Welcome back to Engaging Faith, a weekly series of Street Prophets. Here, we seek to have a conversation between the broader progressive community and us religious progressives. This conversation is intended to help us all work together on our shared goals in helping this nation, and this world, become a better place.
This forum is open to respectful questions and concerns on anything within the broader mission of the series. Need details on how to work with the religious left? Want strategies for how to work against the religious right without alienating the religious folks who aren't your enemies? That's what we're here for.
Today I had a very long post, and I feel important, diary planned. When I started writing it, I had momentarily forgotten that the scheduled posting date would be Independence Day, a day when, among other things, I could expect readership to drop. I think that diary needs more readers (and another round of editing), so I'll keep it in the Drafts section, and post a diary that's less topical, but still important.
I'll keep it brief, just a topic suggestion to offer for discussion, we'll probably return to the same topic, give it the attention and detail it deserve, at another time. As usual, anything in the broader series is free game.
Today, for a topic I'll pick one specifically that needs little introduction. Religion in the Civil Rights Movement.
Engaging Faith is a forum to help the broader progressive community connect politically with religious progressives for our mutual benefit, and to help the progressive community as a whole better address political issues that involve interaction with religion and religious groups. We are offering this forum as a place for respectful engagement, we never fully understand each other, we may not completely agree with each other, but we share many of the same goals. To that end, it's important to be able to ask each other questions (and listen to the answers), share our viewpoints with each other (and observe the points of view around us), and that's where I hope this series comes in.
For this to work, however, I want participants to remember that we're not here to debate, not here to change people's minds, we're here to express our minds, understand others, and learn how to work together to everyone's benefit. When I share my views, I consider it important and helpful to be mindful of the fact that they're my views, not anybody else's, regardless of how much I identify with a group. To remember that my experiences are limited, and I shouldn't make overly broad characterizations. To recall that people have been truly hurt by the actions of people who identify as religious or political, and when someone lashes out from that pain, lashing back only makes things worse.
This forum lies within the Street Prophets community, you are welcome, but please remember that our community rules for respect apply here, and are in place to permit dialog among people with a wide diversity of views, not to suppress anybody's opinion. Don't act like a jerk or a hater.
For more about what I'd like to see here, and what I wouldn't, I go in more detail in the first post of the series.
It's no secret that religion, and the activity of religious groups, played a strong role in the Civil Rights movement, in the struggle to finally give African-Americans the rights they had been promised almost a century earlier, so they could at least have a nominally equal legal footing as voting citizens.
I mean, the most recognizable name in the Civil Rights Movement is the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and when we listen to his speeches, there is no doubt that we're listening to a preacher.
On July 4, 1965, Martin Luther King addressed the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta Georgia, he offered a sermon he called "The American Dream". Read the whole sermon at that link, here's a highlight:
I submit to you when I took off on that plane this morning, I saw men go out there in their overalls. I saw them working on things here and there, and saw some more going out there to put the breakfast on there so that we could eat on our way to Atlanta. And I said to myself that these people who constitute the ground crew are just as significant as the pilot, because this plane couldn’t move if you didn’t have the ground crew. I submit to you that in Hugh Spaulding or Grady Hospital, the woman or the man who goes in there to sweep the floor is just as significant as the doctor, because if he doesn’t get that dust off the floor germs will begin to circulate. And those same germs can do injury and harm to the human being. I submit to you this morning that there is dignity in all work when we learn to pay people decent wages. Whoever cooks in your house, whoever sweeps the floor in your house is just as significant as anybody who lives in that house. And everybody that we call a maid is serving God in a significant way. And I love the maids, I love the people who have been ignored, and I want to see them get the kind of wages that they need. And their job is no longer a menial job, for you come to see its worth and its dignity.
Are we really taking this thing seriously? "All men are created equal." And that means that every man who lives in a slum today is just as significant as John D., Nelson, or any other Rockefeller. Every man who lives in the slum is just as significant as Henry Ford. All men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, rights that can’t be separated from you. Go down and tell them, "You may take my life, but you can’t take my right to life. You may take liberty from me, but you can’t take my right to liberty. You may take from me the desire, you may take from me the propensity to pursue happiness, but you can’t take from me my right to pursue happiness." "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights and among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
Now there’s another thing that we must never forget. If we are going to make the American dream a reality, we are challenged to work in an action program to get rid of the last vestiges of segregation and discrimination. This problem isn’t going to solve itself, however much [word inaudible] people tell us this. However much the Uncle Toms and Nervous Nellies in the Negro communities tell us this, this problem isn’t just going to work itself out. History is the long story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges without strong resistance, and they seldom do it voluntarily. And so if the American dream is to be a reality, we must work to make it a reality and realize the urgency of the moment. And we must say now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to get rid of segregation and discrimination. Now is the time to make Georgia a better state. Now is the time to make the United States a better nation. We must live with that, and we must believe that.
Seems to me that we still haven't addressed these important issues, we still don't pay millions of Americans a living wage, we still have vastly reduced economic opportunities for African Americans, for first and second generation immigrants, for people born poor. I often hear it said that "we can't afford to", yet we can apparently afford to spend billions of dollars outsourcing our military duties to private companies, spend more billions designing and building new engines of war that can only be reasonably used to attack foreign lands.
Since King's day, the African-American churches have become less political, and the Religious Right's churches have become more so. I put forth that our nation is far worse for that trade-off.
I'll open the floor to questions and discussion, on this topic or anything else within the broader scope of the series.