader who happened to be passionately committed to Jesus Christ. For example, King believed the church had failed to fight for peace and social and economic justice. He also chided churches across the United States for having done little to fight segregation and racism. "It is to their everlasting shame," he said, "that white Christians developed a system of racial segregation within the church and inflicted so many indignities upon its Negro worshippers that they had to organize their own churches."

King also blamed organized religion for its willing support of violent policies:

   In a world gone mad with
   arms buildups, chauvinistic
   passions, and imperialistic
   exploitation, the church has
   either endorsed these activities
   or remained appallingly
   silent. During the last
   two world wars, national
   churches even functioned as
   the ready lackeys of the
   state, sprinkling holy water
   upon the battleships and
   joining the mighty armies in
   singing, "Praise the Lord
   and pass the ammunition."
   A weary world, pleading
   desperately for peace, has
   often found the church
   morally sanctioning war.

By this we see that King didn't advocate that the Christian church take the reigns of government, as the Bush administration seems determined to do. He believed, rather, that "the contemporary church" is "often the arch-supporter of the status quo."

Moreover, King was hardly a proponent of contemporary dogma--the kind that insists on favoring creationism over evolution. King berated what he called softmindedness. "Soft-minded individuals," he said, "are prone to embrace all kinds of superstitions.... The soft-minded man always fears change." More specifically, King wrote:

   Softmindedness often invades
   religion. This is why
   religion has sometimes
   rejected new truth with a
   dogmatic passion. Through
   edicts and bulls, inquisitions
   and excommunications, the
   church has attempted to
   prorogue truth and place an
   impenetrable stone wall in
   the path of the truth-seeker.

He goes on to criticize soft-minded persons for having "revised the Beatitudes to read, 'Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God.'"

Defending the importance of science, King wrote, "Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism." This appreciation of science, though hardly acknowledged by most, isn't surprising. In arguing against notions of black racial inferiority, he frequently cited current anthropological research that revealed what he called "the falsity of such a notion." And on more than one occasion, he even lauded "the philological-historical criticism of biblical literature," saying it "has been of immeasurable value and should be defended with religious and scientific passion." We don't hear much today about how King was positively influenced by such atheistic, existentialist philosophers as Friedrich Nietzsche and John Paul Sartre. Yet King said, while "finding things to question in each, I nevertheless learned a great deal from study of them." Yes, Martin Luther King Jr. was much more than just a reverend or just a civil rights champion; he was a learned philosopher who understood the importance of reason and balance in society. Unlike some of the Christian extremists who use his name for their cause and political gains, King valued the pluralism of American society, respected the U.S. Constitution, and never would have supported the corrupt motivation behind efforts to unite church and state--particularly recent efforts to erode that separation by erecting a monument to religion via public displays of the Ten Commandments. King would have recognized such an effort as nothing more than a ruse to pour a particular brand of religion into every crevice of secular society.