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.
In Montgomery five years earlier, King had been stunned, then desolated, by the White church’s opposition to the Negro bus boycott. Only one White clergyman stood with King, and he was the pastor of a Negro Lutheran congregation (whose parsonage, like King’s was bombed). Five years later in Birmingham, there were signs that a few clergy were coming around to a more moderate response to the conflict that was convulsing the city. The white Methodist church had even opened its doors to Black worshippers—a courageous first in what King claimed to be the most segregated city in the south.
But then came the letter. And while it was not a bombshell, it was public, wishy-washy, and utterly predictable. It offered specific counsel only to the Negro residents of Birmingham, but not to the Whites. It associated King’s organization with “outsiders,” as if the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was a foreign entity or questionable offshore operation. “Outsiders” was the usual canard aimed at a collation of southerners, led by the former pastor of an Alabama congregation (King) and spearheaded by the heroic Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, the much beaten and terrorized pastor of a local church. The ministers’ letter takes a long and forgiving view of the racist indignities and violence perpetrated upon Negros in Birmingham. They do not sanction violence, but they are worried about the “potential” for violence elicited by the demonstrations. Their letter also praises the “calm manner” demonstrated by law enforcement officials (the dogs are not mentioned). The clergymen conclude by encouraging the Negro residents of Birmingham to take no part in the demonstrations.
The Importance of Genre
How is it that a public letter written more than a half-century ago, still maintains a hold on us? Why is it relevant to our concerns today? The answer lies not only in the importance of events in the 1960s but the nature of the genre itself. I will argue that King’s response had to be a letter because of a letter’s—any letter’s—two essential qualities. First, it bridges a gap between those who are separated by distance, opinion, or circumstances. A letter suggests a relationship between sender and recipient. It reveals the sender’s state of mind and holds out the possibility of a real or intellectual meeting. Second, and of equal importance, a letter is susceptible to being read by others for whom it was not originally intended. Christians have been adept at reading other people’s mail, learning from it, and applying it to their own circumstances.
The letters of the apostle Paul are a case in point. When, for example, he tells the ancient Corinthians to be transformed by the renewing of their minds, or the Philippians to get along with one another, 21st century readers understand themselves as the legitimate addressees in this correspondence and try to respond accordingly. Similarly, when the author of the Book of Revelation pens letters to the churches of Asia Minor in which he characterizes some of them as strong, some dead, and some lukewarm, modern Christian churches instinctively identify themselves in the mirror of those letters. All of which leads me to make a two-fold observation about King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: it is a genuine “church letter” saturated with the concerns of faithfulness to the gospel; and, from its very inception, it was modeled after New Testament epistles and therefore designed to be read and acted upon by a wider circle of readers.
Although it is a real letter, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is occasionally designated as an essay, this despite its epistolary salutation (“My dear fellow clergymen”) and the personal, interactive style of its author. One of the reasons it is occasionally mistaken for an essay lies in the letter’s failure to distinguish among its recipients. They function only as placeholders for southern Christian indifference to the demands of justice. And at times, King appears to lecture them in essay-fashion.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” can also be read as a manifesto—a compact, decisive, impassioned, and public, statement of a position or a movement. As in the Ninety-Five Theses, Communist Manifesto, or the Barmen Declaration, the reader is called upon to take sides and make a decision. There are no loose ends in a manifesto. Which makes it a graspable tool for moving a nation or calling a church to accountability. There is no need to spin it for a clearer or more forceful explanation of the writer’s intent. It does not require a series of clarifying follow-ups.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a manifesto in the form of a public letter, not unlike Émile Zola’s famous J’accuse, written in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, a French soldier of Jewish descent who was unjustly accused of treason at the turn of the twentieth century. Zola’s letter conveyed the controversial accusation of French anti-Semitism. King’s letter, no less controversially, accused the white church of a failure of nerve in civil rights.
It’s easy to see that “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is not the sort of letter one might write to an acquaintance or a relative. We have learned from Jonathan Bass of the calculations that went into the writing of the letter—how King’s organization waited patiently for the best opportunity to make a dramatic, public statement, and how King never sought a meeting or a more personal relationship with the eight clergymen that might have led to greater understanding among them. Bass implies that the eight “moderate” clergy were set up as foils by King and his advisers.
The philosopher Wittgenstein once remarked that to find the truth one must start with the mistake. That’s the tactic King pursues in his letter. The eight clergy signed their names to a mistake, and they have done so publicly for all the world to see. It was inevitable that the two public statements—their criticism and King’s response—would become dueling letters.
Thus “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is part personal essay, part manifesto, and part open letter. But most decisively, it is an ecclesial letter—a church letter (ecclesia=church)—ostensibly addressed to “fellow clergymen” but designed to be overheard by a much larger congregation. King’s ultimate audience was the American public, especially the then influential coalition of moderate or liberal-leaning white American Protestants. His “Letter” did not originally appear in the popular Life, Look, or Ebony magazines but in the national organ of progressive Christianity, The Christian Century.
As a Christian preacher and theologian, King had available to him the most prominent literary form in the New Testament, the epistle, and the most resonant authorial model imaginable, the Apostle Paul. Just as Paul’s epistles contain echoes of his sermons, King’s letter also incorporates his preaching voice. Moreover, the sources and arguments woven into the texture of the letter, as well as its allusions to midcentury American Protestantism, confirm the writer’s authority as an apostle-like figure. References to scripture, Augustine, Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich and others effectively place him and his audience within a shared Christian conversation. And, as if to seal his letter’s biblical authority, he writes it from a jail where he, again like Paul, is “an ambassador in chains.”
Like the Apostle Paul’s letters, which were widely circulated and eventually attained canonical status, King’s letter quickly transcended the circumstances of its composition and joined the canon of notable American literature. The popularity of the letter in public high schools and in college English classes is somewhat ironic. For over the decades, this distinctively Christian document has burst the bounds of its own religious worldview to be recognized and loved as an expression of universally acknowledged moral truths. In other words, it is a classic.
No single definition captures the essence of a classic. Mark Twain’s “classic” definition takes a poke at literary pretentions: a classic is a book people praise but don’t read. Most literary critics approach the classic by way of its effect. Upon reading, you do not see more in the book than you did before. You see more in yourself than you did before. For theologian David Tracy, the classic bears a surplus of meaning that exceeds its own time and place of origin.
At least three factors contribute to the classic status of King’s letter. First, it is deeply rooted in the circumstances of its own day. It captures both the urgency of the writer and the Laodicean indifference of many of its readers. It reflects upon its own times with the utmost realism and seriousness.
Second, mysteriously embedded in the currency of its own time are matters that transcend its time. King does not begin with a universal principle, say, freedom, and proceed to illustrate it with instances and examples. Rather, he begins with particulars—a particular jail, a particular race-torn city, a particular set of critics—and from these temporally defined particulars leads the reader to considerations of universal truth. The universality of the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” owes much to the skill with which the author associates time-bound controversies over race and segregation with age-old moral and theological truths. In a classic, the universal and the particular fit hand in glove.
The third characteristic of a classic is its emotive power. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” arouses in us the same sense of urgency experienced by the writer nearly sixty years earlier. The document has more than history going for it. For it is a crucial weapon in the continuing fight for racial justice and religious harmony. King’s “Letter” enjoyed a horizontal audience in the 1960s and has steadily achieved a vertical audience that now extends into a new century, inspiring its contemporary readers to fight the same good fight.
In the Mirror of St. Paul
“Just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Graeco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.”
King’s “Letter” does not conform to any one of the Apostle’s letters, but it breathes the spirit of all of them. Paul was under the constant obligation to explain himself to his skeptical congregations. In 1 Corinthians he was forced to distinguish himself from competing messages and more popular speakers. In 2 Corinthians he was obliged to defend his legitimacy as an apostle. He had to deal with the defenders of the Law who shadowed his every move. Why was he missionizing Gentiles? Did the doctrine of freedom he outlined in Galatians promote disregard for God’s law? Did his focus on grace lead to license and further sinning? Whose side was he on in the many factional disputes that disturbed the fledgling churches? If he really cared for the church, say, in Corinth, why didn’t he visit as he had promised?
King, too, found himself under constant obligation to answer his critics and to refute their accusations. So much so, that the first part of the “Letter” contains several refutations of bogus objections to his campaign in Birmingham. Tactically, it was important for King to front-load the refutations, to get them out of the way, so that by the end of the document he is free to make constructive proposals.
In so many words, King reminds his opponents: Not only am I not an interloper or a lawbreaker, but the values of my movement represent the catholic heart of the Judeo-Christian covenant. Shouldn’t “men of genuine good will” be the first to acknowledge the claims of justice and the brotherhood of all God’s children? Wouldn’t you think that learned clergy, of all people, would understand the peripatetic nature of the Christian mission? Truth often comes from out of town, carried by roving prophets and by apostles who don’t look or talk like us and whose way of life differs from ours. This should not come as a surprise, nor should it disqualify the messengers. After all, it was a skeptic who asked about Jesus, “What good can come out of Nazareth?”
Weary with being advised to “wait,” King reminds his readers that “wait” always means “never.” Ministers of the church, especially preachers and evangelists, should appreciate the importance of “Now” is the drama of salvation. When it comes to God’s justice, the time is always now. King might have expected his clerical critics to understand the Bible’s notion of kairos, which is an unrepeatable moment pregnant with meaning and possibility. They might have known Paul’s word in 2 Corinthians: “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!”
In response to the (seemingly willful) misunderstanding of his fellow clergy, King patiently explains the chain of events that made his campaign necessary. In doing so he uses what the ancients called the “method of residues,” by which all alternative actions or explanations are tested and eliminated until only one course of action remains: public demonstrations. He rehearses the confusion and delays resulting from the political conflict between Bull Connor and Albert Boutwell. He reminds them that the election of Boutwell as mayor will make no difference in the status quo, since Boutwell offers no more than a softer version of Connor’s racist policies.
On Good Friday 1963 King disobeyed an injunction against marching and went to jail. Now he has a problem on his hands, one that makes Christians and all decent people a bit nervous: he broke the law. He recognizes the anxiety such an action provokes among good, law-abiding folk. As is his habit, he chooses a few theological examples to refute his critics and relieve their fears. Quoting Augustine—Saint Augustine to emphasize his stature—he writes, “An unjust law is no law at all.” He bolsters his reference to Augustine with one-liners from Aquinas, Jewish scholar Martin Buber, and theologian Paul Tillich. King explains, “An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because they did not have the unhampered right to vote.” In words that resonate with current debates over gerrymandering, he adds, “Who can say that the legislature of Alabama, which set up the segregation laws, was democratically elected?” Although his discussion of immoral laws has to do with politics of state legislatures, every authority he cites is a theological thinker whose contributions would have been known and approved by his eight accusers. On the other hand, it is unlikely that the average newspaper reader would have heard of any of the theological luminaries cited by King. His selection of authorities is but one way he places theological controls on the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and keeps it within the orbit of theological discourse.
Like many of today’s politicians who frequently offer little more than “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of gun violence, some Christians in Birmingham professed nothing but “good will” to Negroes—so long as laws were obeyed and civil order was maintained. These people of good will had become an increasing source of disillusionment to King. They are in favor of “peace,” he says, but it is a negative, risk-nothing peace, far removed from “substance-filled positive peace.” King (and his clergy critics) would have known that the latter kind of peace corresponds more closely to the biblical concept of shalom, though King does not use the word.
Both the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther King engaged in the tricky practice of communicating with two audiences at the same time—Paul with Jews and Gentiles, King with whites and blacks. In the end, both writers found it impossible to maintain a balanced conversation with their two audiences. While respectful of Jewish law, Paul eventually outed himself as the Apostle to the Gentiles. In Galatians and Ephesians, to cite but two examples, he proclaims God’s grace to the Gentiles, thereby running the risk of alienating those who held a proprietary interest in the law.
Throughout his career, King also found himself addressing two vexingly different audiences: impatient Blacks who wanted change now, and moderate Whites who were more than willing to wait for it—or watch Negroes wait for it. The identification game with White readers was tricky, for he was perpetually engaging two separate sub-audiences: conservative racist Christians and progressive Christians who were generally affirmative of the movement. By relying on classic theological authorities, he was challenging progressive but timid Christians to identify with him and his movement. But they refused to support direct action, and by doing so they had publicly shown their hand, leaving him no choice but to tar them with the racism of their conservative fellow travelers.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” is a shot across the bow of its mainline Christian audience. It signifies a patient and reasonable man’s loss of patience and a church-going man’s redefinition of “church.” It marks the author’s decisive shift from the rhetorical strategy of identification with progressives to something stronger and more confrontive. And it signals a shift from his broadly ecumenical notion of the Christian church, which he would exploit two years later in Selma, to something narrower and more specific. The eight men had mistaken a quiet city with no public disturbances for the righteousness of God. And King told them so. His letter is nothing less than an ecclesial document in which one segment of the church accuses another of heresy.
One thinks of a similar process of narrowing in the ecclesiology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who grew increasingly disappointed with the German Evangelical Church, which pledged allegiance to Hitler, and, later, with his own Confessing Church, for its growing tendency to compromise. Bonhoeffer’s understanding of “church” came to be limited to those who opposed the idolatry of National Socialism in the name of Christ’s gospel. If the tone of Paul’s collected letters is one of hope, the prevailing mood in King (and Bonhoeffer’s) letters is disappointment.
The Language of Disappointment
The strongest rhetorical element in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is its ethos, its demonstration of the writer’s character. King has already taken the high ground of being imprisoned for his actions on behalf of justice. He promises that he and his followers are prepared to “present our very bodies” in public and dangerous demonstrations on behalf of freedom. (The eight clergy could not have missed the allusion to Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:1 “to present your bodies as a living sacrifice”). Throughout the “Letter” King maintains an air of personal dignity and restraint. He will answer their letter in “patient and reasonable terms” befitting the respect due his interlocutors. Seething just beneath the veneer of civility, however, is a burning reservoir of anger. But how to express it without violating the ethos of the “Letter” itself? How can the author score his critical points while preserving the integrity of his own character? Answer: very carefully, by means of irony and understatement.
The language of disappointment is subtle, but not so subtle as to be missed by the attentive reader. In lecturing his fellow clergy on the principles of justice and compassion, King exercises the duties of a bishop. The Greek word for bishop, episcopos, means one who oversees. Ironically, the bishop-less Baptist has become the overseer—the bishop—to eight respected clergy, including the five bishops among them! This he accomplishes by way of indirection, appealing to texts, truths, and teachers they would have encountered in their theological training. In addition to the theories of Augustine and Aquinas on unjust laws, he provides examples of legitimate, religiously motivated disobedience: the story Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Old Testament and the history early Christians who chose death above obedience to Roman laws.
In what will become his mantra, he writes, “I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice . . . .” He uses the phrase “I had hoped” five times in the letter, always in reference to the white moderate. The past-perfect tense denotes an action completed in the past. He had hoped in the understanding and cooperation of people not unlike his eight critics, but no longer. “I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause, and with deep moral concern, serve as the channel through which our just grievances would get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again, I have been disappointed.”
In one instance he ratchets up the language of disappointment to something more caustic. What really galls him is that the clergy publicly commended the Birmingham police force for maintaining “order” and “preventing violence.” He doesn’t believe they would have “commended” the police if they had seen the dogs attacking the protesters. They wouldn’t have been quick to “commend” the police if they themselves had seen the inside of the jail or watched them slapping and kicking old men. By the time he has detailed these outrages, the clergymen’s word “commend” has taken on monstrous proportions.
King then concludes by means of the skillfully understated response, “I’m sorry that I can’t join you in your praise for the police department.” Sorry—a word one might use for a slip of the tongue or a minor disappointment: “I’m sorry you can’t go to the movies with us.” I’m sorry you are blind to police brutality in your own city.
Throughout his response to the clergy, King is careful to build his own credibility as a loyal son of the church. How could he cast stones against the institution he loves? He is no outsider, skeptic, or cultured despiser. Returning to his theme of disappointment, he adds, “There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.” His credibility and credentials are in no way inferior to those of his critics: “I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and fear of being nonconformists.”
He has begun his letter by addressing his critics as “men of genuine good will”—one thinks of Marc Antony’s similar technique in Julius Caesar: “For Brutus is an honorable man,” spoken of a traitor and assassin. Employing the ancient device of “refining,” he subtly refines his original definition of the eight clergy as “men of genuine good will” to the point at which, by the end of the document, he has implicitly identified them with the enemies of freedom.
Thus, as he recalls the high steeples and beautifully maintained white churches of Birmingham, his accusatory question makes perfect sense: “Who is their God?” It is the single most devasting sentence of the “Letter.” By this point, the answer is clear. The White church’s god is an idol. It represents only the thinly disguised veneer of racism. It is the god of segregation, which is the death of the true God. Rereading King’s impression of the pretty churches, one thinks of Jesus’ similar critique of high-steeple hypocrisy: His opponents are like gorgeous, whited sepulchers, “which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones . . . .”
In several instances, King’s use of understatement, as in his word “sorry,” serves as a contrast between the egregious misjudgment of the clergymen and the author’s dignified restraint in the face of it. In the letter’s opening paragraph, he informs them that if he answered all such criticisms, he would have little time for “constructive” work. He is “sorry” that their statement showed no concern for the conditions that make protests necessary. It is “unfortunate” that direct action is the protesters’ only recourse. In another use of refining, the demonstrations he deems necessary are elevated on the next page to “our nonviolent witness “ Surely, the clergy must understand the necessity of “witness.”
By the time he reaches his conclusion, he is apologizing for taking their “precious time” by writing such a long letter. “I can assure it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk [presumably, like the desks from which the clergymen wrote their letter], but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers?” Finally, after he has thoroughly exposed their failures as Christian leaders, he twists the knife one last time by asking for their forgiveness.
King’s “Letter” is an essay in ethos. As such it is a tour de force. Beyond the sentiments of their Good Friday public letter, the eight clergymen are allowed few defining characteristics. Whatever ethos they possess is collectivized. Their failure is embalmed in their big mistake—and King’s reply. What might have been the beginning of a genuine exchange turns out to be the dead end of dialogue. For King, on the other hand, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” offers a window into his soul and provides a narrative exposition of his developing thought. The very spirit in which his message is conveyed speaks volumes about the writer, whose courage, restraint, and reasonableness constitute an apology for the continuing struggle.
The Talking Letter
Biblical scholars have long assumed that the Apostle Paul’s letters mirror his preaching and contain passages from his sermons. In a similar vein, many passages from “Letter to Birmingham Jail” are derived from sermons King had preached many times and would preach again. In his thought-piece “What Makes an Essay American,” Vinson Cunningham argues that the essay in America owes its origins to the sermon. Just as the sermon moves away from what Vinson calls “the safety of the text” toward provocative and exhortative address, so the good essayist (or public letter writer) begins by making personal contact with the reader, and from that platform launches into trenchant analysis and problem solving—“always, however smilingly, trying to convince somebody, somewhere, of something, and our essayist tradition bears this out.”
King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is littered with phrases and rhetorical set-pieces that originated in the pulpit:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”
“an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny”
“the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood’
“the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people . . . the appalling silence of the good people
“They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.”
“the church was not merely a thermometer . . . . it was a thermostat”
Such phrases, along with many others, point to the homiletic provenance of the letter. Much of its language not only originated in the pulpit but migrated back to it once he was released. King is known to have preached a “Black” paraphrase of the “Letter” at a mass-meeting, in which he referred to the eight clergymen more dismissively as “these preachers.” What ultimately emerged from King’s cell in the Birmingham Jail was a talking letter, a preachment in parchment.
A student of rhetoric might complain that the homiletical effusions are expected fare in sermons but are out of place in a written document. They work better in a pulpit than a magazine. But many of the phrases, some of which were borrowed from other preachers, had become King’s signature phrases. He owned them or had taken ownership of them. They served to reinforce the identity and celebrity of the author. As Paul’s voice reinforced the authority of his letters, so the distinctive phrases from King’s sermons authenticated his written letter.
One passage in the letter illustrates the oral-aural quality of King’s writing. It is his lengthy riff on his critics’ pleas to “Wait.” It is much too long to be quoted in its entirety. After remarking that the word “Wait” is used as a stall tactic by those who, like the eight clergy, have never experienced segregation, King crafts a 319-word periodic sentence whose punchline is withheld until the very end. Its effect is overwhelming.
Each of its ten clauses begins with the word “when” and is followed by a different experience of degradation in ascending order of painfulness—when “you have seen vicious mobs”; when “you have seen hate-filled policemen”; . . .when “you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading ‘white’ and ‘colored’”; “when your first name becomes ‘nigger’ and your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however old you are) and your last name becomes ‘John,’ and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title ‘Mrs.’ When you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are Negro living constantly at tiptoe stance”; —"then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.” (my italics)
This is a sentence meant for a vocal instrument, not a printing press. It should not be read silently but performed by pause, angry intonation, and a rising rate of delivery. It is not difficult to imagine the power and the pathos with which an accomplished speaker like King could deliver it. By its very force, it overpowers all objections.
The piling on of indignities is an example of copiae, plenteousness. Their sheer bulk makes a shambles of the advice to “wait.” Moreover, each of the indignities has been experienced directly or indirectly by the writer. As he enumerates them, he re-experiences them, and in so doing allows the reader to feel what he felt.
The paragraph ends in a marvel of understatement. The reader might expect the writer to say, “You can understand why we are ready to explode!” Instead, he concludes with an adjective that models his own and the Negro race’s restraint: “we find it difficult to wait.” It is the unexpected anticlimax that suggests not only great dignity but also rage that is barely containable. It is the rage of a long-humiliated people who, once again—in Birmingham—have been fed nothing but the counsel of patience.
Two sentences later, he adds, “I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.” The salutation addressed to “My dear fellow clergymen” has been reduced to a term of formal contempt.
The True Church
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” is about the church that failed. “I have been so greatly disappointed with the white church and its leadership,” he says with evident sorrow. The majority of the letter documents the southern churches’ failure to support the cause of integration. Paradoxically, it is also a letter about hope, a hope—surprisingly—grounded in the church! The North African church father Cyprian (200-258) decreed, Outside the church there is no salvation. King believed that too. The question is, which church? What sort of church?
The White churches in Birmingham are guilty of something more than an excess of caution. Some have been “outright opponents.” King was more willing to take the gloves off in his sermons. On one occasion he reminds Ebenezer that those who are lynching them are often the “big deacons in Baptist churches and stewards in Methodist churches.” “The most vicious oppressors of the Negro today are probably in church.” Since his eight critics represent the most enlightened and broadly educated elements of Birmingham’s religious community, King’s initial optimism was reasonable: “I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.” Some White clergy counseled their congregations to comply with desegregation because it was the law, but none did so because it was the morally right thing to do.
King’s letter does not envision a grand reunion of Christians in one, holy, catholic church. That moment has passed (if it ever existed). Employing the tactic of “refining” once again, he burns off the accoutrements of “church” with a refiner’s fire—the beautiful buildings, lofty spires, pious trivialities, otherworldly gospel—to arrive at the core of what it means to be the people of God. First and foremost, it is the church’s willingness to suffer for the sake of righteousness. Just as the early church willingly suffered persecution for its convictions, so only those religious communities that are willing to do the same deserve the name “church.”
The true church is not satisfied to echo the majority opinion on racial justice. That church is nothing more than a reflector, or a tool, of the dominant racial, social, and political ideology. As Karl Marx (whose name King dares never mention) would have argued, religion first reflects the dominant economic interests, then reinforces them with otherworldly sanctions. The true church, on the other hand, is a minority, a cell, a “colony of heaven,” whose witness undermines the very injustices supported by the majority church. King strains for words with which to name this colony: “the inner spiritual church, the church within the church,” “the true ecclesia and the hope of the world.” His stated model is a the pre-Constantinian church, the church that was immune to the temptations of power because it had none. A few congregations and White ministers have already committed themselves to “the true ecclesia.” They have been kicked out of their parsonages, fired by their congregations, and cut loose by their bishops. Their witness of courage and suffering is the leavening agent that has preserved the authentic witness of the gospel.
Salvation remains with the church. King is not proposing a secular substitute for the church of God; nor is he pinning his hope to a few enlightened individuals, a “talented tenth” within the church. The true community remains the hope of the world.
King’s ecclesial letter offers an internal critique of the church by one of its own. It also prefigures a decisive shift of perspective in his thinking. In his earliest speeches and sermons, the Negro church appears as the mirror image of the dominant White church. It deserves the same respect and privileged position in society as the White church. Why? because the two churches are hewn from the same rock. They worship the same God, sing the same hymns, and read the same Scripture. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” implicitly questions Black church aspirations. Indeed, in his sermons to Black congregations, King complains that some Negro churches have “developed a class system,” boasting of their dignity and influential members. In many of these churches the sermon resembles nothing more than “a homily on current events.”
In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” a new model of church appears. Gone is the Black church’s quest for respectability and acceptance by the dominant, White church. The two have ceased to be social coordinates. The word “brothers” rings hollow in the ear. In place of the hegemonic model based on the success of the White church, King places his hope in a more limited but ultimately transformative model: the Black church as witness. The “colony of heaven” will never be at home in a corrupt society. It will no longer support a corrupt government and kiss up to its leaders. In King’s ecclesiology, the true church does not live by the promise of the hereafter but in the demands of the present. In a 1966 sermon he pointedly contrasts hope in the New Jerusalem with hope in a New Atlanta. The role he envisions for the Black church resembles the leavening witness of the ancient church in Roman society. It is nowhere more poignantly expressed than in another public letter, the anonymous Letter to Diognetus in the 2nd or 3rd century. The Letter concludes, “What the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world.” It is a heavy assignment that King lays upon the Negro church of his generation.
The ecclesiological shift from hegemonic arbiter to faithful witness prefigures a systemic transformation in King’s understanding of his mission. With “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the whole point of his movement was beginning to undergo a sea change. No one fought harder for the Negro’s right to better wages and civil equality than Martin Luther King, Jr. But, like Malcolm X before him, he came to the realization that gaining access to a corrupt system of life, that is, one rooted in military power and material gain, was not enough. That would not be his legacy.
He realized that he was in danger of replicating the same aspirations and the same sort of blindness that afflicted White society. Like his shifting models of what it means to be “church,” his Poor People’s Campaign recognized that, economically, many Whites were no better off than Blacks. The economic fissures that divided the races also cut across them and united them in a comparable struggle. In King’s view, Black and White poverty had the potential of being the great unifier of the races. While never retreating from civil rights, in the final year of his life King spoke increasingly of human rights. Just as “Letter from Birmingham Jail” illumined a vision of the true church, so his later campaign would shine a light on the poor of all races and make them, in King’s word, “visible” for all to see. And in making them visible, he would reimagine the civil rights movement as a struggle for human dignity.
That observation raises broader questions. How did it happen that in an avowedly secular society such as ours a letter about the church, of all things, still maintains its status as a classic? As the decades have eroded our nation’s Christian sensibilities, on what basis has the letter retained its appeal? If American society is less obviously Christian than it was sixty years ago, doesn’t it follow that King’s letter should be receding in relevance?
In my judgment, its universal appeal does not stem from its specifically ecclesial references but from the moral challenge embedded within its theological judgments. If, as I have argued, the “Letter’s” strongest element is its ethos, its power continues to emanate from the human conflict portrayed in it: an idealistic author whose hope in the integrity of a sacred institution has been shattered—versus the keepers of the institution who have publicly buckled under the demands of unjust laws. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” is nothing less than a public exploration of principled behavior. In broad and universal strokes, it shines an unforgiving beam on the conflict between peace at any price and justice at any cost.
If the “Letter” is grounded in a moral conflict, who benefits from the theological judgments found in it? The church benefits. Christians benefit. In addition to its universal appeal in a secular society, King’s “Letter” continues to instruct and challenge the church. Just as Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison continue to resonate under changed circumstances, so King’s model of the true ecclesia sharpens the contemporary church’s understanding of its mission. As with Bonhoeffer, King’s “Letter” continues to challenge and judge a church that has traded its birthright for a mess of political power
In The Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer famously asked, “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” Every generation faces its “Today,” and therefore every generation must respond to Bonhoeffer’s question. If King’s “Letter” still speaks to American Christians in the 21st century—and it does—then his question, too, deserves an answer: “Who is their God?”
Bibliography
Bass, S. Jonathan. Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ Louisiana State University Press, 2001.
Cunningham, Vinson. “What Makes an Essay American,” The New Yorker, May 13, 2016.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. A Knock at Midnight, ed. Clayborne Carson and Peter Holloran, Warner Books, 1998.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in Why We Can’t Wait, New American Library, 1963.
Letter to Diognetus, Library of Christian Classics, I, ed. Cyril Richardson, Westminster, 1953.
Lischer, Richard. The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America, Oxford University Press, 1995.
Marsh, Charles. “The Civil Rights Movement as Theological Drama: Interpretation and Application,” http://www.livedtheology.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/marsh.pdf.
Rieder, Jonathan. The Word of the Lord is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr., Belknap Press, 2008.
Tracy, David. The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, Crossroad, 1981.
1 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait, New American Library, 1963, 76-95. All references are to this edition. The editor of one prominent collection of King’s writings includes “Letter from Birmingham Jail” under “Historic Essays.”
2 S. Jonathan Bass, Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ Louisiana State University Press, 2001, 116-17. Cf. Jonathan Rieder, The Word of the Lord is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr., Belknap Press, 2008, 257-58.
3 Ephesians 6:20
4 See David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination, Crossroad, 1981.
5 To the church at Laodicea in Asia Minor: “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:14-15)
6 2 Corinthians 6:2
7 P. 93. The phrase “I’m sorry” is inexplicably omitted from the New American Library text, but it is present in the most original printed version of the speech. The omission deflates the final irony of the paragraph.
8 Matthew 23:27
9 The word “witness” is omitted from the current text thereby obscuring the religious nature of King’s original argument.
10 Note 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 and 15:1 ff.; 2 Corinthians 13:2; Galatians 1:11 and many other places.
11 Vinson Cunningham, “What Makes an Essay American,” The New Yorker, May 13, 2016.
12 See Lischer, 93-141
13 Rieder, 327-28.
14 “Pride versus Humility,” October 9, 1966, quoted in Lischer, 237-8.
15 “A Knock at Midnight” in A Knock at Midnight, Warner Books, 1998, 74.
16 “Who Are We?” February 5, 1966, quoted in Lischer, 234.
17 Letter to Diognetus in Library of Christian Classics, I, ed. Cyril Richardson, Westminster, 1953, 218.