“In the quiet recesses of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. That dream, however, has no hope of being understood apart from King’s Baptist identity. Such an identity, a multigenerational heritage in his case, is the soil from which King’s life grew. “While the world saw him as a marching protest leader, King was first and foremost a preacher.” His international fame may be due to his work in the civil rights movement, but his vision and impact cannot be understood apart from his Baptist identity.
The “son of a Baptist preacher, grandson of a Baptist preacher, and great-grandson of a Baptist preacher,” King viewed his Baptist identity as an inheritance bequeathed to him by his forefathers.
Martin’s great-grandfather was the Rev. Willis Williams, who preached in antebellum Georgia and contributed to the “emergence of independent black Baptist congregations after the Civil War.” In 1894 King’s grandfather A. D. Williams accepted the call to pastor what would become a prominent site of religious and social life, the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. Not only this but Williams would also assist in founding the National Baptist Convention, which was “the largest African American organization” in the United States at the time. Williams’s son-in-law was none other than Martin Luther King, Sr. (known later as “Daddy King”) who assumed the Ebenezer pastorate in 1931, when his son Martin was two years old. “From the time of his birth in 1929, then, Ebenezer [Baptist Church] was often at the center of Martin Jr.’s world.” From this small Baptist church, King, Jr. drank in its religion as if it were “his mother’s milk.” Everything that would follow from his life can be sourced back to that congregation.
Despite his fated destiny of ministerial service, the young King required convincing before officially entering the pastorate. Martin graduated high school at the precocious age of fifteen (1944) and went on to study at Morehouse College in his hometown of Atlanta. Despite his ministerial heritage, the young King was reluctant to enter the ministry due to the rampant “‘emotionalism,’ the hand-clapping, [the] ‘amen-ing,’ and shouting of the Black church.”
While “deep down... [King] wanted to become a minister... he believed that there was an oversupply of ‘unintellectual’ and ‘untrained ministers’ in the Black church.” However, two men among the faculty of Morehouse College –Dr. Benjamin Mays (Preacher-President) and Dr. George Kelsey (Director of the Department of Religion)– showed the skeptical undergraduate that it was possible to preach and serve the church in ways that are “intellectually respectable,” “emotionally satisfying,” and even “socially relevant.” King then, intent on assuming the mantle of pastor-scholar, decided in his junior year of college (age 17) to “give himself to the ministry.” In 1947, Martin Luther King, Jr. was thus ordained by his local church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta, Georgia.
King, Jr. would go on to complete a B.D. at Crozer Theological Seminary (1951) and a Ph.D. at Boston University (1955). In Boston, he met the woman whom he would marry, the intellectually and artistically astute Coretta Scott, who bore him four children and went on to found the King Center. While finishing his doctoral dissertation, King assumed the pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama (1954). In the still segregated South, King was immediately drawn towards civil rights, becoming a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1955, he accepted leadership of “the first great nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the United States,” the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, begun by the now famous Rosa Parks.
Two years later, in 1957, King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership conference, “an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement.” Over the next eleven years, King would travel across the country, speaking to churches and other large gatherings, garnering support (financial, physical, legal) for what had become the largest single effort at civil rights since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863.
One of King’s most popular works is Why We Can’t Wait, a memoir recounting his civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. It had been 100 years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation yet people of color in Birmingham were far from free. It was the most segregated city in America at this time, and it was there that the young Martin (34 years old) went to work.
Why We Can’t Wait narrates the successful non-violent demonstrations of thousands of protesters led by their commander, Martin Luther King, Jr. The book includes King’s famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and concludes with an account of the iconic March on Washington (August 1963).
Ten Baptist distinctives emerge from this work: social involvement; ecumenism/diversity; freedom/independence; the priesthood of all believers; the transformative power of preaching; civil disobedience; religious freedom; centrality of faith; congregational polity; and responsibility. By tracing these Baptist distinctives in Why We Can’t Wait, one can appreciate with greater precision how Baptist Martin Luther King, Jr. really is.
First, let us consider the distinctive of social justice. To be a Baptist means to be concerned not merely with an ethereal, heavenly “afterlife,” but with applying the love of Jesus to concrete sociocultural issues. This distinctive emerges quite early in Why We Can’t Wait as King recounts the participation of Southern Black ministers in his fight for racial justice in Alabama. He writes, “Black ministers, with a growing awareness that the true witness of a Christian life is the projection of a social gospel, had accepted leadership in the fight for racial justice.” Later, King declares that “only a ‘dry as dust’ religion prompts a minister to extol the glories of heaven while ignoring the social conditions that cause men an earthly hell.”
The second distinctive that emerges is the notion of ecumenism or diversity. This can either refer to Baptists’ relationship with those of other traditions/faiths or the diverse internal, interdenominational makeup of Baptists of various sorts. King describes his movement’s attempt to gain support from a wide variety of persons. He writes, “We felt it was vital to get the support of key people across the nation. We corresponded with the seventy-five religious leaders of all faiths who had joined us in the Albany movement.”
Third, we see the distinctive of freedom or independence. This impulse towards freedom and independence oozes from every nook and cranny of King, Jr.’s life and work. King “pleaded for... strong, firm leadership by the Black minister [in the civil rights movement], pointing out that he is freer, more independent, than any other person in the community.” The freedom that characterizes Baptists when coupled with the independence of Blacks such as King, produced a fiery sense of resolution making no goal unattainable for Black Baptists.
Related to this is a fourth distinctive, the priesthood of all believers. Not only are Baptist congregations autonomous regarding their own governance. Baptist congregants exercise autonomy and responsibility towards one another. One illustrative quote comes late in Why We Can’t Wait as King reflects on the work they accomplished in Birmingham. He writes, “It was the people who moved their leaders, not the leaders who moved the people. Of course, there were generals, as there must be in every army. But the command post was in the bursting hearts of millions of Black Americans.”
Connected to this is congregational polity. Commenting on the notion of a voting bloc, King, Jr. writes, “Development as a conscious bloc would give them more flexibility, more bargaining power, more clarity and more responsibility in assessing candidates and programs. Moreover a deeper involvement as a group in political life will bring them more independence.” While not exactly the same as congregational polity, King’s vision of a voting bloc draws its inspiration from this core Baptist distinctive.
The sixth distinctive concerns the power of preaching. One of the most powerful quotes from Why We Can’t Wait comes in the same context as many of the previous quotes: King’s attempt to garner support from ministers, professionals, and other influential persons throughout Birmingham and the neighboring regions. King traveled nearly six million miles delivering impassioned homilies and speeches aimed at garnering support for their civil rights cause. He writes, “Somehow God gave me the power to transform the resentments, the suspicions, the fears and the misunderstanding into faith and enthusiasm. I spoke from my heart, and out of each meeting came firm endorsements and pledges of participation and support.”
A seventh distinctive is that of civil disobedience. On April 10, 1963, the city government of Birmingham tried to stifle the demonstrations of King and his campaigners by issuing “a court injunction directing us,” in the words of King, “to cease our activities until our right to demonstrate had been argued in court.” Knowing that the corrupt bureaucracy of the judicial system of Birmingham would forestall any efforts toward desegregation, Martin and his associates, after much “prolonged and prayerful consideration,” decided to do something they “had never done” before: they “disobeyed a court order.” Such disobedience was neither impulsive nor without thought, but was “discussed as far back as... March [1963].”
Related to this is an eighth distinctive: religious freedom. In reflecting upon the impact of the Birmingham non-violent protests and looking forward to civil rights progress in the future, King writes the following: “One aspect of the civil-rights struggle that receives little attention is the contribution it makes to the whole society. In winning rights for themselves Blacks produce substantial benefits for the nation.”
The ninth distinctive is responsibility (to each other). In the Baptist tradition, each individual congregant is responsible both to and for each other. Baptists are, thus, responsible for providing spiritual support, encouragement, and care to other members of the congregation (who reciprocate such care and support). Continuing on from King’s previous quote, he writes: “Eventually the civil-rights movement will have contributed infinitely more to the nation than the eradication of racial injustice. It will have enlarged the concept of brotherhood to a vision of total interrelatedness.”
Last but not least, we arrive at a tenth distinctive: the centrality of faith for Black Baptists. A major part of King’s non-violent campaign in Birmingham was voluntary incarceration. “Fill up the jails,” King thought, inspired by the Indian non-violent revolutionary Mahatma Gandhi. The movement had amassed thousands of dollars in bail funds as a result of King’s speaking engagements throughout the country. Supporters could thus “go to jail” (as a statement) trusting that they would be released shortly thereafter.
These ten distinctives taken together show that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Baptist to his very core. His Baptistness helps provide a grid through which to interpret and understand his contributions to American society and religion. King’s heart for his Black brothers and sisters coupled with his Baptist sensibilities has achieved more for the kingdom of God than anyone else in the 20th century. Baptists today can thus extend King’s legacy by remembering their roots and following God’s heart, wherever it leads.
Jonah Bissell
Pastor
*This is an excerpted version of a paper I wrote entitled: “What a Baptist Can Be: The Religious Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr.” (for AIM’s “American Baptist History & Polity” course). If you would like access to the full paper (with bibliographic references), please contact me at jonah@freeportbaptist.org.