|
Books by & About Malcolm X
Malcolm X:
The Man and His Times /
Seventh Child: A Family Memoir of Malcolm X
/
Martin and Malcolm and America
Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England,
and the Caribbean
The Black Muslims in America
/
The Autobiography of Malcolm X /
Malcolm X Speaks /
By Any Means Necessary
February 1965: The Final Speeches
* * * *
*
Books by Martin
Luther King, Jr.
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
/
Strength to Love /
The Measure of a Man /
Why We Can't Wait
A Testament of Hope /
A Knock at Midnight /
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., 1948-1963
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community /
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
* * * * *
Living
Scripture in Community
Martin Luther King, Jr. & Malcolm X
By George W. Miller
I was born and spent my early years in a
predominantly black, mostly poor section of Baltimore, Maryland.
There I experienced and observed first-hand the problems that
have for so long plagued America’s cities. However, my formal
awareness of the extent of the cities’ problems began nearly
thirty years ago when I studied issues such as the “economics
of poverty” and the “political economy of the ghetto” as
an economics undergraduate at the University of Maryland at
Baltimore County.
There I learned that many of America’s
inner cities shared the same characteristics as
“underdeveloped” countries around the world. Three decades
later problems such as hunger, homelessness, unemployment and
underemployment remain major issues in the wealthiest nation in
the world. In reflecting on urban ministry, I have often tried
to understand how God would have me respond to people of the
city, not just to the poor and those who find themselves on the
margins of society, but also those at the centers of power.
Indeed, I have searched the Scripture hoping
to be informed about practices that cause people to be poor and
oppressed. For as Stanley Hauerwas suggests, I believe the
church returns to Scripture time and time again, because God has
promised to speak through Scripture.[i] What I found in my
search was, that while Scripture provides a vast amount of
biblical material about God's special concern for the poor,
people interpret and use Scripture in very different ways. To
help unravel what Hauerwas describes as the complex relationship
between text and community, I examined the lives of two African
American leaders who spoke out against the injustices that were
occurring in America’s cities during the Civil Rights Era.
In some sense, the lives of these two men,
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, embodied the Scriptures
as they addressed the word of the Lord to their community in its
own language. Both men demonstrated a deep religious commitment
and a concern for social transformation. As Hauerwas says of
“The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount,” Martin and Malcolm
did not “extol an esoteric or naďve or idealistic ethic – a
way of life never tested or tried – but one whose instructions
set forth the way of life that he himself embodied.”[ii]
Stephen Fowl and Gregory Jones suggest
interpretation of Scripture is a social activity and, as such,
it is subject to the political arrangements in which people
interpret.[iii]
These authors make it clear that understanding the political
constitution of those contexts in which interpretation takes
place is critical to faithful interpretation and use of
Scripture. In a similar vein, Hauerwas cautions that
interpretation of Scripture is not an objective science because,
from beginning to end, it is an exercise in politics.[iv]
For Hauerwas, it is not an issue of whether the Bible
should be read politically, but an issue of which politics
should determine our reading as Christians. Although both Martin
King and Malcolm X began their public ministry in the mid-1950s,
they operated in very different social contexts.
The Civil Rights Era, which began in the
1950s, was marked by a period of unprecedented protest against
the condition of blacks. Resistance to racial segregation and
discrimination with strategies such as civil disobedience or
nonviolent resistance, which included marches, boycotts, freedom
rides, rallies and other tactical protests, received national
attention as newspaper, radio, and television reporters
documented the struggle to end racial inequality. James Cone
notes that in the South, where Martin King grew up, “WHITE
ONLY” signs for waiting rooms, restrooms, water fountains and
eating places constantly reminded young Martin of the
second-class citizenship accorded to blacks in a white man’s
society.[v]
In the North, industrialization and rapid urbanization spawned
other problems including the spread of slums and poverty. Cone
suggests that in contrast to Martin, Malcolm was a product of
the northern “black masses living at the bottom of the social
heap.”[vi]
Fowl and Jones note that scholars have
started to recognize the central role communities play in the
formation of character and in ethical deliberation.[vii]
As such, understanding the communities that were instrumental in
shaping the character of Martin and Malcolm provides important
insight into the very different views these two men held about
America at the beginning of their public ministry. Indeed, as
Tunde Adeleke suggests, Martin’s and Malcolm’s personalities
and ideological values were shaped by the realities of their
conflicting backgrounds.[viii]
Born January 15, 1929, Martin King was well
educated, culturally refined, and politically aware. Cone states
that the optimism and the idea of the “American dream” that
dominated the speeches and writings of King were shaped by a
relatively affluent social, religious and educational
upbringing.[ix]
He indicates that King believed that if other Negroes were
given the same opportunity they too would manifest similar
social and educational development. In 1949, when he was a
student at Crozer Theological Seminary, King wrote:
|
It is quite easy for me to think of a
God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where
love was central and where lovely relationships were
ever present. It is quite easy for me to think of the
universe as basically friendly mainly because of my
uplifting hereditary and environmental circumstances. It
is quite easy for me to lean more toward optimism than
pessimism about human nature mainly because of my
childhood experiences. It is impossible to get to the
roots of one’s religious attitudes without taking into
account the psychological and historical factors that
play upon the individual.[x] |
King’s father and maternal grandfather were
prominent Baptist preachers, each serving as Pastor of the
Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia.[xi]
Cone states that both men actively participated as community
leaders in fighting for equality and justice. He indicates they
combined the self-help, accommodation philosophy of Booker T.
Washington and the protest, integrationist philosophy of
Frederick Douglass. Cone argues that education played an
important role in shaping young Martin and notes that the social
and intellectual environment at Crozer and later at Boston
University served to reinforce King’s optimism.
Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm
X grew up in Lansing, Michigan.[xii]
Like Martin, Malcolm X was the son of a Baptist preacher. Earl
Little, as Cone points out, was a “jackleg” preacher who was
never called to a permanent pastorate.[xiii]
Yet Earl Little was deeply involved in black people’s struggle
for dignity and justice as an organizer for Marcus Garvey’s
Universal Negro Improvement Association. When Malcolm was six
years old, his father Earl was killed and his mother was forced
to accept public relief. She later suffered a mental breakdown
and was placed in a state hospital. At this point, the
authorities came in and the Little children were scattered in
different places, as public wards.[xiv]
Malcolm became the ward of a white couple that ran a
correctional school for white boys where, according to Cone,
Malcolm’s church and educational experiences were primarily
defined by whites. At age fifteen, Malcolm dropped out of
school. In his autobiography, he spoke on environmental
influences.
|
People are always speculating - why
am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his
whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All our
experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that
ever happened to us is an ingredient…. I think that an
objective reader may see how in the society to which I
was exposed as a black youth here in America, for me to
wind up in prison was just about inevitable.[xv] |
Cone states that although Malcolm’s formal
education ended at the eighth grade, it continued informally in
the ghettos of Boston and New York, at Charlestown prison, and
under the tutelage of his spiritual father in the Muslim faith,
Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm worked as a street hustler in Boston
and New York before he was sentenced to prison just prior to his
twenty-first birthday.[xvi]
Stephen Covey, who conducts
leadership-training workshops, suggests that while heredity
(nature) and environment (nurture) are important to who we are,
leadership is a choice.[xvii]
Although formed by very different communities, both Martin and
Malcolm made “leadership” a choice and accepted their
“call” to ministry. Cone notes that after much
soul-searching and reflection, Martin King chose to return to
the South to serve the Negro community that nurtured his social,
educational and religious development.[xviii]
Malcolm’s transformation occurred in
prison, where his devotion to the Nation of Islam stimulated
self-reform and self-education so that he could be an example to
others and an effective evangelist in spreading the good news of
what Islam could do for “the caged-up black man.”[xix]
Interestingly, the two men accepted the leadership positions
that catapulted them to the nation stage during the same
year. that In September 1954, Martin became, Cone reports,
pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a black middle-class
congregation in Montgomery, Alabama, and in June of that year,
Malcolm was appointed head minister of the influential Temple
Number Seven in New York City.
In his workshop material, Covey cites Winston
Churchill: “To every man there comes in his lifetime that
special moment when he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder
and offered a chance to do a very special thing, unique to him
and fitted to his talents.”[xx]
Like David’s encounter with Goliath, these modern-day warriors
confronted their own giants and secured a measure of victory for
their people. The political career of Martin King began,
Peter Paris reminds us, in December 1955 when he was propelled
into the leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott following the
“Rosa Parks incident.”[xxi]
After more than a year of boycotting the buses and a legal
fight Montgomery buses were desegregated. For Malcolm, Cone
notes, it was the “Hinton Johnson incident,” a case of
police brutality in April 1957, which brought him to the popular
attention of the larger black community.[xxii]
Malcolm confronted the police and secured medical treatment for
Johnson and punishment for the officers involved in the beating.
Throughout their public careers, both Martin
and Malcolm used the Scriptures to help people see the world
through the biblical story. Yet their faith and theology caused
them to interpret the same stories in very different ways. Paris
indicates that it was extremely important for King to develop
through his studies an understanding that was theologically
sound. He notes that King’s thought was heavily influenced at
crucial points by evangelical liberalism, the social gospel, and
personalism; by theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul
Tillich, and Walter Rauschenbusch; and by philosophers such as
Karl Marx, E. S. Brightman, G.W.F. Hegel and Mahatma Gandhi.[xxiii]
In contrast to Martin’s university and
seminary training, Malcolm did not rely on “careful” theological
investigations and readings when writing and speaking about his
religious convictions and practices. Paris notes that Malcolm,
however, had read voluminously while in prison, and after a
period of personal training by Elijah Muhammad he rose quickly
in the Nation of Islam to become its official national
spokesman.[xxiv]
Although influenced by many forms of thought,
Paris points out that King did not become a disciple of anyone.
In fact, King’s thinking on the American dream, Cone believes,
went through several changes. He indicates that early in
King’s public ministry, his thinking was defined by an
optimistic belief that justice could be achieved through love.[xxv]
However, Cone indicates that later, love, for King, became more
important, not displacing justice but bestowing greater
significance on its achievement.
King considered love, argues Paris, to be the
supreme religious and ethical principle that aims at restoration
of community between people and God and between person and
person.[xxvi]
According to Cone, King viewed “nonviolence” as the vehicle
love should take to achieve justice in the struggle of the
oppressed against their oppressors. Nonviolence did not
mean passivity for King, Cone reminds us, but nonviolent direct
action.
King believed, both Cone and Paris note, that
only the strong and courageous person could be nonviolent. For
King, it was the moral power of nonviolence that was most
important, because rather than destroying the enemy, nonviolence
transforms the enemy. In fact, what made King a figure of world
historic proportions, with only the powerless at his side,
Walter Wink believes, was his ability to formulate actions that
would provoke and make visible the institutional violence of
racism.[xxvii]
King, Wink points out, refused to treat racism as a political
issue only; rather, he insisted on it being seen as a moral and
spiritual sickness.
In contrast to Martin, Malcolm had very
different ideas about God and justice. Charles Campbell states
we can only act in the world we can see or imagine, and he
indicates that we differ not only because we select different
objects out of the same world, but because we "see
different worlds.”[xxviii]
In this regard, the distinction that Campbell makes between
Matthew and Luke’s view of the poor in the Sermon on the Mount
also seems to apply to the different views of the poor held by
Martin and Malcolm. Campbell states that Matthew may offer an
even more profound grasp of the poor than does Luke, one that
reckons with both the material and spiritual dimensions of the
powers at work in the world.[xxix]
Matthew’s version of Jesus’ words
suggests, Campbell argues, that the deepest and most
debilitating form of poverty occur when the material,
institutional oppression of poor people becomes internalized in
their spirit. Like Matthew, Malcolm saw poor blacks as victims
of oppression who had, in large part, lost their humanity as
evidence by their apparent lack of resistance to the paralyzing
conditions they were forced to endure.[xxx]
Thus, Malcolm’s message was focused on the brainwashed
condition of the “so-called Negroes” who seemed unaware of
the “satanic” nature of the white man.
Malcolm also took comfort, Paris notes, in a
religion that affirmed a rigorous, pragmatic approach to the
problems of life.[xxxi]
Although he credited Elijah Muhammad for showing blacks how to
pool their financial resources, it was under Malcolm’s
leadership that the Nation of Islam was transformed from a
relatively unknown religious sect in 1952 to a disciplined
nationwide movement in 1963.[xxxii]
The Nation of Islam, Cone reminds us, had
approximately 400 followers and ten temples. In 1963, with
Malcolm X as its chief spokesman, according to a Playboy
magazine article, the Nation was running its own schools and
publishing its own newspapers.[xxxiii]
The Nation, the Playboy exposed, owned stores and
restaurants in four major cities, purchased broadcast time on 50
radio stations throughout the country, staged mass rallies
attended by partisan crowds of 10,000 and more, and maintained
its own police force of judo-trained athletes called the Fruit
of Islam.
For Malcolm, the most persuasive element of
the Nation of Islam was its affirmation of black people’s
cultural history.[xxxiv]
In the “Domination system,” silence and violence
often go together, Campbell states, and notes that amnesia and a
“disconnection from history” are important allies of the
powers.[xxxv]
Human captivity to the powers often, he continues, results from
ignorance and denial about the realities of the past. Further,
when people are silenced by the System and when they feel their
voices will not be heard and do not matter, they are not only
the victims of violence, but also often become the breeding
ground of further violence, as their pent-up oppression goes
unexpressed and finally explodes.
According to Cone, Malcolm was not silent; he
was angry and he wanted the world to know that he was angry.
Malcolm could not understand, Cone notes, how anyone could be a
human being and not be angry about what white people had done to
black people in America. Malcolm was particularly angered by
white people’s assertion that he was teaching hatred and often
responded, “History is not hatred.” Malcolm believed, Cone
points out, that God is the executor of justice and notes that
Malcolm’s concept of justice was “an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth, and an arm for an arm, and a head for a head, and a
life for a life.”[xxxvi]
As such, Malcolm believed the “solution” to the
problem of racial injustice “will be brought about by God.”[xxxvii]
Martin and Malcolm were not concerned with
the abstract “meaning of Scripture,” but with the usefulness
of Scripture in illuminating the societal problems in their
communities. Although he was a Muslim minister, Malcolm
commanded, Cone reminds us, a profound knowledge of and creatively
used of the Bible, which gained him wide acceptance in the
African-American community.[xxxviii] In fact, both
men were deeply rooted in the biblical tradition, and they both
often, according to Cone, referred to the same biblical
characters, parables, and events: Moses, Daniel, Jesus, Paul,
Lazarus, the lost-found sheep, the wheat and tares, the prodigal
son, and the great liberation event – the Exodus.
King frequently drew upon the symbolism of
the Exodus, Paris points out, to depict God’s action in
history and the inevitable self-destruction of evil.[xxxix]
Malcolm argued often that what happened in the story of Pharaoh
and the Egyptians was imminent in America and history would
repeat itself unless white America “Let my people go!”[xl]
King believed, Paris notes, that those who
know the will of God ought to oppose evil whenever they see it,
and such action must take precedence over social conformity and
respectability.[xli]
In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King felt compelled
to respond to a group of clergy who advised African-Americans to
wait patiently for justice. The title of the letter, King
purposely chose it, Cone points out, to evoke the memory of the
Apostle Paul who was jailed many times “for the sake of the
gospel of Jesus.”[xlii]
In this letter, King writes:
|
I am in Birmingham because injustice
is here. Just as the eight century prophets left their
little villages and carried their “thus saith the
Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns;
and 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 Greco-Roman
world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom
beyond my particular home town. Like Paul, I must
constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.[xliii] |
In this speech, King employs images of
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as symbols of civil
disobedience, noting that their refusal to obey the laws of
Nebuchadnezzar was because a higher moral law was involved. King
also reminded the respectable clergyman that the early
Christians were willing to face hungry lions and the
excruciating pain of the chopping blocks, before submitting to
unjust laws.
In terms of his audience, Cone states that
King’s “dream” metaphor was primarily directed at the
white public. In contrast, King urged blacks to accept
nonviolence as an affirmation of faith. In his “I Have A
Dream” speech delivered at the March on Washington in August
1963,[xliv] King declared to
whites:
|
America has given its colored people
a bad check, a check that has come back marked
insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe the bank of
justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are
insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of
this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check
that will give us on demand the riches of freedom and
security and justice. |
At the same time, King encouraged blacks to
hold on:
|
This is our hope. This is the faith
that I will go back to the South with. With this faith
we will be able to hew out the mountain of despair a
stone of hope… With this faith we will be able to work
together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go
to jail together, to climb up for freedom together,
knowing that we will be free one day. |
In contrast to Martin, Malcolm spoke
primarily to black audiences. Malcolm, Cone recalls, compared
America’s coming doom to the “downfall and destruction of
ancient Egypt and Babylon” and Elijah Muhammad to Moses and
the prophets who spoke for God. Malcolm’s analysis of God’s
judgment on the nations of the past meant that God must destroy
America for its sins. In December 1963, he delivered the
“Chickens Come Home to Roost” [xlv]
speech in which he declared at a Nation of Islam rally:
|
We, the Muslims who follow the
Honorable Elijah Muhammad, believe wholeheartedly in the
God of justice. . . . Before your pride causes you to
harden your heart and further close your ears . . .
search the Christian Scriptures. Search even histories
of other nations that sat in the same positions of
wealth, power, and authority that these white Americans
now hold…and see what God did to them. If God’s
unchanging laws of justice caught up with every one of
the slave empires of the past, how dare you think White
America can escape the harvest of unjust seeds planted
by her white forefathers against our black forefathers
here in the land of slavery! |
In this speech, Malcolm also stated that the
“Negro revolt” is controlled by the white man and suggested
that King, Roy Wilkins, and other civil rights leaders were
fighting publicly over the money they were trying to get from
white liberals. On the March on Washington, Malcolm reminded his
audience, “Now that the show is over, the black masses are
still without land, without jobs, and without homes…their
Christian churches are stilled being bombed, their innocent
little girls murdered.”[xlvi]
Because they disagreed publicly with one
another on many matters, Martin and Malcolm seldom
publicly acknowledged their shared convictions, Cone notes. As
different as Martin’s and Malcolm’s religious communities
were, Cone concludes, their faith commitments were derived from
the same black experience of suffering and struggle in America.[xlvii]
Their theologies, therefore, should be interpreted as different
religious and intellectual responses of African-Americans to
their environment.
Martin and Malcolm both insisted that black
people stand up and demand their rights and also argued that the
Christian church must not ignore social problems. In fact, King,
Paris points out, chastised the church for its laziness, its
indifference and, most of all, for its historical support of the
agencies and institutions in society that were bent on
maintaining various forms of injustice. King judged it incumbent
upon the church to be as concerned about bodily and material
needs as it appeared to be about the soul,[xlviii]
arguing that:
|
Only an irrelevant religion fails to
be concerned about man’s economic well-being. Religion
at its best realizes that the soul is crushed as long as
the body is tortured with hunger pains and harrowed with
the need of shelter. |
Fowl and Jones point out that interpreting
Scripture is a difficult task because it is, and involves, a
lifelong process of learning to become a wise reader of
Scripture capable of embodying that reading in life.[xlix]
In a similar vein, Hauerwas notes that in Benjamin Jowett’s
1854 essay on the interpretation of Scripture, Jowett states
that one has to bear in mind the progressive nature of
revelation – in particular the superiority of later religious
insights to earlier ones.[l]
In fact, Hauerwas indicates that Jowett believed that if
the interpreter possesses the proper linguistic tools,
“universal truth easily breaks through the accident of time
and place” and such truth still speaks to the condition of the
human heart.
Toward the end of their lives, Martin and
Malcolm reached a turning point that resulted in a movement by
each toward the other and a break with earlier deeply held
convictions about America. A heart-wrenching break with Elijah
Muhammad, Cone points out, initiated a new stage in Malcolm's
thinking and consciously moved toward the politics of Martin
King and began to advocate “hope” and the participation of
African-Americans in the political process.[li]
King, on the other hand, moved to the north
and came face to face with the reality of Malcolm’s nightmare
– the ghetto. After talking with young blacks who participated
in the Watts riots, King discovered that the problem of racism
and injustice in America was much deeper than he had thought.
King began to see, Cone notes, that “there are literally two
Americas,” one beautiful, rich and primarily white, the other
ugly, poor and disproportionately black.[lii]
Using Malcolm’s language, Martin began to speak of the ghetto
as a “system of internal colonialism.”
Fowl and Jones indicate that the process of
turning from the “world” to God is never over,[liii]
and that certainly seemed to be the case for Martin and
Malcolm. Along with the break with Elijah Muhammad Malcolm’s
experience in Mecca, Cone reminds us, revolutionized his
attitude toward white people and forced him to rearrange much of
his thought patterns. Malcolm, Cone continues, moved toward a
universal perspective on humanity that was centered on a
commitment to the black liberation struggle in America. King
traveled throughout the United States, and later to other
countries, Cone reveals; these experiences contributed to King's
developing a modified philosophy that was informed by a world
perspective. King, Cone notes, became especially critical of
America after he traveled to Ghana and India where he saw many
starving and homeless people.
King, a Baptist minister, and Malcolm, a
Muslim, were both assassinated at age 39 seeking to live out the
biblical mandate to “do justice.” These two modern day
prophets not only interpreted the Scripture for their
communities, they demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the
cause of justice. Campbell states that preaching involves an
element of risk, which begins with the recognition that we
cannot guarantee decisive changes in the near future or even in
our lifetime.[liv]
He suggests that the ethic of risk is propelled by, the equally
vital recognition that to stop resisting, even when success is
unimaginable, is to die.
Faithfulness, Campbell argues, is more
important than effectiveness or success and he believes this is
good news for those who know that preaching often does not
produce immediate results. It is clear that Martin and Malcolm
not only recognized the risks they were taking, but they
continued to stand, faithfully declaring the word of the Lord in
spite of the danger. In his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”
speech, Martin declared, “Like anybody, I would like to live a
long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned
about that now . . . I may not get there with you.”[lv]
Likewise, in Malcolm’s “Speech at Ford Auditorium,” he
stated, “I was in a house last night that was bombed, my
own.”[lvi]
Just as Campbell says of the crucifixion of
Jesus, Martin’s and Malcolm’s death cannot simplistically be
blamed on any one individual or group; rather, something larger
was at work.[lvii]
Hauerwas raises the question of why would anyone ever have
gotten upset with Jesus if all he had to tell us is that God
loves us and does not want us to perish. Yet Jesus ended up on
the cross, abandoned by all of his followers except a few women
and a mysterious figure called the “blessed disciple.”[lviii]
Although killed by a white man, King was
abandoned by many in the civil rights movement who joined the
chorus of criticism against him, and it was not until after his
death that he became popular throughout the black community.
Malcolm, on the other hand, was killed by the blacks he loved,
Cone reminds us, blacks he was seeking to liberate from self-
hate.
Brad Braxton states that in every age, and in
every community, the Spirit is not left without a witness, and
the Spirit will send or raise-up prophets in communities.[lix]
These prophets will see different things in the world and
in the Scriptures, and their testimony (hopefully and
eventually) will convict and convince communities to see things
– in the world, in the biblical text, and in themselves –
differently.
Yet Fowl and Jones suggests that no matter
how many prophets there were in Judah and, I add, in America,
ultimately it is the people who corporately must act upon the
word of the Lord. These authors state that the consistent
failure of the people of Judah to recognize and act upon
Jeremiah’s word from the Lord indicates that a character
nurtured by (among other things) courage, patience, and hope is
not for prophets only.[lx]
Indeed, it seems that Martin King and Malcolm
X are but two more in a long list of individuals who responded
to the call of God to speak to specific communities. In 1852,
Martin Delany published The Condition, Elevation, Emigration,
and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States,
Politically Considered.[lxi]
Like Malcolm, Delany urged black separation from whites and
recommended black resettlement in Central America, Africa, or
South America. The book also spoke of the proud history of the
black race at a time when leading theorists debated blacks’
innate inferiority. Nearly a century before Martin King’s “I
have a dream speech” Frederick Douglass fought against the
system of slavery and pleaded for freedom and equality for
blacks.
The lives of Martin King and Malcolm X make
it clear that, as Hauerwas suggests, the relationship between
text and community is indeed complex. The Westminster
Dictionary of Theological Terms defines a prophet as one who
speaks on behalf of God to God’s people.[lxii]
The lives of these two modern-day prophets testify of a God who
continues to speak to and through his people a word that is
tailored for their particular social location. It is unlikely
that the people to whom Malcolm spoke, with their pent-up
oppression waiting to explode, could have received King’s
message of nonviolence, nor were they apparently ready for
integration.
On the other hand, King’s audience of
middle-class, educated blacks and liberal whites were able to
make the needed sacrifices. Thus God not only raises up prophets
in communities throughout the city and nation, but he gives them
a custom-made word, meeting people where they are and moving
them forward until his “truth” breaks through the accident
of time and place. He speaks not only to the poor, but also to
the rich; not only to blacks, but also to whites. In fact, as
the words of the song “Lift Him Up” declare, God still
“speaks from eternity” to reach the entire city, “men of
every birth.”[lxiii]
[i]
Stanley Hauerwas,
Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible
from Captivity to America, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), p.
36.
[ii]
Ibid, p. 66.
[iii]
Stephen Fowl and Gregory Jones,
Reading in Communion: Scripture
and Ethics in Christian Life, (Eugene: Wipf and Stock
Publishers, 1998), p. 11.
[iv]
Hauerwas, p. 15.
[v]
James H. Cone,
Martin and Malcolm and America, (Maryknoll: Orbis
Books, 1991), p. 24.
[vi]
Ibid, p. 39.
[vii]
Fowl and Jones, p. 9.
[viii]
Tunde Adeleke, “Book Review.” Canadian Review of American
Studies, 23 no 3 (1993): http://web20.epnet.com.
[ix]
Cone, p. 19.
[x]
Ibid.
[xi]
Ibid, p. 20.
[xii]
Ibid, p. 41.
[xiii]
Ibid.
[xiv]
Malcolm X, “Playboy Interview,” (1963), www.themalcolmxmuseum.org.
[xv]
Cone, p. 38.
[xvi]
Ibid, p. 41.
[xvii]
Stephen R. Covey, “Unleashing the Fire Within: 4 Roles of a
Leader,” (Franklin Covey Company: 2001).
[xviii]
Cone, p. 32.
[xix]
Ibid, p. 52.
[xx]
Covey, p. 50.
[xxi]
Peter J. Paris,
Black Religious Leaders: Unity in Conflict,
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), p. 99.
[xxii]
Cone, p. 94.
[xxiii]
Paris, p. 100.
[xxiv]
Ibid, p. 183.
[xxv]
Cone, p. 61.
[xxvi]
Paris, p. 114.
[xxvii]
Walter Wink,
Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces that
Determine Human Existence, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986),
p. 129.
[xxviii]
Charles L. Campbell, The Word Before the Powers: An Ethic of
Preaching, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), p.
130.Amazon.com:
The Word Before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching: Books:
Charles L. Campbell
[xxix]
Campbell, p. 17
[xxx]
Paris, p. 104.
[xxxi]
Paris, p. 199.
[xxxii]
Malcolm X, “Playboy Interview,” (1963.) www.themalcolmxmuseum.org.
[xxxiii]
Ibid.
[xxxiv]
Cone, p 51.
[xxxv]
Campbell, p. 75.
[xxxvi]
Cone, p. 104.
[xxxvii]
Ibid.
[xxxviii]
Ibid, p. 161.
[xxxix]
Paris, p. 105.
[xl]
Cone, p. 168.
[xli]
Paris, p. 117.
[xlii]
Cone, p. 139.
[xliii]
Martin L. King, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,”
(Birmingham: 1963).
[xliv]
Martin L. King, Jr. “I Have a Dream,” (District of Columbia:
1963), http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mlk/king/speeches.html
[xlv]
Malcolm X, “Chickens Come Home to Roost,” (New York: 1963), www.themalcolmxmuseum.org.
[xlvi]
Ibid.
[xlvii]
Cone, p. 122.
[xlviii]
Paris, p. 106.
[xlix]
Fowl and Jones, p. 29.
[l]
Hauerwas, p. 33.
[li]
Cone, p. 193.
[lii]
Cone, p. 222.
[liii]
Ibid, p. 70.
[liv]
Campbell, p. 81.
[lv]
Martin L. King, Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,”
(Memphis: 1968), http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mlk/king/speeches.html.
[lvi]
Malcolm X, “Speech at Ford Auditorium,” (Detroit: 1963), www.themalcolmxmuseum.org.
[lvii]
Ibid, p. 58.
[lviii]
Hauerwas, p. 87.
[lix]
Brad R. Braxton,
No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African
American Experience, (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2002),
p. 28.
[lx]
Fowl and Jones, p. 103
[lxi]
“Martin Delany.” Afro-American Almanac.
http://www.toptags.com/aama/bio/men/martin.htm .
[lxii]
Donald K. McKim,
Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms,
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), p. 224.
[lxiii]
Johnson Oatman, Jr., “Lift Him Up,”
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/l/i/f/lifthimu.htm.
*
* * * *
updated 13 October 2007
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