King's God: The Unknown Faith of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Lutheran Witness said that King “Is first of all a committed Christian.”
Who told the truth about him? The LCMS or Christian News?

King’s God: The Unknown Faith of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Christian News, January 30, 2012

As a young man, Martin Luther King Jr. rejected many of the orthodox views of Jesus’s divinity, resurrection, and return. The author shows how King flatly rejected “a literal interpretation of biblical stories, claiming such a reading would be ‘absurd’ in a Copernican world.” On these issues, Scofield argues, King did not change his mind in later years. by Robert James “Be” Scofield.

You undoubtedly know that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a progressive Christian and champion of civil rights and the social gospel. You may also know that he spoke out against the Vietnam War, harshly criticized U.S. foreign policy, and questioned the capitalist system that produced poverty. But do you know his theology?

Right up until Dr. King's assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had traveled to support striking sanitation workers, the civil rights leader worked—not as a secular activist but as a Baptist minister—to awaken the conscience of the nation. What was the meaning of Jesus for Dr. King? Did he see Jesus as divine? How did he interpret the Bible?

Biographies describe King as a liberal Protestant, but what does this mean? What was his understanding of Christian doctrines and why are they important to us? A number of academic papers written during his seminary years (1948-1951) provide an intimate look at the young King as he struggled to reconcile religion with a changing, dynamic, and modern world.

Prior to entering the liberal Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, King had developed only a tenuous relationship with Christianity. Despite being raised in a lineage of orthodox Baptist ministers, King at a young age demonstrated skepticism of the irrational claims of religion, and embarrassment at the emotionalism of his father's preaching. His entrance into Christianity at the age of six came from neither a genuine religious conviction nor a crisis moment; rather, he saw his sister make the altar call during a local religious revival and quickly followed suit. He claimed that during his baptism he had no idea what was occurring. Perhaps most striking was his denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school at the age of thirteen. From this point he stated, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly."[i]

King carried these suspicions with him when he entered Morehouse College in Atlanta at the age of fifteen. He had originally planned on being a doctor or lawyer. At Morehouse, under the guidance of President Benjamin E. Mays and professor George D. Kelsey, he began to believe that religion could be both "intellectually respectful and emotionally satisfying." Mays's weekly talks on the social gospel enchanted King, while Kelsey's Bible course taught him to see the Bible metaphorically, leading him to conclude the Bible has "many profound truths which one cannot escape."[ii]

While the "shackles of fundamentalism" broke off during these years at Morehouse, it was at Crozer that King discovered the insights and potential of liberal theology and began to articulate his opinions about Christianity. It was here that he found his calling, graduating first in his class and delivering the commencement address. He would go on to study the twentieth-century giants of theology -- Tillich, Wieman, Niebuhr, and Barth -- while pursuing a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston University. But by the end of his seminary years at Crozer he had already laid out his understanding of the core doctrines of the Christian faith. And it is here that we now direct our focus.

How did Dr. King understand Jesus? Did he see him as the Son of God? In "The Humanity and Divinity of Jesus," a paper written for a class called "Christian Theology Today," King clearly lays out his view on the divinity of Jesus:

The orthodox attempt to explain the divinity of Jesus in terms of an inherent metaphysical substance within him seems to me quite inadequate. To say that the Christ, whose example of living we are bid to follow, is divine in an ontological sense is actually harmful and detrimental. To invest this Christ with such supernatural qualities makes the rejoinder: "Oh, well, he had a better chance for that kind of life than we can possibly have ..." So that the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is in my mind quite readily denied. The significance of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact that his achievement is prophetic and promissory for every other true son of man who is willing to submit his will to the will and spirit of God. Christ was to be only the prototype of one among many brothers. The appearance of such a person, more divine and more human than any other, and in closest unity at once with God and man, is the most significant and hopeful event in human history. This divine quality or this unity with God was not something thrust upon Jesus from above, but it was a definite achievement through the process of moral struggle and self-abnegation. [iii]

The question King answered was not whether Jesus was divine but rather how he became divine. This approach allowed him to deal with the "insuperable difficulties" of the orthodox position while still explaining why Jesus was unique and different from other people.

In line with his metaphorical interpretation of Jesus, King searched for the deeper significance of the history and context in which the Christian doctrines were created. He suggests, "We should delve into the deeper meaning ... and somehow strip them of their literal interpretation," and when we do this "we will find they are based on a profound foundation."[iv]

In a paper discussing the creation of orthodox beliefs, King argues that the virgin birth story represents a pre-scientific worldview: Christ's followers believed that Jesus's uniqueness could only be explained biologically. According to King, Jesus's early disciples saw his "spiritual life so far beyond theirs" that any attempt to explain his existence as human was inadequate. He concludes, "We of this scientific age will not explain the birth of Jesus in such unscientific terms."[v] This same type of thinking led Christ's followers to externalize their inner experience of his lasting power through the story of the bodily resurrection. Those who knew Jesus "had been captivated by the magnetic power of his personality," King writes, which led them to believe that he "could never die."[vi] The living and eternal presence they experienced was then transferred into the story of a bodily resurrection.

In "The Christian Pertinence of Eschatological Hope," a paper King wrote for Christian Theology Today, he explores the core doctrines. The one he denounces most directly is that of the second coming, writing, "It is obvious that most twentieth century Christians must frankly and flatly reject any view of a physical return of Christ."[vii] What were the early Christians trying to convey in predicting the return of Jesus? King states:

Actually we are celebrating the Second Advent every time we open our hearts to Jesus, every time we turn our backs to the low road and accept the high road, every time we say no to self that we may say yes to Jesus Christ, every time a man or wom[a]n turns from ugliness to beauty and is able to forgive even their enemies. Jesus stands at the door of our hearts if we are willing to admit him.... The final doctrine of the second coming is that whenever we turn our lives to the highest and best there for us is the Christ.[viii] This is in effect the continual return of Jesus.

In addressing the orthodox notion of the Day of Judgment, King suggests that we "set aside the spectacular paraphernalia of the judgment scene and the literal throne."[ix] Jesus has already come to judge the world. When we judge ourselves against the life of Christ or experience closeness to him we are experiencing the Day of Judgment. King also denies the traditional notion that some are destined for eternal communion with God while others are destined for hell. In "The Christian Pertinence of Eschatological Hope," he writes, "A physical heaven and a physical hell are inconceivable in a Copernican world ... for us immortality will mean a spiritual existence."[x] And in "Why Religion?" he says, "In reality I know nothing about heaven ... personally I don't believe in hell in the conventional sense."[xi] In the end King interprets the kingdom of God not as some cataclysmic end time or a theocratic kingdom that triumphs over "satanically inspired regimes."[xii] Rather he associates the kingdom of God with the eternal love of God on earth, writing, "When we see social relationships controlled everywhere by the principles which Jesus illustrated in life -- trust, love, mercy, and altruism -- then we shall know that the kingdom of God is here."[xiii]

For entire article see Christian News, January 30, 2012; Vol 50, No 5; http://www.christiannewsmo.com/