Carlos at Jesus Politcs reflects on MLK’s VALUES:
King explained that robbing the nation’s treasury to fund military misadventures abroad did not fit into any definition he knew of “moral values.” Indeed, he suggested, morality called Americans to oppose presidents who embarked upon careers of empire — for the sake not just of victimized nations on the other side of the planet, but for the sake of America.
After doing some more reading in A People’s History of the United States today, I find myself struggling with the pull of two powerful emotions that arise from the feelings evoked by the reading. One is the sense that forces so ingrained and powerful and insidious and , and so “culturally integrated” that we will be “stuck” in this rut for a long time; and so this is a feeling that brings me low and saps me of energy; I feel as if resistance is futile.
Then there’s the sense that just as prior generations of Christians struggled under Empire, and saw Christianity lose its soul, there were people and communities that stood firm; even suffered for it (Bonhoeffer, for instance), and so I hold out hope for hope; for “delievrance”; for justice to be visitied upon us (but then, as I consider this, I wonder what kind of “armageddon” will be neccessary to bring all of the evil to light, and what form it will take. Not a “Left Behind” concept of armageddon, of course, but a great upheaval that reflects a great struggle between good and evil; (aka: On Earth As it is in Heaven”; Walter Wink describes how many apocalyptic stories are an earthly counterpart of eternal battles; a way of expressing the sense of place in a great historical drama.)
America’s National Treasure is certainly its people, and the vision held by those who have responded to the call of the Almighty to be the Church in the world (therefore, to be the Church in some tangible way)
Carlos ends his post with a great quote from MLK:
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values,” the Nobel Peace Prize winner explained. “There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.