On March 19th Ray Jasper will be put to death. Jasper was sentenced to death after being convicted of participating in the robbery and murder of David Alejandro, a recording studio owner. Jasper walked into the prison system when he was 19 and has 13 years of experience in that system of which he speaks about in his latest and last correspondence with Gawker.com. His letter is a part of a larger project at Gawker called “Letters from Death Row,” in which they have written letters to prisoners who are scheduled for execution. Though Jasper splits hairs in his letter on the facts of his case—claiming he didn’t murder Alejandro although he did slit his throat with the possible intent to murder—he articulates the real problems of the prison system, race and education, and the contradictory nature of religion that supports the death penalty. Below is an excerpt of some of his thoughts on those issues:
On Prison Sentences as Slavery
Under the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution all prisoners in America are considered slaves. We look at slavery like its a thing of the past, but you can go to any penitentiary in this nation and you will see slavery. That was the reason for the protests by prisoners in Georgia in 2010. They said they were tired of being treated like slaves. People need to know that when they sit on trial juries and sentence people to prison time that they are sentencing them to slavery.
If a prisoner refuses to work and be a slave, they will do their time in isolation as a punishment. You have thousands of people with a lot of prison time that have no choice but to make money for the government or live in isolation. The affects of prison isolation literally drive people crazy. Who can be isolated from human contact and not lose their mind? That was the reason California had an uproar last year behind Pelican Bay. 33,000 inmates across California protested refusing to work or refusing to eat on hunger-strikes because of those being tortured in isolation in Pelican Bay.
On Religion & the Death Penalty
The last thing on my heart is about religion and the death penalty. There are several well-known preachers in Texas and across the South that teach their congregations that the death penalty is right by God and backed by the Bible. The death penalty is a governmental issue not a spiritual issue. Southern preachers who advocate the death penalty are condoning evil. They need to learn the legalities of capital punishment. The State may have the power to put people to death, but don’t preach to the public that it’s God’s will. It’s the State’s will.
If God wanted me to die for anything, I would be dead already. I talk to God everyday. He’s not telling me I’m some kind of menace that He can’t wait to see executed. God is blessing me daily. God is showing me His favor & grace on my life. Like Paul said, I was the chief of sinners, but God had mercy on me because He knew I was ignorant. The blood of Abel cryed vengeance, the blood of Jesus cryed mercy.
To read the rest of Ray Jasper’s letter visit Gawker.com
In January, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis performed their gay rights anthem “Same Love” at the 56th annual Grammy awards show, staged as the soundtrack for dozens of actual same-sex marriages simultaneously officiated by Queen Latifah. Most of the major news and entertainment networks covered this as a bellwether event, generally positive in tone, and widely regarded as another breakthrough in the march for civil rights for gay couples.
In response, Houston-based rapper Bizzle released “Same Love (A Response),” wherein he criticized the agenda as he perceives it, highlighting what he sees as a double standard in the media of tolerance and celebration of same-sex marriage, but intolerance and judgment toward those Christians who express their view that homosexuality is a sin.
Odds are, if you care much about these occurrences, you’ve probably already made up your mind about the homosexuality debate. (I use that term rather loosely as really it’s more than one debate, there are, rather, a series of interlocking, related debates that involve the various roles of gay people in society…marriage, adoption, health care, employment discrimination, et cetera.)
Where a person lands on these issues is almost always a result of a complex set of beliefs, experiences and principles. This isn’t to say that a column, a song, or a mixtape-style response song, can’t help to change anyone’s perspective, but these things don’t take place in a vacuum. In today’s hyper-partisan environment, where the worlds of sports, politics and entertainment are regularly intermingled, every editorial has the potential to swirl around in an echo chamber that serves more to reinforce people’s existing beliefs than it does to challenge them. I say that not as a point of despair, but only to acknowledge the emperor’s naked elephant in the room (pardon the mixed metaphor): most articles on the internet don’t change anyone’s mind, and if we’re honest, few of them are even meant to.
Which is why, for a moment, I’d like to set the debate aside. Regardless of whether or not you view gay rights as the next round of civil rights, or whether you feel there is a gay agenda that could encroach on your religious liberty, there is one thing people on both sides can agree on:
One of the key issues at hand is respect.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T (sang Aretha!)
Macklemore wrote “Same Love” as a way to counter what he perceived as a culture of homophobia in hip-hop, a culture which amplified society’s general fear and distrust of people who are gay. Not only in plenty of hip-hop circles is “gay” a synonym for “weak or lame,” but in and out of hip-hop, so many dudes have been so afraid of being labeled as gay that the conversation suffix “no homo” was adopted just to clarify anytime one guy complimented another. This was the environment Macklemore was wading into before The Heist was released in 2012. So even if you ignore the meaning of the words, you can hear it in the “Same Love” track itself. By starting off with just piano and vocals, it’s clear that Macklemore was trying to contrast the normal hip-hop bravado with honesty and humility. He was trying to plead with the hip-hop nation, and by extension, to society at large, for a little respect for the cause of same-sex rights.
Similarly, Bizzle wrote his response to the same track, and attempted to imitate that honesty and humility. Only his plea was for respect for a worldview that he sees as becoming increasingly marginalized in popular culture – the traditional Christian view that says homosexuality is a sin. He responded honestly, trying to show how offensive he feels it is to compare the plight of gay and lesbian people to the systemic oppression and enslavement of African-Americans because, as he put it, “you can play straight, we can never play white.” And in the response track, Bizzle bristles at the irony that many of the people who say they want tolerance for gays and lesbians don’t extend that same tolerance toward him.
Both guys wanted respect to be shown to their side.
Which is why, even though I respect Bizzle for taking an unpopular stand based on his convictions, and even though I think he tried to be as loving as he knew how, I think he shouldn’t have done it this way, and maybe not even at all. Respect is a two-way street, and you have to work twice as hard to give it to get even half as much back. If “Same Love (A Response)” was intended to effectively engage people who are allied with gay and lesbian activists, it was doomed from the beginning. If it was truly done from a place of love, then perhaps, at that point, he just didn’t have enough of it.
Effective outreach vs. partisan cheerleading
First, “Same Love (A Response)” was doomed because the debate surrounding gay rights involves marriage, which is an institution that is simultaneously sacred and secular. This is why, at the end of most weddings that happen in churches, the preacher, pastor or officiant will usually say something like, “by the power invested in me by God and the state of [insert state], I pronounce you husband and wife.”
Before starting a religious debate about what God thinks about marriage and what it says in the Word of God about marriage, Bizzle would have done well to consider the possibility that any gay person listening may either not believe in God, or may be a Christian who has been treated poorly by fellow Christians in the past because of how they identify themselves.
If someone isn’t a believer, none of those arguments are relevant or compelling. If you’re using the same words, you’re still talking a whole different language. You might as well be arguing LeBron-versus-Durant to someone who has no interest in basketball. They may merely be interested in the same rights and respect as any other person choosing marriage.
But if he’s talking to gay and lesbian people who want a more sacred, Christian acknowledgement of their marriage, then he’s potentially talking to gay and lesbian Christians, people who, like any Christians, have given their lives over to Christ and are in the process of being sanctified and changed into the people He’s called us to be. So the way we Christians talk to each other should rise above the level of simply wanting to prove an argument.
This isn’t just a debate; we’re talking about people’s lives here. It’s not just their sex lives, but their everyday domestic lives, their careers, their dreams, their pain, their pasts and futures.
In the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, he said this:
Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Phil 2:1-4, NIV)
Did you see it? He said, “having the same love.” Oh, the irony.
I want to stress one point – I’m not calling Bizzle’s motives into question. He might’ve had the best motives in the world. Based on what I saw in his song, I don’t think he hates gay people, nor do I think he thinks more highly of his own sin than he does of anyone else. I appreciated his attempt at the end, imploring people not to stereotype gay people, and encouraging those who are actively struggling against sexual desires of all stripes. And also, to be honest, I understand being offended at the “new civil rights” comparison. There are definitely plenty of ways where I think proponents of same-sex marriage have, at best insensitively and at worst unjustly, improperly appropriated elements of the African-American struggle.
But still, his response devolved into partisan cheerleading and probably did more harm than good. Sometimes even with the best motives, our flesh and our ignorance gets in the way.
Speaking of marriage…
I’ve seen this happen plenty of times in my own marriage (even as I worked on this column). My wife and I, like any couple that’s been married for a while, sometime get into disagreements. And sometimes during those disagreements, I get angry. And many times, what sets me off is what I perceive at the time to be a particular form of oversensitivity on her part. She gets hurt by things that I say, and I get annoyed when she says that they’re disrespectful, because hey, I didn’t mean it in a disrespectful way.
But I thank God for my wife, because she has learned, through many rounds of frustrated, teary-eyed (for her), ego-bruised (for me) discussion, a really valuable truth – respect is never just about intentions, it’s also about execution. It’s about saying loving things in as loving a way as possible. Rather than blaming the other person for not interpreting your choices as charitably as you would, it’s about swallowing your pride and making the tough choice to alter your behavior so that the other person can receive the message you’re trying to send. For me, in the moment, it’s about lowering my voice, softening my tone, and not being so directly confrontational. It’s about saying, “I love you,” and then backing it up, not just by apologizing each time I offend her in this way, but by and actually changing my approach so that it happens less often. By God’s grace, this allows us to continue to develop a rich and rewarding marriage, even though we sometimes offend one another.
It is in this way, in the turning-the-other-cheek, going-the-extra-mile way, that Bizzle’s approach failed. Some of his points were valid, but his execution was more defiant than it was humble. There were plenty of lyrical instances of Bizzle saying things that he felt needed to be said, but it seemed to me more of a I-need-to-get-this-off-my-chest kind of a thing, rather than a I-thought-long-and-hard-about-what-would-help-you-understand-where-I’m-coming-from-and-this-was-what-I-chose kind of a thing. And that often ends up being the difference between two sides yelling and actual communication taking place. It may seem fair to respond to one rap with another rap, but maybe a rap song isn’t the best vehicle to have a nuanced discussion. All in all, I think Bizzle could’ve done more to understand, and less to be understood. And that’s a posture we all could use more of.
Regardless of where you stand on the homosexuality debate, we all desire to be loved and respected. So if that’s how Bizzle, or Macklemore’s zealous fanbase, ever learn to show their love, then sign me up – I’ll have the same thing they’re having.
This weekend while the heavy hitters in the entertainment industry will gather to celebrate one another at the 86th Annual Academy Awards, many others around America will gather with their families to celebrate the faithful few by tuning into Movieguide’s Faith & Values Awards Gala. This awards gala celebrates the work of people who create “family-friendly movies and television shows as well as the most moral and Christ-centered films for mature audiences.” Driven by the mantra, “Change the channel and help change the culture,” the MovieGuide Awards Gala sends a message to Hollywood that there is demand for faith-based programming on both the big and small screens. In fulfilling that demand by creating more God-inspired and faithful content, culture can be changed for the better.
MovieGuide has worked to fulfill this mission of drawing attention to faith-based programming since 1985, a time when there weren’t many movies aimed at families. Over the years things have gotten better. Since 1993 family-friendly and Christian movies tripled while the number of R-rated movies declined. For instance, last year only six of the Top 25 highest grossing movies in the box office were R-rated films, yet these statistics don’t mean that all is well. With the prevalence of reality television programming that exalts physical and verbal violence as well as a high-level of materialism, the MovieGuide Awards counter that increasingly dominant narrative to show the industry at large that there is demand for better programming.
This year the awards show will air on the Reelz channel on March 1st at 2PMEST/11AMPacific. Some of the nominees this year include “Black Nativity,” “Frozen,” and “Linsanity,” for Best Family Films; “42,” “Captain Phillips,” and “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” for Best Mature Audience Films; and “The Bible,” “The Cross,” and “Last Man Standing: Back to School” in the Epiphany Prize Television category. Actors such as Forest Whittaker, Sandra Bullock, and Harrison Ford are also among the nominees in the Grace Award Movies category.
We here at UrbanFaith don’t take lightly the influence that entertainment can have on young people in particular and people in general. It is for that reason that we affirm the work that MovieGuide is doing. We hope that you will tune in on Saturday to celebrate that work and share news of the Awards Gala airing with your friends and family.
The MovieGuide Awards Gala will air on Saturday, March 1 at 2PMEST/11AMPST. To find out what channel The Movieguide Awards will be on in your area, click here.
I saw the video you made Feb. 10 — apparently in honor of Black History Month – about how “stony the road” has been for you all while trying to earn your degrees.
The video is well done, has gone viral, and is apparently generating substantial sympathy from several black people and probably some whites. As somber piano music plays gently in the background, you all are shown one by one pleading your cases about how “bitter the chastening rod” has been.
“I have to plead my humanity,” one of you says.
“I feel like I’m from another country – a European Country,” says another
“A lot of pressure… A lot of weight…Feels like I don’t belong…Unwelcoming and hostile.”
“It’s so far from being a safe space, that staying at home would be better for my mental health…”
“I have to police myself.”
“I’ve never felt the burden to have to represent my community until I came to law school.”
Lonely? Pressure? Burden?
You all are enrolled in one of the most prestigious schools in the country, which means you are among the best and brightest. Most of you are hopefully preparing to enter the criminal justice system, where your black perspective is sorely needed. Certainly you are all familiar with the book, “The New Jim Crow,” where attorney Michelle Alexander shows how prison has become the new plantation for black and brown people. You witnessed George Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict in the death of Trayvon Martin. And now “stand your ground” has deadlocked a jury on whether to convict Michael Dunn of murder in the shooting death of Jordan Davis. But instead of “facing the rising sun” and marching on, you turn a video camera on yourselves and whine?
Don’t misunderstand me. I actually get where you all are coming from. You see, growing up in the late 70s and 80s in Brooklyn, NY, I went through a traumatic academic experience. I was bussed away from my black low-income neighborhood to predominantly white middle class public schools. In middle school when we “bus kids” (that’s how they labeled us) stepped out onto the streets, we faced a gauntlet of screaming mad grown white folks spewing hateful threats of death for attending their school. We bus kids had to plead our humanity. We felt that we were in another country. Our parents told us that we had better police ourselves because we were representing our entire race. And to think, we were only children.
Have you all had it so good up until now perched upon the shoulders of previous generations that have sacrificed for you that you are now rejecting your birthright? How can your feet already be weary at “the place for which our father’s sighed?”
Sorry, but you’re not facing pressure. You’re facing your duty. Pressure is sneaking into the plantation down the road to set your wife free. Pressure is going to war for America in the hopes that your death will enable generations of black children to live free. Pressure is raising five children on your own in poverty because your deadbeat husband split.
What pressured W.E.B Dubois at Harvard into becoming the first African American to earn a Ph.D.? What burdened Paul Robeson while being an all-American athlete, multitalented artist and scholar at Rutgers who went on to earn a law degree at Columbia University? What loneliness drove Jane Bolin to not only become the first African American woman to graduate from Yale Law, but the first black woman judge in the United States?
“We have come over a way that with tears has been watered
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered…”
Here’s some advice that helped me when I was “the only one” while earning a master’s degree at the University of Arizona and even now as I pursue a doctorate at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Look to the past for inspiration. Read essays by African-American Jeremiads such as Maria Stewart and David Walker. Read poems like “I too Sing America” by Langston Hughes and “We Wear the Mask,” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar. Sit down and really digest “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (a.k.a The Black National Anthem) by James Weldon Johnson, who, by the way, was also a lawyer:
“…Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
–~~~~
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.”
“We want every person to bring their ‘whole self’ to work every day,” says a Kellogg’s human resources manager in the company’s latest “diversity and inclusion” report.
A hundred locked-out Kellogg’s workers marched with 1,000 community members in the Martin Luther King Day parade in Memphis. The local NAACP is calling for a boycott. (Photo Credit: Schaeffer Mallory)
But for more than three months now, 220 locked-out cereal workers in Memphis, a majority black, have had to settle for bringing their “whole self” to the frigid picket line at the Kellogg’s factory entrance. Workers maintain a 24/7 picket, with four to 10 workers holding signs.
Production continues uninhibited by the picketers. Scabs brought in by an Ohio company enter through a back gate. Cereal leaves by the trainload, heading east.
At a rally on Martin Luther King Day, the president of the Memphis chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) called for a boycott of Kellogg’s products.
Rev. Dwight Montgomery said he had spoken with an organization of 300 ministers in the Memphis area, and that they had decided to ask “our congregation members to go talk to their friends, family neighbors… We are not going to buy any Kellogg’s products.”
He said the Memphis SCLC had written two letters and made several phone calls to Kellogg’s CEO John Bryant—but had not heard back.
“I want to make it clear,” Montgomery said. “We first communicated, tried to move this in the direction of resolution, before calling a boycott. We have been fair. We’re calling it nonviolent direct action for social change.”
‘Diversity and Inclusion in Our Plants’
More than 60 percent of the locked-out workers are black, reflecting the demographics of Memphis.
In 2012 Memphis was the setting for a meeting of Kellogg’s African-American Resource Group, discussing how to create an “inclusive environment.” Apparently, according to the report, “recruiting and retaining diverse employees in the Memphis area was proving to be a challenge.”
But Rev. Montgomery said the company could easily fix its retention problem: “[Kellogg’s] locked out people who are diverse, so bring them back!”
Kevin Bradshaw is president of BCTGM Local 252G, which represents the workers. He said that “without us being at work they don’t have any diversity. All their K Values don’t mean anything. Everything they mean, they did the opposite of by locking us out.”
Kellogg’s K Values include “involving others in decisions and plans that affect them.” Another Resource Group, K-Pride and Allies, was created to “Stomp Out Bullying.”
Locked-out workers take these messages with a grain of salt.
When asked about the Employee Resource Groups and Kellogg’s attempts at diversity and inclusion, Bradshaw said, “They’ve never approached us about them on a local level. They’ve got a whole team, but they’ve never put forth the effort in Memphis.
“These are not honorable people. They’ll say anything to look good. It’s all a bunch of corporate lies.”
Vice President Earl Earlie said he had never heard of the Employee Resource Groups.
‘Just a Marketing Ploy
Kellogg’s boasts in its report of the “ongoing work we are doing on our diversity and inclusion journey.”
A more cynical view of this “journey” is revealed in a section of the report titled “Kellogg Connects with Latino Customers through Targeted Marketing and Product Development.”
Kellogg’s claims its efforts at branding and marketing to Latino customers demonstrate its commitment to diversity. “Christopher R., associate director of multicultural brand marketing” is quoted as saying “my focus right now is ‘all Hispanic, all the time.’”
In Hispanic markets, Tony the Tiger is now El Tigre Toño, selling Choco Zucaritas instead of Frosted Flakes Chocolate.
Locked-out Memphis workers appear to agree that Kellogg’s diversity programs amount to little more than marketing. Trence Jackson, a Local 252G officer, said, Kellogg’s also puts “African Americans, like Gabby [Douglas] on their cereal boxes each February.”
‘Memphis Boycott Again
Civil rights organizations have rallied to the Kellogg’s workers’ cause. The A. Philip Randolph Institute organized a January 12 rally including speakers from the SCLC and NAACP. Many recalled facing violence in the 1950s and ’60s, and called for a return to the militant tactics of the civil rights movement, including civil disobedience to stop scabs from continuing production.
In his famous “Mountaintop” speech in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. also called for a boycott in Memphis. What began as a labor dispute—a strike by sanitation workers—had quickly escalated into a fight between Memphis’s black majority and its white economic and political elite. King called on the black community to boycott white businesses until the strike was settled.
Almost a half-century later, Bradshaw said, “The community in general is tired of being used. The whole Memphis area is tired of being used. Big companies come to Memphis just because they have a cheap labor rate.
“The rich are getting rich and the poor are getting poorer, and the people of Memphis are getting tired of it. Employers need to change their tactics and treat us fairer than what they’ve been doing.”
For more news on the labor movement visit LaborNotes.org.
“If we’re going to take Martin Luther King Jr. seriously in theological education as someone worthy of being studied, we can’t just do a service, celebration or lecture on his anniversary,” said Dr. Cheryl J. Sanders, senior pastor of the Third Street Church of God in Washington, D.C. and this year’s guest speaker at the 2014 MLK Jr. Lecture Series at Fuller Seminary.
Instead, Sanders, who is also a professor of Christian Ethics at Howard University School of Divinity, told the audience that she would be speaking on the leadership legacy of the historic figure.
“I’d like to suggest particular roles King played that we can use as a guide to our pedagogy in the academy as we are preparing people for leadership and professional formation for ministry,” she said, noting that these roles can then be adopted by people who cherish King’s legacy, ministry, and are willing to take up his “prophetic mantle.”
The seven leadership roles that King possessed and exemplified, and “are worthy of emulation by religious leaders of our time,” are that of orator; organizer; opportunist; optimist; operative; organic intellectual; and oracle, Sanders explained. She emphasized that embedded in each role are corresponding gifts of virtue such as “hunger and thirst for righteousness, purity of heart, right motivation, and equanimity under pressure.”
Firstly, the role of orator is to communicate ideas to motivate diverse audiences, Sanders said.
“It’s not the communication, it’s the motivation,” she said. King would often use proverbial expressions, scriptures, and quotes as part of his oratory presentation to add imagery and expressiveness to his speech. Sanders explained that people today can study him as an orator and watch his effectiveness in communicating motivation even in this age of social media.
King also played the role of an organizer to develop and sustain a following to achieve goals and ends. Sanders noted that King grew up in the African American church as a preacher’s son. Because he belonged to middle-class society and was very bright, he was able to attend college at the age of 16. There, King, was involved in fraternities and societies. As a result, Sanders said, by the time King was through seminary and hitting the public sphere, he understood how organizations, clubs, and networks operate. He was also able to speak to both white America and the Black poor. This allowed him to be successful as an organizer, and to speak with “unflinching honesty and undeniable authenticity.”
Opportunity is also an important part of leadership, Sanders said. Opportunists can harness media and technology to seize the moment. Pointing to an image of King’s cover photo in Time Magazine, Sanders explained that King would often present himself as a Black leader familiar with European intellectual trends.
“Opportunist isn’t a bad word,” Sanders said. “It’s recognizing that having a PhD from Boston University meant King is conversant in broader audiences than just the traditional Black church audience.”
King acquired respectability in a broader audience, and took advantage of opportunities to be in the media.
King was also an optimist, able to inspire hope in resistance to dread and despair. Sanders noted optimism doesn’t just mean dreaming and hoping. Not every protest King led was successful, she said, which made it all the more important for him to be an optimist “so in the face of failure he can speak a word of hope that is meaningful.”
Sanders also explained that optimism means having the ability to see what change looks like.
“Protest of injustice is a good and necessary thing, but you need to have an alternative in mind,” she said. “You can’t just tear stuff down. You need to have an inkling of what is possible.”
Leaders can also learn to be an operative – a person who achieves objectives of a larger interest. Pointing to a photo of King standing behind President Lyndon B. Johnson as he signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Sanders noted that the photo communicated “politics of compromise.”
“As an operative, you know when to hold ’em, and you know when to fold ’em,” she said. The photo showed King being a successful operative, because he was able to diminish his role, and allow the person with power to achieve what was the best interest of his people.
King also played the role of organic intellectual, able to fuel activism with academic agility.
“Martin Luther King Jr. was the most successful organic intellectual in American history,” Sanders said. “Never before has a figure outside of elected public office linked the life of the mind with social change with such moral persuasion and political effectiveness.”
Sanders explained that King became an organic intellectual by being shaped through his prophetic Black church tradition, the liberal Christianity he encountered in his scholarly training, prophetic Ghandian method of non-violence, and the prophetic American civil religion that fuses secular and sacred history and combines Christian themes of deliverance and salvation with political ideals of democracy. King exemplified “the best of the life of the mind involved in public affairs.”
In addition, King had the ability to talk to people who were not his intellectual peers – to make himself available to even young children.
“As intellectuals, we can’t afford to shelter ourselves in our ivory towers,” Sanders said. “And we have to be not just available, but willing. The American way is to relate up and not relate down, because people on the up will help you to advance.” However, Sanders reminded the audience of the scripture passage in Matthew, when Jesus told the disciples to let the children come to him.
Lastly, Dr. King was an oracle. Sanders pointed to his last sermon, in which he accurately predicted his death, as evidence of King’s ability to discern vision and voice in the realm of the Spirit.
“An orator crafts a speech or sermon,” Sanders said. “An oracle speaks what is heard in the ear or the heart. When King spoke the night before his assassination, he spoke of things not from a book. He was hearing from another realm.”
Sanders concluded by echoing that the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. is not just a holiday or an occasion, but to mind the lessons that will serve us going forward.
“The role of the public pastorate can be elevated and enhanced by individuals who have been schooled in the various leadership roles exemplified by King and we can teach and equip our theological students to pursue leadership development and professional formation beyond the traditional roles of pastor, priest, and preacher to equip them to care more effectively for the soul of a nation,” she said.
