In reading (slowly and gradually, I should note) Taylor Branch's "Parting the Waters," one of several aspects I'm looking at is how King made his way through the kingdom of this world while being a practitioner of the kingdom of God. It's a concept that, I think, is clearer with a reading of Greg Boyd's "Myth of a Christian Nation." As luck would have it, I also got my DVD set of the sermon series that led to that book. So I'm now reviewing that message for a third time (audio sermons, book, now video of the sermons).

One chapter in particular opens in a way that caught my interest. And it's important to realize that this is the author's telling of King's mission - by no means King in his own words. But it still hits me like a clanging cymbal to read this (emphasis mine) ...

p 206 - A Taste of the World

As the boycott dissolved in memory to a quaint story of tired feet and empty buses, King groped on a number of fronts to spread what he called the "Montgomery experience" across the South. Deluged with speaking invitations and cheered by enraptured audiences, he hoped that the power of his speech might fuel a mass conversion, like the Great Awakening of the 1740s. More realistically, he knew that oratory could aspire only to enlightenment, and that enlightenment was not enough. Power was required. Toward that end King devised a number of plans. While trying to build his own organization, he labored also to register several million new Negro voters, enlist the organs of mass communication, harness the influence of the organized clergy, gain the endorsement of the highest white leaders , and mobilize a "nonviolent army" of witnesses. When segregationist resistance threatened these efforts, King tinkered incessantly with strategy, trying many combinations of tactics. He consulted the few professed specialists in racial politics, who, since the prospects of overturning the everyday arrangements of the entrenched white majority were dim, tended to be eccentrics of assorted varieties - pietists, incendiaries, one-worlders, Communists, and other ideologues. King learned gradually to distinguish between kooks and quixotics of promise.

Now, contrast that sentiment with King in his own words:

That was from 1968 - late in King's life. Branch's telling of King's mission, for what it's worth, was from an earlier point - coming off the heels of the successful Montgomery Bus Boycotts over a decade prior. I don't point these contrasting items out in the belief that King necessarily sought out "power." But Branch's telling does seem to signify what a universal allure that is. There's something of an intellectually consistent conclusion that it follows from other forms of influence.

Boyd. for his sake, contrasts between "power over" and "power under." The latter being the methodology Jesus taught. The former being what is valued more in this world. Whenever the two are combined, we end up playing according to the rules of the kingdom of the world. What stands out from King's life is that he seems to have found a way to lead a seemingly political movement in a very Calvary-like manner. Hence my interest in looking more and more at the details. Do I expect to find perfection at every turn? Hardly. But it's still a great history to review and analyze against the understanding that Boyd highlights.

And for whatever more it might be worth, I'll throw in a quote from C.S. Lewis' "Screwtape Letters" that Boyd introduces his third sermon with. It's as concise a summary of what I believe I see as a misplaced correlation of faith and politics:

Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the "cause", in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours--and the more "religious" (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.

UPDATE: Pastor Boyd opines a bit on the kingdom message that MLK brought to the fore:

From a Kingdom perspective, the thing that stands out most about King is not that he rallied black folks to push back on unjust laws. This was of course a good and necessary thing to do. What makes King a truly great man from a distinctly Kingdom perspective, however, is the way he did this.

Before marching, King would always tell his audiences he didn't want anyone marching who could not genuinely say she loved her white oppressors and was marching not only for her own freedom, but from the freedom of her oppressors (for King saw that oppressing another is as much a form of bondage as being oppressed). Not only this, but King would tell audiences he didn't want anyone marching who couldn't commit to refraining from all violence, even in self-defense. King explicitly based all this on the teaching and example of Jesus.

This makes what King did not simply a good and necessary social movement. It makes what King did a Kingdom movement. Indeed, I'd argue that the early civil rights movement, led by King, was one of the clearest expressions of the Kingdom in history.

It's unfortunate, though hardly surprising, that the beautiful Kingdom dimension of King's vision has largely been forgotten today. For the most part, King is remembered simply as a leader who fought for the rights of oppressed people, and the civil rights movement is remembered only as a political and social protest movement. In my opinion, this doesn't do King justice. It misses the most important thing about the man. While the civil rights movement spun off in a number of directions -- including some that contained violence -- the man who birthed it had a vision of a movement that would look like a giant Jesus, fighting for the freedom of all though loving service to enemies rather than relying on anger and force.

To honor King rightly, we must never forget this.

Indeed, to honor King rightly, we must never cease to practice this.

Live in love, as Christ loved you and gave his life for you (Eph 5:1-2).