By Dick Detwiler
Monday, January 18, 2021, in the time of COVID-19 was a little different for people of Trinity, who in other years would have been participating in volunteer community service projects.
A group of Trinity members gathered on Zoom to discuss and reflect on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. Here’s a link to the letter as published in The Christian Century in June 1963. The group was ably prepared and led by Trinity Racial Justice Task Force member John Wittenbraker.
King had left home in Atlanta, Georgia, and gone to Birmingham, Alabama, because, as he said early in his letter, “I cannot not sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” King, 34, was serving as the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
In Birmingham, King was arrested as an “outside agitator”, even though he was there at the invitation of one of his affiliate organizations, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, to join the nonviolent demonstrations for justice taking place in the one of the most segregated cities in the U.S. While in the Birmingham city jail he was able to read a letter published in the newspaper signed by eight white male pastors criticizing the civil rights demonstrations as “unwise and untimely”.
King lays out in detail the context of racial injustice and the character and the wisdom of the nonviolent campaign for change that he and others were carrying out in response to that pervasive and persistent injustice. He writes, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” As to the “untimeliness” of the campaign for justice, he says, “We have waited 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights.”
The white pastors criticized the protestors for breaking laws. King responds with a compelling argument for distinguishing between just and unjust laws and references a long history of Jewish and Christian thought on the subject from ancient to modern times, as well as Biblical and historical precedent for civil disobedience by Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and early Christian martyrs. Among the leaders King cites is Lutheran Reformer Martin Luther, who on trial for his writings critical of church practices before the Imperial Diet in Worms in 1521, had spoken “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”
King’s voice takes a prophetic turn, when he moves from defending the movement for justice to focusing a critical eye on his white Christian critics. He confesses that he has come to see the “white moderate” as a greater obstacle to justice than the Ku Klux Klan, noting the moderates’ support of the status quo and greater devotion to “order” than to justice. The prophet’s voice warns that if African Americans aren’t permitted to express their frustrations and discontent in nonviolent protest, history suggests that protest can turn violent. He expresses deep disappointment in the lack of support for direct action for justice on the part of the white church. He shares special dismay for the white pastors’ praise for the police for keeping “order”, while not offering any praise for brave demonstrators protesting injustice.
King brings his letter to a close saying, “Never before have I written so long a letter. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone for days in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers.” He wrote the whole letter on small scraps of paper, napkins, and the margins of newspaper articles and smuggled them out a few at a time with visitors.
In 2021 we can ask ourselves what Dr. King might write to us in another time of turmoil and movements for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice. Are we still the white moderate Christians that King saw as the largest obstacle to reaching the goal of justice for all? If Dr. King were to write to Trinity today, would he commend our Christian witness or be dismayed by our complacent whiteness? Are there things that we can do at Trinity to more fully embody our embrace of diversity and to answer the prophetic call for justice?
Several overlapping groups at Trinity are beginning to read, learn, and discuss how we might individually and as a congregation be better members of the body of Christ in pursuit of Christ’s peace and justice. Some have read African American Lutheran Pastor Lenny Duncan’s Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the U.S. Some are reading Waking Up White by Debby Irving and attending weekly Zoom discussions organized by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod. Some are regularly sharing discovered resources, ideas, and questions as participants in Trinity’s Racial Justice Taskforce.
Keep checking the Racial Justice page on the Trinity website for ways to join the conversation about how we might all be better at practicing witness than whiteness.
The author is a member of Trinity’s Racial Justice Task Force and lifelong Trinity member.