Why was Martin Luther King Jr. so opposed?
Written by Dan McDonald
Photo from Seattle Times website honoring Dr.
King http://seattletimes.com/special/mlk/
Fifty years have passed since the
Selma to Montgomery march. The movie “Selma”
about those events is drawing appreciative audiences of both whites and blacks.
Fifty years ago Dr. King’s leadership of the civil rights movement was
controversial. He won some allies and faced many opponents. A friend and I conversed
recently about what caused Dr. King’s appeals for racial equality to be met
with such hardened resistance. While racism was an obvious reason, I found that
I suspected a second culprit was involved in the resistance to his calls for
equality under the law. It is a factor that I have often feared has especially
clung to conservatism, to which I have been attached in greater and lesser
degrees most all of my life.
Conservatives could admire Ronald
Reagan standing in Berlin and saying at the Berlin Wall, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear
down this wall.” But many Conservatives were reluctant to support Dr. King’s
calls for America to tear down its walls that prevented a people from enjoying
the fullness of their human rights as enshrined in the guarantees of our
American Constitution.
Racism was certainly involved in the
opposition to the civil rights movement. But perhaps a more potent enemy of
reform existed alongside racism, one too seldom recognized. A theological issue
existed in a society that seeks to separate the theological from the political.
The America, of the fifties and sixties was, especially for the white majority,
proud of itself. We had won two world wars and in the process had become
entitled to describe our nation as “the
arsenal of democracy”. The mission to stand against an atheistic brand of Communism
had led us to add the words “under God”
to our pledge of allegiance. We seemed to be the nation called to lead other
nations to a better world. We had come to think of our nation as that nation
which was different from all other nations. The idea of exceptional-ism is so
close to a form of idolatry that perhaps we could not think of ourselves as the
nation without beginning to think of our nation as God’s one superior nation.
Idolatry proves itself easily enjoyed, powerfully addictive, and cruel as it
commands opposition to anything threatening its command over our lives.
There are two kinds of patriotism
possible in our world. The word patriotism is formed from the Latin root word “patri” which means father. Patriotism
is that national recognition that we are people who have inherited a legacy
from our ancestors, both fathers and mothers. A positive patriotism embraces
the concept of each generation gratefully receiving a legacy from former
generations and yearning to pass a built upon legacy to future generations.
But a different kind of patriotism
instills in a people a narcissistic illusion demanding superiority over other
nationalities and ethnicities. It is a patriotism rooted in madness. It is the
sort of patriotism in which a nation imagines it is no longer one of the
nations. It breeds a belief that we have received a special charter so we are
no longer bound to the normal boundaries. When others make war, or use terror,
or inflict torture it is evil, but with us we are the nation that is called to
a special mission that justifies all things. To doubt this calling is to attack
the very identity we have as this uniquely empowered nation that is like no
other nation. We may prove in our actions to be demons and devils but we are
God’s demons and devils. We are God’s nation on earth.
This idolatry was something
Christians should not have easily accepted. But it slid in under the radar and
we enjoyed feeling a sense of superiority. It felt nice as we moved from being
aliens and strangers seeking a city and country whose builder was God, to
feeling like we were already in that country. It was an intoxicating illusion.
Idolatry is so often an intoxicating addictive narcotic.
When a nation begins to believe that
it is a superior nation to those outside its borders, it will surely regard with
suspicion any people within the border who call that superiority into question.
The idolatry of a nationalism bound in the trappings of Exceptional-ism will
have contempt for anyone who attempts to disfigure and dismantle the bright
shiny golden calf of our idolatrous worship.
Dr. King made us Americans aware of racism. Racism was
something so obviously contrary to our illusions of our superiority we would
have to either dismiss our idolatry or include our superiority over a lesser
people demanding equality. Dr. King’s charge of racism came too close to our
dear sin of idolatry. We were named as racists but it was the closeness to
having our idol dismantled that sent us into a rage. Our golden calf was
threatened.
Downloaded from Shutterstock.com photo by Diez Artwork
If during Dr. King’s life, there had
been no golden calf to be defended, the issue of racism would have been easier
to handle. We were like other nations, all nations have flaws. Let’s acknowledge
this flaw and move on. But our exceptional-ism was at stake and to admit such a
glaring oversight of justice would demand us to abandon our belief in our
nation’s superiority. Confession is not an easy thing for people convinced they
are the better and superior people in the world. We will turn the water
cannons, bring out the weapons of brutality, and instruments of torture before
we will give up our illusion of superiority.
If in 2014 we began to question once
more how much racism was still obstructing America’s pursuit of equal justice,
then in 2015 perhaps we may begin to consider if connected to our faults is the
strange madness of idolatry that somehow puts a glittering layer of gold over
our faults and induces us to imagine that even our faults show our superiority
over the lesser peoples of mankind.
At times I have loved my nation with
an idolatrous affection. At times I have wanted to hate it with an equal
idolatry placed in myself. But gradually I have come to love my nation as a
nation like all the nations with its possibilities, accomplishments, needs, and
its failures. But I can love it and work for its best, from my Christian
perspective only as I realize I love it while an alien and stranger seeking a
city and country made without hands, whose builder is God. I waken on this
Martin Luther King holiday with the freshness of the possibilities before me.
His work so many years ago was all part of helping me discover this hope with
the freshness I feel this morning.
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