Day 2, Aug 20: King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail

Posted in Great American Debates
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 8:28 am

Day 2, Aug 20: King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail

Think about John Dewey’s claim:

“[U]nless one gives up the whole struggle [for positive political change] as hopeless, one has to choose between alternatives. One alternative is dependence upon the supernatural; the other, the use of natural agencies. . . . Those who face the alternatives . . . will have to ask … whether what they accomplish when they point with one hand to the seriousness of present evils is not undone when the other hand points away from man and nature for their remedy.”
John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), 81-83.

Translation: “An attitude of dependence upon God to get things done tends to induce religious believers to stick to their own little groups and avoid rolling up their sleeves to work with other people to get good things done.”

What do you think about this claim? True or false?

We’re going to chew on this claim, as well as a few others this semester.

Sticking with this claim for now, let’s start by contrasting it with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King helped lead a movement powerful and persuasive enough to do away with Jim Crow laws of segregation, ending generations of legal discrimination in the course of a few short years. Though controversial in his day, his public arguments were powerfully felt. Today the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and the “I Have a Dream” speech are American classics. Both of those texts were delivered 29 years after Dewey wrote A Common Faith (quoted above).

There are reasons for the power of King’s message. One is that they so powerfully tapped into key sources of public motivation in America — including biblical motives.

Read King’s letter with an eye for his use of biblical and theological argument and examples. Highlight them, list them, analyze them. What biblical stories, examples, illustrations did he use? Are they faithful to orthodox Christian belief? Do they (a) hinder or (b) encourage participation in efforts for positive democratic reform?

King’s Letter — with my highlights added

UNFINISHED — LINKS COMING:

King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

(also attached to this e-mail)