NOTE: This is the third in a three-part series on peace, intended to encourage the faithful to look inward and create and support peace at home, in their communities and in the world. In Part 1, Micah Kiel wrote “Blessed are the Meek.” For Part 2, Daniella Zsupan-Jerome wrote “Standing still in the midst of a busy world: Peace as an inner disposition of spirit.”
The end of nonviolence: A revolution of values
By Chris Conway
From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on a late August day in 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his most remembered speech: “I Have a Dream.” Buoyed by the success of “Project C” in Birmingham, the mass organized nonviolent campaign that challenged segregation laws and practices in the city, King dared to share his dream with the 260,000 in attendance. His hope-filled vision saw a United States in which his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” and where “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”
On a Sunday morning two weeks later, four members of the KKK planted a bomb that exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church, the primary coordinating site for “Project C,” murdering four girls — Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Carole Denis McNair (11).
Understandably, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech has become iconic. It is brilliant work of rhetoric and public speaking. One would need a hardened heart not to be moved by the still-not-yet-realized image it paints of a country where, in the words of the prophet Amos, “justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Unfortunately, like some many iconic things, King’s speech can be plucked easily from the historical context from which it emerged. As such, it seemingly speaks of bygone era, to our country’s history rather than to our country’s reality. Lost in this process is the hard truth that for King this late summer dream of 1963 had “in many points turned into a nightmare.”
In a 1967 interview with NBC News correspondent Sander Vanocur, King confessed that he had “gone through a lot of soul-searching and agonizing moments” and that “the old optimism was a little superficial and … must be tempered with solid realism.” That same year he delivered a lesser known, but no less powerful talk at the Riverside Church in New York titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” To the chagrin of some in the Civil Rights movement, the scope of King’s concerns had widened.
In “Beyond Vietnam,” he identified the “giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism” as the grave threats to liberty, justice and peace at home and abroad. King had realized that the true barrier to becoming the Beloved Community existed less in the hearts and minds of individuals and more in the systems and structures that shaped them. To address the evils of racism, materialism and militarism he called for a “revolution of values.”
For King this revolution of values is the true end of nonviolence. Violent systems and structures certainly begat violent persons, but even more treacherously they necessitate all persons to participate in violence. Some do so intimately, while others do so from a distance. However, in the end no one escapes unscathed or with clean hands. King believed that without this revolution of values, the best we could achieve was the constant addressing of the effects of such an ordering to society, the country and the world. We would be left to play the Good Samaritan as well as the traveler repeatedly, bandaging and being bandaged without ever getting at the underlying causes. The Jericho Road would remain the status quo.
However, a revolution of values leads to some uneasy questions. In what ways do I benefit from the present ordering of things? What privilege and power do I enjoy? What privilege and power would I lose should things cease to be the way they are? What am I willing to part with? What am I afraid to let go of?
In his summation of the law, Jesus declares two commandments: to love God and to love one’s neighbor. To love is the great positive commandment of Christ. The great negative command of Christ is “do not be afraid.” Self-interest often inhibits our ability to love God and to love neighbor. The realism that King reckoned with, that transformed his dream into his nightmare, was that he had underestimated the power of that fear. The evils of racism, materialism and militarism prey upon and perpetuate that fear. They render the neighbor as other and enemy, profit and possessions as the measure of a good life.
For King, nonviolence remained the means to transform a broken and often brutal world. He realized that such a transformation necessitates a radical revaluing that wrestles with one’s entanglement in a web of structures and systems that exploit and oppress. The only way forward is a revolution of love and courage. Do not be afraid.
//////////
Chris Conway is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Saint John’s University School of Theology and Seminary. He completed his doctoral studies at Boston College in comparative theology focusing on Christianity and Hinduism. His areas of research include spiritual practices and devotional traditions in Christianity and Hinduism. He is the co-editor of the book “Interreligious Hermeneutics” with Catherine Cornille. His recent publications include “The One Who Prays Is a (Comparative Theologian): The Spirituality of Francis Clooney’s Comparative Theology,” in “The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Comparative Theology” and “Fostering Religious Inclusion on Campus: Insights from Student Experiences” in “Inclusion in Higher Education: Research Initiatives on Campus” with Megan Sheehan, Maria Schrupp, D’Havian Scott and Rediet Negede Lewi.