Dr. King`s Kitchen
Charles Marsh, Professor of Religious Studies
University of Virginia
Note: This article is based on the author`s forthcoming book, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice and was revised from a lecture at Messiah College, Grantham, PA.
It has been a difficult year for the Christian witness in the United States. In fact, it`s hard for me to imagine a period in my lifetime when the integrity of the Christian faith has not more compromised or threatened-and I grew up Baptist in the Jim Crow South! The widespread misuse by religious and political elites of the language of faith and the "philosophy of Jesus Christ" is absolutely heartbreaking; no doubt the integrity and mystery of the faith has been cheapened in our zeal to be Christian patriots. Perhaps we should heed Dietrich Bonhoeffer`s sobering advice in his letters and papers from prison that at such times a period of holy silence is in order.
Over the past, I have been trying to complete a book about the civil rights movement and the American search for "beloved community." Throughout this year of writing and solitude, my thoughts have returned time and again to Martin Luther King Jr.`s sermon at Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967, delivered one year to the date of his assassination in Memphis. King`s sermon is haunting in its fierce urgency and righteous anger. With the nation unhinged by riots and uprisings and by the rising specter of Vietnam, with the dream fast becoming a nightmare, King`s sermon came as a lament for the soul of a nation, and I think as tellingly, as a lament for the Christian church, reeling like a drunken man between political expediency and self-serving ambition.
"It is midnight in our world today," King said, "We are experiencing a darkness so deep . . . that we can hardly see which way to turn."[1]
When Dr. King gave voice to a glimmer of hope, it was not hope in military power or political might. "Our only hope today," he said, "lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. . . . Let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter-but-beautiful struggle for a new world."[2] This is the "calling" of the children of "the living God."
It strikes me as a very good time for us take to another look at the path of Dr. King`s calling to public discipleship, to consider his understanding of that "new world," a new world that has transformed the old order in the great event of the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ; an event which happened decisively in the past, but must be claimed anew in every age as the vision that animates God`s people. Let us take a journey to a place and time that many students may regard as ancient history, but which in the intensity of our historical moment is alive with import and meaning. A journey to Dr. King`s kitchen.
Students are often surprised to learn that when Dr. King arrived in Montgomery in the fall of 1954, two years before this speech on "the beloved community" (not to mention the practices of non-violence which he thought considered an inseparable part of this vision)-these were the last things on his mind. Civil rights activism was not part of his agenda. King came to Montgomery because it offered a great salary, a comfortable parsonage and a highly educated congregation. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church had no interest in racial crusading either. Church members had long prided themselves on their access to white elites and their own relative social privilege; certainly they shared a common hope of a future without Jim Crow, but they were not going to ignite the fires of dissent.
In fact, Dr. King actually had to be talked into accepting the leadership of the Montgomery Improvement Association when the organization was formed the day after Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat in the front of the bus. King accepted only after being reassured, or perhaps cajoled into thinking, that the boycott would be over in a day. In his first list of demands as president, King made clear that the protest was not about challenging segregation. Did you get that? Not about challenging segregation. The NAACP refused to endorse King`s list.
King was no fan of nonviolence either. Glenn Smiley, a white staff member visiting Montgomery with the Fellowship of Reconciliation claimed to have discovered "an arsenal" in the parsonage.[3] "When I was in graduate school," King said, "I thought the only way we could solve our problem . . . was an armed revolt."[4]
By the end of the second month of the bus boycott, King had fallen into despair about his leadership and the direction of the protest, which was in a state of disarray. On a gloomy day in late January, 1956, certain that he was a complete failure, King offered his resignation as the president of the MIA. The resignation was not accepted, but his doubts about his own abilities as a pastor and organizer remained real and unabated.
The next week, King returned late one night to his parsonage after a long day of organizing and planning session. He had also just endured his first arrest and wanted nothing but to climb into bed and surrender to a good night`s rest. But then the phone rang, and on the other end of the line rushed a torrent of obscene words, and then a death threat: "Listen, nigger, we`ve taken all we want from you; before next week you`ll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery."[5] King hung up without comment, as had become his custom, but hopes of much-needed rest were gone. Threatening phone calls had become a daily routine throughout the weeks of the protest. In recent days, though, the phone calls had started to take a toll, increasing in number to thirty or forty each day and becoming much more menacing.[6]
Unwelcome thoughts prey on the mind in the late hours, and King felt himself overcome with fear. "I got out of bed and began to walk the floor. I had heard these things before, but for some reason that night it got to me."[7] Stirred into wakefulness, King made a pot of coffee and sat down at his kitchen table. He felt his emotional balance-maintained throughout the preceding weeks of the boycott with a kind of willful unreflectiveness-slide abruptly out of balance. "I was ready to give up. I felt myself faltering," he said.[8] It was as though the violent undercurrents of the protest rushed in upon him with heightened force, and he surveyed the turbulent waters for a way of escape, searching for an exit point between courage and convenience-"a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward"-and he found none.[9]
King thought of his little girl Yoki sleeping in her crib, of her "little gentle smile," and of Coretta, who had sacrificed her music career, according to the milieu of the Baptist pastor`s wife, to follow her husband south.
Alone now in the midnight kitchen, with the silences of the Alabama night masking the great tumult in his soul, King grasped, for the first time, the utter and complete seriousness of his situation, and with it the inescapable fact that his family could be snatched away from him at any minute, or more likely he from them.[10] King felt his soul "melted because of trouble," as the Psalmists said, "at wit`s end." "I couldn`t take it any longer," King said. "I was weak."
Sitting at his table sipping the coffee, however, his thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a notion that at once intensified his desperation and clarified his options. "Something said to me, `You can`t call on Daddy now, you can`t call on Mama. You`ve got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way.`"[11]
With his head now buried in his hands, King bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud. "Lord, I`m down here trying to do what`s right. I still think I`m right. I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But Lord, I must confess that I`m weak now, I`m faltering. I`m losing my courage. Now, I am afraid. And I can`t let the people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I`ve come to the point where I can`t face it alone."
With his prayer enveloping the midnight room and house, King heard a voice: "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo, I will be with you. Even until the end of the world."[12]
King testifies, "I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone." And as the voice of Jesus washed over the vile words of the caller, King reached a spiritual shore beyond anxiety and despair. "I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before," he said. "Almost at once my fears began to go, . . . My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything."[13]
In a seminary class years earlier, King had written an autobiographical essay on his own religious formation. The paper is distinguished not only by its intellectual posturing-the sort you might expect of a brilliant and ambitious young graduate student-but also by its complete lack of moral and spiritual intensity. King described his "early environment" as "very congenial," one in which he was always able to think of God as a benevolent being presiding over a friendly and happy universe.[14] He said he`d never had anything like a crisis moment; his upbringing in the faith had been comfortable and wholesome.
In his Montgomery kitchen in January 1956, King experienced his crisis moment, and it burned away pretensions even as it fortified courage for the difficult times ahead. Faced with the possibility of death, he could not turn to his Daddy for consolation (besides his Daddy wanted him out of Montgomery). Faced with the gathering force of white resistance, liberal platitudes failed him. Notions of essential human goodness and perfectibility-these seemed empty now.
Dr. King may have been schooled at Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University; but in Montgomery, King was called, and the calling propelled him into the crisis that would define his life and legacy. In his Montgomery kitchen, he decided to follow Jesus into "the new world of God" and go the distance on peace.
Three nights after the kitchen vision on January 30, 1956, King stood at the pulpit of First Baptist Church, addressing a standing-room only audience, when word reached him that the parsonage had been bombed.
By the time he arrived home, a large crowd had already begun forming in the street and front yard. Memories of the size of the crowd vary greatly; some say hundreds, others thousands. King felt the undercurrents of rage that had run strong for years in the black community swelling into the immediate threat of violence. Many in the crowd were armed and ready to fire. King felt the shifting of sentiment away from peaceful negotiation to militant conflict.
Inside the house, with the front window shattered and a hole blasted into the porch, King was relieved to find Coretta and Yoki safe and in good spirits. The Mayor of Montgomery, along with police commissioner Sellers, the fire chief, and newspaper reporters, assembled in the dining room and proceeded to make official declarations of regret. Meanwhile, the crowd outside, still collecting newcomers from all corners of the block, continued to press forward against the police barricade. King realized he had to address the people, and he walked onto the porch and called for order. His words, reminders to his fellow travelers of their basic spiritual obligations, formed an arch from the First Baptist Church meeting to the gathering of the church militant, now milling about the house at 309 South Jackson Street. The words extended the Gospel from the sanctuary to the parsonage and wrapped the whole expanse of the violent Montgomery night in a sheltering story of peace.
"Now let`s not become panicky," King told the crowd from the damaged porch after offering reassurances that Coretta and Yoki were unharmed. "If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence. Remember the words of Jesus: `He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword.` Remember that is what God said."[15]
A "respectful hush" settled over the crowd, as church leader Jo Ann Robinson recalled. Even the police grew still and listened to King`s words.[16]
"We must love our white brothers," King continued, "no matter what they do to us. We must make them know that we love them. Jesus still cries out in words that echo across the centuries: `Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; pray for them that despitefully use you.` This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love."
"Remember, if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with the movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance. Go home and sleep calm. Go home and don`t worry. Be calm as I and my family are . . . and remember that if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place."
Throughout the Jackson Street crowd, a scattering of "Amens" and "God bless you" and "We are with you all the way, Reverend," created a new momentum, as the threatening Jackson Street crowd became a worshipping congregation. King looked out over the audience and saw tears rolling down the faces of many people. Some hummed church songs.
King knew all too well that this gathering could have turned into the "darkest night in Montgomery`s history," with hundreds-some said thousands-of angry and long-frustrated African Americans surrounding the middle-aged mayor and his three sidekicks. But "something happened" to avert the disaster, King said. "The spirit of God was in our hearts, and a night that seemed destined to end in unleashed chaos came to a close in a majestic group demonstration of nonviolence."[17] In fact, church happened, and the reluctant man who had been called to "stand up" for God`s righteousness, justice, and truth, saw the evidence of their rarely tested power. King emerged from the Montgomery bombing with a single-minded theme, the transformative power of love.
In the final jubilant days of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in December, 1956, with the United States Supreme Court decision of November guaranteeing the African-American protesters a victory over the segregated city laws, King spoke at a week-long Institute on Nonviolence and Social Change at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery. Reflecting on the tumultuous year that had passed, King tried to put the extraordinary experience in theological perspective. "It seems that God has decided to use Montgomery as the proving ground for the struggle," he said, and "our church is becoming militant, stressing a social gospel as well as a gospel of personal salvation." [18] Then he spoke with greater theological attention to the lessons learned: "We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization. There is still a voice crying out in terms that echo across the generations, saying: `Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you, that you may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven.`"
Although King believed a boycott was necessary in Montgomery to bring an end to discriminatory laws, the church people in the movement must ever be mindful that a boycott and its essential legal achievements do not represent the goal of their struggle. But, as King said in words that burn themselves into our minds and hearts with fierce urgency: "The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of the beloved community."[19]
What a beautiful notion he gave voice to in this address: the beloved community. One of King`s young associates, John Lewis, described it as "nothing less than the Christian concept of the kingdom of God on earth." Lewis said the first time he heard Dr. King speak of the beloved community it evoked in his mind a lush and embracing vision of redemptive community and gave voice to all that he was working for as a young civil rights activist, devoted as he was to the task of applying the teachings of Jesus directly to social existence in the South. For a while even, the pursuit of beloved community gave to the civil rights movement a unifying spiritual vision.
However, in that rage-drenched 1967 sermon at Riverside Church, the hour has grown late, and the dream has given way to disillusionment. King`s questions strike with arresting power on his hearers, both then and today What if the people of God have already crossed the line from confessing Jesus as Lord and yielded their hearts to great violence? What if those who call themselves Christians have already turned their back on the "Jesus who walked the streets of Jerusalem" and bowed down to gun? Then there must be a time of repentance, a time of rededication, and a time when the followers of Jesus speak out clearly and boldly about the call and its decisive costs.
"We are confronted," King reminds us, "with the fierce urgency of now."
So, how do we today share a cup of coffee in Dr. King`s kitchen? Silence may tempt us, and certainly holy silence has its place, but now is not the time to be silent as the Cross is turned into an emblem of national ambition, and the wonder-working power of the Lamb-the precious blood of the Lamb-becomes just another way of talking about the personal benefits of consumer culture. In this moment we are called upon as Christians to reclaim our citizenship in a "world-wide fellowship," beyond tribe, race, class, and nation, in the kingdom of God, the beloved community, disciples of the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them.
It is my hope that a young generation of Christian men and women will take inspiration from Dr. King`s life and his commitment to public discipleship. With King we need to reclaim the truth of the power of the Cross and Resurrection in contrast to those who insist that the paradigm of violence is the way to peace. Like Martin Luther King, Jr., dare to dream. Dare to change the world. Dare to live boldly for Christ.
Endnotes
[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., cited in Marshall Frady, Martin Luther King, Jr., 189.
[2] Martin Luther King, Jr., "A Time to Break Silence," A Testament of Hope, 243.
[3] Clayborne Carson, "The Boycott that Changed Dr. King`s Life," New York Times Magazine, 7, 1996.
[4] King, Stride Toward Freedom, 121-22.
[v5 King, The Autobiography, 77.
[6] Ibid., 76.
[7] Ibid., 77.
[8] King cited in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 56.
9] Ibid.
[10] King cited in Garrow, 59.
[11] King, The Autobiography, 77.
[12] Ibid., 78.
[13] Ibid., 78.
[14] King, "An Autobiography of Religious Development," The Papers, volume I, 361.
[15] Cited in The Papers, volume III, 115.
[16] Jo Ann Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), 132.
[17] King, Stride Toward Freedom, 138.
[18] King, The Papers of Martin Luther King. Jr., volume III, Stewart Burns, Susan Carson, Peter Holloran, and Dana L. H. Powell, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 452.
[19] King, The Papers, volume III, 136.
