How often we forget (and ignore) what MLK did and said and wrote AFTER 1963, after “I have a Dream”…..He moved to link the various maladies of society to the larger problem of justice; to a “Cosmic bent toward justice”; to Vietnam and violence, to Economic justice (Poor People’s March, housng in Chicago, Memphis sanitation worker’s strike), and yes, even an ecological awareness far in advance of the explosion of Climate science and its discoveries and subsequent warnings. His “We are all in an INESCAPABLE Network of Mutuality” along with several obervances in sermons and writings about “the universe” and “the cosmos” and the intricate , interdependent nature of EVERYTHING. Given MLK’s controversial linking of Vietnam to the Civil Rights struggle, it is a given that the same opposition he had to the Vietnam war would also be focused on the links between racial and economic injustice and environmental ly damaging mechanisms of industrialized society. “We must move from being a THING oriented society to a PERSON oriented society”, King said (Riverside Church, April 4, 1967) .

Drew Dellinger has written and spoken on the “Ecological King” and done years of PhD work on a soon to be published book on this topic.  I am in touch with Drew about coming on EcoEcclesia as a guest to tell us about some of his discoveries.  Yet more on the MLK that we don’t often talk about,  just as was the case with the final 5 years of his life. Vincent Harding,  a close confidant of King,  wrote a book about  MLK,  “The Inconvenient Hero”,  and how America , in “honoring” Dr. King with a holiday,  has , in many cases,  “cloistered” him away under a cloak of generalities about equality stripped clean of its specifics. When Dr. King started getting VERY specific about what were generally perceived as “non-racial” matters,  sparks flew,  even within the circle of the movement.  It seems almost certain that , had MLK lived longer,  that the growing awareness of a Climate Crisis would have risen big on his “Justice Radar”,  given his “We are all in an inescapable network of mutuality”.  This “network” is nowhere more fully illustrated than in the ecosystem.

It’s a kind of a typical “Gnostic” move: to “spiritualize” the man’s message in order to silence the prophet.  “Stick to Civil Rights”,  to which King replied with “I’ve worked too long and too hard to end of SEGREGATING my MORAL concerns;  Injustice ANYWHERE is a threat to justice EVERYWHERE”