As we look to Monday and celebrate the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Cherie Hardie's words are most helpful. Cherie Hardie is the President of The Trinity Forum. For more information about the Trinity Forum, check out http://www.ttf.org/.On Monday, our nation will observe a federal holiday in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday falls on January 15. It is, in many respects, a remarkable holiday – the most recently established, possibly the most controversial at the time of its creation, and the only federal holiday to honor an individual who did not serve in an official government capacity – honoring a remarkable man, and the lasting impact of his short life on the life, direction, and character of our nation.
Among his most important writings was his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." History holds that King composed his famous letter on scraps of newsprint and a legal pad offered by a sympathetic jailhouse janitor, following his arrest on Good Friday in 1963. Jailed for his role in the Birmingham campaign, a series of non-violent protests that sought to call attention to – and defy – the city's segregation and discrimination laws, King crafted an extraordinary letter explaining the purpose of the campaign – "to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation" – and the moral, civic, and spiritual rationale for doing so.
For King, the time of forebearance had passed. From his jail cell, he answered the clergymen's letter with courteous, measured language, but intense conviction, and asserted that "the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate... who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."
Negative peace was precisely what King and the Birmingham campaign sought to unsettle. Order predicated on injustice and oppression could not, he argued, rightfully be called peace.
Ultimately, what he aimed at was shalom – a true peace which is realized not by the absence of conflict but the presence of harmony, love and justice. In his delightful book on the dark topic of sin, Not the Way It's Supposed to Be, theologian Cornelius Plantinga defined shalom as "the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight... Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be."
King recognized that shalom could require the active disruption of complacency, even the destruction of the uneasy order that rested upon established injustices. Placing a false peace above true justice is only one of many instances when mistaken theology enabled political oppression. Discerning and seeking shalom requires both humility and courage – and may, at times, work against the settled order, or undermine one's own comfort or interests.
If "all truth is God's truth" much of King's rightful legacy rests in his articulation and demonstration of the civic reality of shalom – and a vision for what it looked like when "peace in his time" was predicated upon the presence of racial injustice, accepted bigotry, and oppression. On this upcoming 25th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Trinity Forum honors Dr. King, and the efforts of all leaders, whether in the political, ecclesiastical, commercial, or private spheres, who long and labor for shalom.
Pastor Todd
