Spiritual Memoir: Telling Lives
Traditionally, the memoir was the province of the “great man” who embodied the achievements of his age and helped steer the course of historic events, who now, with some leisure on his hands and in need of cash, has agreed to write about it. The chief purpose of the memoir was to provide an insider’s perspective on external events, such as wars, treaties, and scientific explorations.
Martin Luther King’s Break-up Letter To the White Church
Sooner or later, it was a letter he would have to write. You can be abused, rejected, or taken for granted only so long before you write the proverbial “Dear John” letter. It is not a bill of divorcement King is sending to its recipients, because the White church and the Negro church have never been married. There has been the occasional pretense of love, but never the real thing. No one wanted it to end like this. Not King who tirelessly preached (and pretended) that Blacks and Whites are “brothers.” And not the recipients of his famous Letter, who, like the church bodies they represented, pretended to the same brotherhood.
Sunday All the Time
The chapters in this collection originated in several ways. Most were sermons preached in churches or chapels, the names of which I remember with pleasure and list at the end of this introduction. The sermons were accompanied by singing and prayers and in most cases followed by the movement of people toward the altar for communion. In other words, most of the messages in this collection were not isolated from the assembly of worshipers, the responses of attentive listeners, and the fidgeting and fussing of children.