Pensees: MLK Day, the BJU Apology, and Evangelicals’ Humble Necessity to Honor the Holiday

Thank you.

Very well said.

=} “Mere weeks after” is generous. BJU’s statement was issued the DAY after the open letters signatures were capped at midnight. This after the open letter had been garnering signatures for months (from April till November 2008). http://karagraphy.com/2008/11/20/statement-about-race-at-bob-jones-university/

While I too rejoice that an end got met in spite of the means, I won’t say “who cares?” I agree it’s not a paramount issue—certainly was not. But it OUGHT TO matter that the University would be willing to hear and respond to—at least to acknowledge the existence of—the letter’s rationale and pleas, at least in this case. In this case, the letter-writers and most of the signatories were loving, grateful alumni who swore a pledge to keep their alma mater faithful to ultimate values as defined by biblical authority (rather than to personal or institutional preferences).

So, as an alumna who carefully thought through my own involvement in and promotion of the open letter, I admit I was hoping that the alumni-driven open letter would be an influence to spur an apology from the Univ. And I did notice, with dismay, the extraordinary claims to the contrary.

RE: LABC and “laughing and rejoicing”.

Is this verifiable? I ask because I remember the MLK assassination very well. I was a Freshman in college at the University of Cincinnati.

I don’t remember anybody rejoicing. My recollection from being on campus that day was deep and profound grief that a young man was cut down in his prime.

I found your piece on MLK Day both intriguing and provocative. There was much to agree with and much with which we could, I would imagine, engage in a spirited discussion. Peraps at variance with your position, time actually has a way of blurring history, and I believe the record of Dr. King has become really blurred in just 40 or so years. I am sure the FBI file on the good “reverend,” if it hasn’t been destroyed by the liberal protectors of political correctness, would bring back many troubling memories regarding Dr. King. Because of the length of your piece, I thought in order to respond in a timely fashion I would zero in on a couple of points in your next to last paragraph.

Yes, MLK left a legacy, in fact several. Personally, I find nothing to admire in his documented legacy of close ties with the enemies of America. Though you most certainly incorrectly claim the matter was “unspoken,” even amongst your “fundamentalist” friends, most of us living at the time on Planet Earth have a vivid recollection that, in addition to civil rights, Dr. King was deeply involved in the anti-war movement, along with luminaries like Jane Fonda, serving as a willing tool for Hanoi, that is, an enemy in time of war. He had a most unsavory group of collaborators. I personally attended a gigantic anti-war rally at the Chicago Coliseum, organized by a vast array of known American Communist fronters, addressed by Dr. King and Dr. Benjamin Spock, as I recall. He, unfortunately for his legend, had an extensive record of such unseemly affiliations and associations, Please, whatever else, don’t try to confuse the facts and minimize issues concerning this matter with warm wombs and your personal revelations about Dr. King. If there wasn’t more to Dr. King than his interest in civil rights one would think he would have steered steer clear of supporting mass-murders and enemies of human rights, the world communist movement.

“We honor this day because we honor a principle, a principle of civil rights for people of any color,” you say. Alright, fair enough. Then, let us celebrate something called Civil Rights Day, or perhaps Bill of Rights Day. Either one would seem to cover the whole spectrum. There are no bank holidays or paid holidays for government workers for even a single white American. Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays have been deposited in the memory hole and replaced by something called Presidents’ Day, but now`that we have a President “of color,” is there not one white American in all of American history worthy of the honor of his own day of closing the banks once a year?

The real issue of the day is the possible impending demise of our constitutional republic and the civil rights of all Americans as we lurch into the era of Hollywood and media-anointed Hussein Obama, a successful graduate of the Alinsky method of Marxist revolution, who has promised an America of most Christian American’s worst nightmares. And he is only the shadow puppet of far more insidious forces.

In my feeble efforts in posting the above comments, the last paragraph somehow was not included:

I am growing weary of people using the race card whenever a liberal icon is involved. Is it not more than just possible for one to oppose certain parts of MLK’s record and without opposing him on racial grounds or being a`racist? Unlike the Balkanizers of America, those who seek to divide America by race, ethnicity, and gender. I say, most emphaticaly, yes!

Jim Peet,

I believe “the laughing and rejoicing” account is in the book “Reconciliation Blues: A Black Evangelical’s Inside View of White Christianity” by Edward Gilbreath, if I’m not mistaken.

From King’s Autobiography, chapter one, early years:

“I joined the church at the age of five. I well remember how this event occurred. Our church was in the midst of the spring revival, and a guest evangelist had come down from Virginia. On Sunday morning the evangelist came into our Sunday school to talk to us about salvation, and after a short talk on this point he extended an invitation to any of us who wanted to join the church. My sister was the first one to join the church that morning, and after seeing her join I decided that I would not let her get ahead of me, so I was the next. I had never given this matter a thought, and even at the time of my baptism I was unaware of what was taking place. From this it seems quite clear that I joined the church not out of any dynamic conviction, but out of a childhood desire to keep up with my sister.

The church has always been a second home for me. As far back as I can remember I was in church every Sunday. My best friends were in Sunday school, and it was the Sunday school that helped me to build the capacity for getting along with people. I guess this was inevitable since my father was the pastor of my church, but I never regretted going to church until I passed through a state of skepticism in my second year of college.

The lessons which I was taught in Sunday school were quite in the fundamentalist line. None of my teachers ever doubted the infallibility of the Scriptures. Most of them were unlettered and had never heard of biblical criticism. Naturally, I accepted the teachings as they were being given to me. I never felt any need to doubt them—at least at that time I didn’t. I guess I accepted biblical studies uncritically until I was about twelve years old. But this uncritical attitude could not last long, for it was contrary to the very nature of my being. I had always been the questioning and precocious type. At the age of thirteen, I shocked my Sunday school class by denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly.”

From “Reconstructing the King Legacy: Scholars and National Myths” — In We Shall Overcome: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Freedom Struggle. 1990:

“A religious liberal and pioneering proponent of what is now called liberation theology, King carried on a long and determined-though unsuccessful-struggle against the conservative leadership of the National Baptist Convention.”

Bob, what is your definition of “hero?” And why do you call MLK a hero? I’m not trying to start a fight, after all, it is your blog, and i respect that, but I don’t agree that MLK is a hero.

I have a somewhat similar background as you. I didn’t grow up in Africa, but was a PK whose father taught in a black Bible college. And I attended the same undergraduate institution you did.

Thanks.