Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

King Goes to War Against Fundamentalists -- 40 Years After His Death
Monday, January 15, 2007

From Abraham to Abraham Lincoln, every major historical figure finds his life reinterpreted by each succeeding generation. A new book about MLK finds, not surprisingly, that he was against Fundamentalism and in favor of the Social Gospel. Here's a report from the SF Chronicle today:

King was not a conformist Christian. He not only eschewed literalism, he was a strident critic of how the Christian church perpetuated injustices such as slavery and segregation.
"Too often has the church talked about a future good 'over yonder,' totally forgetting the present evil over here," King wrote in 1952 to Coretta Scott, his future wife.
Within a decade, King would lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott to protest legal segregation and numerous marches for voting rights. He returned repeatedly to the idea that true Christianity is practiced through the work for social justice.
"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and not concerned about the city government that damns the soul, the economic conditions that corrupt the soul, the slum conditions, the social evils that cripple the soul, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood," King preached in 1962 to his congregation at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

And another professor adds, Duke's Richard Lischer, adds: "King went to seminary and received a doctorate from two bastions of liberal theology, Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University, respectively. A professor told him that neither Moses nor the exodus were real -- an irony, given that King was called "new Moses" for his role during the civil rights era.

Posted by B Feiler at 11:13 AM
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