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Toward a Theology of Radical Involvement: The Theological Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The importance of Toward a Theology of Radical Involvement lies in its focus on the theological and ethical perspective of Martin Luther King, Jr. By examining the multiple, competing images of King in both academia and the public square, Ivory argues that mass public confusion and ambiguity exist today about King's identity. Consequently, the more radical and prophetic thrust of his legacy of thought and action has been blunted.
Seeking to resolve the public identity crisis about King, Ivory offers the provocative thesis that King is best understood as a creative theological thinker whose activist rhetoric and emancipatory praxis were thoroughly informed and undergirded by an understanding of God and God's will for history and humanity. Hence the prophetic focus and radical character of King's thought and action culminate in a "theology of radical involvement," which gives rise to an ethic of community. King's perspective raises permanent, generative tensions in the contemporary church, academy, and culture. Ivory thus promotes a re-reading of King that gives due credence to the too-often overlooked but profound level of critical analysis, proactive revolutionary challenge, and the bold transformative vision King inspired.
Seeking to resolve the public identity crisis about King, Ivory offers the provocative thesis that King is best understood as a creative theological thinker whose activist rhetoric and emancipatory praxis were thoroughly informed and undergirded by an understanding of God and God's will for history and humanity. Hence the prophetic focus and radical character of King's thought and action culminate in a "theology of radical involvement," which gives rise to an ethic of community. King's perspective raises permanent, generative tensions in the contemporary church, academy, and culture. Ivory thus promotes a re-reading of King that gives due credence to the too-often overlooked but profound level of critical analysis, proactive revolutionary challenge, and the bold transformative vision King inspired.
232 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1997
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July 4, 2024
AN EFFECTIVE ANALYSIS OF KING “PRIMARILY AS A THEOLOGIAN”
Luther D. Ivory is Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College, and pastor at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church USA in Memphis. He has also written The Rhythm of Discipleship.
He wrote in the Preface of this 1997 book, “we are caught on the horns of a dilemma---a crisis---relative to the identity of [Dr.] King… citizens of the nation and the world today harbor multiple, diverse viewpoints and feelings about King. The reason for this state of affairs … [is that] we are as yet unclear as to who King really was and what he was really attempting to accomplish… This book grows out of my own desire to gain clarity about the identity and the relevancy of Martin Luther King Jr. for our time. While this project culminated in my doctoral dissertation, I come as a pilgrim, a seeker who has wrestled with King for some twenty-nine years.” (Pg. 11)
He continues, “The time has come for long-overdue corrective to the decades of insufficient attention, inadequate focus, and improper treatment of King as a theologian. I am convinced that the current cultural ambiguity and mass public confusion about King are best understood as a collective crisis of identity.… The resolution of the public’s identity crisis with regard to King… lies in its capacity to reconceptualize him as a theologian. Every aspect of his public witness and social activism was undergirded by a solid theological platform… one must begin with the sustained intellectual formulation that informed his public actions… This book examines the vocational identity or calling of Martin Luther King Jr. primarily as a theologian… In this text, I argue that King is best understood as a creative theological thinker who offered a theology of radical involvement… I intend to establish a critical correlation between King’s highly visible patterns of proactive public engagement and his less visible, underlying framework of theological thought.” (Pg. 14-15)
He points out, “It was clear that whites, as a collective sociopolitical force, neither desired nor appreciated King’s presence… this response was to be fully expected of whites… It was another matter altogether, though, to witness the negative reactions to King’s arrival by some in the black community of Memphis. This was especially true of many poor blacks whose worldview was linked to … [t]he religious perspective that … tended to focus primarily upon a personal salvation aimed at the interior conversion of the individual psyche… The role of religious faith was conceived mainly to convict, restrain, and guide the affairs of the individual Christian as private citizen. The task of religion, therefore, was understood primarily as that of nurturing the development of faith in the individual disciple… As a result, the arena of private faith was severed from the realm of public responsibility… Consequently… King’s activist spirituality… would be considered illegitimate.” (Pg. 8-9)
He notes, “King’s difficult and ultimate challenge was to arrange various philosophical, theological, and ethical interpretive frameworks into some kind of integrative schema.… King was forced to decide for or against alternative modes of thought.” (Pg. 32-33) He continues, “King was eventually able to describe himself as an ‘evangelical liberal’ without exhibiting the slightest anxiety about the oxymoronic incongruity. The tradition of liberal thought provided King with a qualified optimism with regard to liberal doctrine of the basic goodness of humankind; and understanding of the gospel as having to do with both the formation of individual virtues and character as well as society reconstruction… an unshakeable belief in the redeemability of society, the benevolence of God, and the basic goodness not only of humans but of all of creation; metaphysical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and the inherent dignity and worth of all humanity.” (Pg. 36) He adds, “King found answers to the questions of God, Christ, self, church, and society… His answers provided a theological platform from which King could interpret and understand his vocational identity. Therefore, an inspection of what theological platform will prove illuminative for clarity on King’s vocational self-understanding.” (Pg. 41)
He explains, “King’s conception of God as ‘Love-in-Action’ proved to be the linchpin of his theological framework. A belief in God’s unfathomable and immutable love for humanity provided the basis for King’s imaging of a parent God who cares for us; who would not abandon us to despair in our crises… King argued that love was the essence of God… Love provided the conceptual clue for ascertaining the nature and purposes of God, and derivatively, the meaning and end of life.” (Pg. 46-47) He goes on, “As loving Personality, God wills the operation of the universe as a coherent unity of just and harmonious relationships between and among God, humanity, and the remainder of the created order. To achieve this end, God set a multiplicity of laws in operation to ensure the perpetuation of what King referred to as the ‘moral foundation of the universe.’ Personalism formulated a moral law system… The influence of personalism on King’s thinking led him to affirm the reality of absolute moral values… Unjust laws, practices and structures are in rebellion against God.” (Pg. 50)
He says, “The necessity of voluntary suffering in the freedom struggle received its justification in the certain knowledge that such suffering was salvific or redemptive in nature…King applied this perspective on suffering to the freedom movement… King appealed to the redemptive value of unearned suffering in every circumstance of brutality, violence, and hostility… Gratuitous sacrificial suffering was not to be engaged in indiscriminately. The aim was not to romanticize suffering. Suffering was not to become an end in itself, but rather a means to a greater end.” (Pg. 74-75) He notes, “King credited Jesus with providing the ‘spirit’ of the Montgomery movement… Mohandas K. Gandhi enabled him to see the applicability of Jesus’ love ethic at the level of social reform. Gandhi’s method of nonviolent resistance became paradigmatic for King and the black-led freedom movement, though Jesus remained the movement’s primary motivating force.” (Pg. 80)
He continues, “[Walter] Rauschenbusch… and other liberal Protestant thinkers had further assisted King in developing a theological basis for his ethical concerns. In so doing, they had helped him to avoid the inadequacies of a one-dimensional religious preoccupation with personal salvation… King said Rauschenbusch gave to American Protestantism a sense of social responsibility that it should never lose.” (Pg. 86-87) He adds, “King admitted that … Rauschenbusch had helped him to see that religion demanded an accompanying sociopolitical action relative the particularity of the conditions one faced… King was able to critically appropriate two important concepts from Rauschenbusch that helped him to arrive at significant conceptual clarity. Rauschenbusch’s notion of the ‘beloved community’ subsumed under his broader conceptual motif of the ‘kingdom of God’ helped King to envision and articulate an eschatological goal with historical concreteness and specificity.” (Pg. 99)
He asserts, “Too many ministers had failed to understand that religion deals with both heaven and earth, and that the Christian gospel seeks to change both the souls of human beings and the environmental conditions within which people live. King said that this faulty understanding of religion … had resulted in many ministers turning away from the moral and social responsibility to address the economic, social, and political conditions of human beings. This religion, King argued, amounted to little more than a narcotic, a tranquilizer that effectively drugged people into a passive acceptance of their plight.” (Pg. 88)
He points out, “King’s ecclesiological perspective was heavily influenced by and based upon a prophetic model of religion. The prophetic model understood the gospel as essentially social in nature. It stressed a public, corporate concern of religion as a necessary counterbalance to the excessively privatistic focus predominant of culture. For King, as bearer and embodiment of a prophetic, revolutionary consciousness emergent from the gospel of freedom, the church’s task was to become the moral guardian and social factor of salvation.” (Pg. 89)
He laments, “King candidly admitted that at one time he had been rather optimistic and hopeful about the white church’s capacity to involve itself in the quest for dignity and equality. However… he had become greatly disappointed with the white church, its ministerial leadership, and its laity… generally the white church had been ‘weighed in the balance and found wanting’ through a gross abdication of its moral responsibility. It had withheld its solidarity with a movement that sought a public confrontation with collective evil… Separating the gospel from social concerns, they had withdrawn from the emphases of socially active Christianity.” (Pg, 92-93)
He explains that for King, “Radical involvement represented the only viable, morally responsible human response to the call of God in the revolutionary situation and the most effective counter to the sin of apathy.” (Pg. 122) He adds, “And yet radical involvement was a costly endeavor. It would exact a price that many were not willing to pay… [King] was especially concerned with middle-class blacks who, having fallen prey to a culture of conspicuous consumerism and materialistic values, were prone to apathy and inclined to ‘forget the masses.’” (Pg. 127)
He summarizes, “The point of theology, for King, was to serve God in the concrete human situation. This meant that theology’s usefulness lay in its capacity to serve the interests and objectives of truth, justice, freedom, and righteousness. This approach represents the essence of King’s theology of radical involvement. In this sense, King is … to be credited with innovatively linking the worship of God to active participation in the concrete exigencies of emancipatory struggle. King forged a unique moral-spiritual development and disciplined, liberative social action… King’s distinctive contribution, then, was to reconstruct theology to the pressing existential realities of his day. In this sense, King modeled a paradigm shift for doing theology, and did more than virtually any other theologian of his time to reestablish the relevance of the Christian faith in the modern era.” (Pg. 123-124)
He points out, “King asserted that the moral values of the nation had been tragically misplaced. America was badly in need of a cultural values revolution… The important issue was whether or not America possessed the necessary ‘soul’ or ‘moral will’ to undertake this radical task… King’s critique of American involvement in the Vietnam War amounted to a public exposure of the nation’s moral hypocrisy… King raised serious doubts about the national moral will and commitment to civil rights… King publicly confessed that America was much sicker than he had realized when the movement began in 1955.” (Pg. 136)
He concludes, “King’s enduring legacy lies in keeping before us the challenge continually to probe, locate, and articulate with power, passion and persuasion the relevance of the gospel as a solution to the ongoing crises of the human situation… King’s perspective, lifestyle, and public witness illuminate the human vocation to live a life a radical commitment to the goal of humanizing the human community. If we are serious about accepting the forceful invitation to join God in the struggle to restore cosmic community, King’s intellectual and activist legacy will prove to be highly relevant to our efforts in undertaking this human calling.” (Pg. 179)
This book will be “must reading” for anyone interested in the intellectual development of King’s theological and ethical ideas.
Luther D. Ivory is Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College, and pastor at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church USA in Memphis. He has also written The Rhythm of Discipleship.
He wrote in the Preface of this 1997 book, “we are caught on the horns of a dilemma---a crisis---relative to the identity of [Dr.] King… citizens of the nation and the world today harbor multiple, diverse viewpoints and feelings about King. The reason for this state of affairs … [is that] we are as yet unclear as to who King really was and what he was really attempting to accomplish… This book grows out of my own desire to gain clarity about the identity and the relevancy of Martin Luther King Jr. for our time. While this project culminated in my doctoral dissertation, I come as a pilgrim, a seeker who has wrestled with King for some twenty-nine years.” (Pg. 11)
He continues, “The time has come for long-overdue corrective to the decades of insufficient attention, inadequate focus, and improper treatment of King as a theologian. I am convinced that the current cultural ambiguity and mass public confusion about King are best understood as a collective crisis of identity.… The resolution of the public’s identity crisis with regard to King… lies in its capacity to reconceptualize him as a theologian. Every aspect of his public witness and social activism was undergirded by a solid theological platform… one must begin with the sustained intellectual formulation that informed his public actions… This book examines the vocational identity or calling of Martin Luther King Jr. primarily as a theologian… In this text, I argue that King is best understood as a creative theological thinker who offered a theology of radical involvement… I intend to establish a critical correlation between King’s highly visible patterns of proactive public engagement and his less visible, underlying framework of theological thought.” (Pg. 14-15)
He points out, “It was clear that whites, as a collective sociopolitical force, neither desired nor appreciated King’s presence… this response was to be fully expected of whites… It was another matter altogether, though, to witness the negative reactions to King’s arrival by some in the black community of Memphis. This was especially true of many poor blacks whose worldview was linked to … [t]he religious perspective that … tended to focus primarily upon a personal salvation aimed at the interior conversion of the individual psyche… The role of religious faith was conceived mainly to convict, restrain, and guide the affairs of the individual Christian as private citizen. The task of religion, therefore, was understood primarily as that of nurturing the development of faith in the individual disciple… As a result, the arena of private faith was severed from the realm of public responsibility… Consequently… King’s activist spirituality… would be considered illegitimate.” (Pg. 8-9)
He notes, “King’s difficult and ultimate challenge was to arrange various philosophical, theological, and ethical interpretive frameworks into some kind of integrative schema.… King was forced to decide for or against alternative modes of thought.” (Pg. 32-33) He continues, “King was eventually able to describe himself as an ‘evangelical liberal’ without exhibiting the slightest anxiety about the oxymoronic incongruity. The tradition of liberal thought provided King with a qualified optimism with regard to liberal doctrine of the basic goodness of humankind; and understanding of the gospel as having to do with both the formation of individual virtues and character as well as society reconstruction… an unshakeable belief in the redeemability of society, the benevolence of God, and the basic goodness not only of humans but of all of creation; metaphysical grounding for the idea of a personal God, and the inherent dignity and worth of all humanity.” (Pg. 36) He adds, “King found answers to the questions of God, Christ, self, church, and society… His answers provided a theological platform from which King could interpret and understand his vocational identity. Therefore, an inspection of what theological platform will prove illuminative for clarity on King’s vocational self-understanding.” (Pg. 41)
He explains, “King’s conception of God as ‘Love-in-Action’ proved to be the linchpin of his theological framework. A belief in God’s unfathomable and immutable love for humanity provided the basis for King’s imaging of a parent God who cares for us; who would not abandon us to despair in our crises… King argued that love was the essence of God… Love provided the conceptual clue for ascertaining the nature and purposes of God, and derivatively, the meaning and end of life.” (Pg. 46-47) He goes on, “As loving Personality, God wills the operation of the universe as a coherent unity of just and harmonious relationships between and among God, humanity, and the remainder of the created order. To achieve this end, God set a multiplicity of laws in operation to ensure the perpetuation of what King referred to as the ‘moral foundation of the universe.’ Personalism formulated a moral law system… The influence of personalism on King’s thinking led him to affirm the reality of absolute moral values… Unjust laws, practices and structures are in rebellion against God.” (Pg. 50)
He says, “The necessity of voluntary suffering in the freedom struggle received its justification in the certain knowledge that such suffering was salvific or redemptive in nature…King applied this perspective on suffering to the freedom movement… King appealed to the redemptive value of unearned suffering in every circumstance of brutality, violence, and hostility… Gratuitous sacrificial suffering was not to be engaged in indiscriminately. The aim was not to romanticize suffering. Suffering was not to become an end in itself, but rather a means to a greater end.” (Pg. 74-75) He notes, “King credited Jesus with providing the ‘spirit’ of the Montgomery movement… Mohandas K. Gandhi enabled him to see the applicability of Jesus’ love ethic at the level of social reform. Gandhi’s method of nonviolent resistance became paradigmatic for King and the black-led freedom movement, though Jesus remained the movement’s primary motivating force.” (Pg. 80)
He continues, “[Walter] Rauschenbusch… and other liberal Protestant thinkers had further assisted King in developing a theological basis for his ethical concerns. In so doing, they had helped him to avoid the inadequacies of a one-dimensional religious preoccupation with personal salvation… King said Rauschenbusch gave to American Protestantism a sense of social responsibility that it should never lose.” (Pg. 86-87) He adds, “King admitted that … Rauschenbusch had helped him to see that religion demanded an accompanying sociopolitical action relative the particularity of the conditions one faced… King was able to critically appropriate two important concepts from Rauschenbusch that helped him to arrive at significant conceptual clarity. Rauschenbusch’s notion of the ‘beloved community’ subsumed under his broader conceptual motif of the ‘kingdom of God’ helped King to envision and articulate an eschatological goal with historical concreteness and specificity.” (Pg. 99)
He asserts, “Too many ministers had failed to understand that religion deals with both heaven and earth, and that the Christian gospel seeks to change both the souls of human beings and the environmental conditions within which people live. King said that this faulty understanding of religion … had resulted in many ministers turning away from the moral and social responsibility to address the economic, social, and political conditions of human beings. This religion, King argued, amounted to little more than a narcotic, a tranquilizer that effectively drugged people into a passive acceptance of their plight.” (Pg. 88)
He points out, “King’s ecclesiological perspective was heavily influenced by and based upon a prophetic model of religion. The prophetic model understood the gospel as essentially social in nature. It stressed a public, corporate concern of religion as a necessary counterbalance to the excessively privatistic focus predominant of culture. For King, as bearer and embodiment of a prophetic, revolutionary consciousness emergent from the gospel of freedom, the church’s task was to become the moral guardian and social factor of salvation.” (Pg. 89)
He laments, “King candidly admitted that at one time he had been rather optimistic and hopeful about the white church’s capacity to involve itself in the quest for dignity and equality. However… he had become greatly disappointed with the white church, its ministerial leadership, and its laity… generally the white church had been ‘weighed in the balance and found wanting’ through a gross abdication of its moral responsibility. It had withheld its solidarity with a movement that sought a public confrontation with collective evil… Separating the gospel from social concerns, they had withdrawn from the emphases of socially active Christianity.” (Pg, 92-93)
He explains that for King, “Radical involvement represented the only viable, morally responsible human response to the call of God in the revolutionary situation and the most effective counter to the sin of apathy.” (Pg. 122) He adds, “And yet radical involvement was a costly endeavor. It would exact a price that many were not willing to pay… [King] was especially concerned with middle-class blacks who, having fallen prey to a culture of conspicuous consumerism and materialistic values, were prone to apathy and inclined to ‘forget the masses.’” (Pg. 127)
He summarizes, “The point of theology, for King, was to serve God in the concrete human situation. This meant that theology’s usefulness lay in its capacity to serve the interests and objectives of truth, justice, freedom, and righteousness. This approach represents the essence of King’s theology of radical involvement. In this sense, King is … to be credited with innovatively linking the worship of God to active participation in the concrete exigencies of emancipatory struggle. King forged a unique moral-spiritual development and disciplined, liberative social action… King’s distinctive contribution, then, was to reconstruct theology to the pressing existential realities of his day. In this sense, King modeled a paradigm shift for doing theology, and did more than virtually any other theologian of his time to reestablish the relevance of the Christian faith in the modern era.” (Pg. 123-124)
He points out, “King asserted that the moral values of the nation had been tragically misplaced. America was badly in need of a cultural values revolution… The important issue was whether or not America possessed the necessary ‘soul’ or ‘moral will’ to undertake this radical task… King’s critique of American involvement in the Vietnam War amounted to a public exposure of the nation’s moral hypocrisy… King raised serious doubts about the national moral will and commitment to civil rights… King publicly confessed that America was much sicker than he had realized when the movement began in 1955.” (Pg. 136)
He concludes, “King’s enduring legacy lies in keeping before us the challenge continually to probe, locate, and articulate with power, passion and persuasion the relevance of the gospel as a solution to the ongoing crises of the human situation… King’s perspective, lifestyle, and public witness illuminate the human vocation to live a life a radical commitment to the goal of humanizing the human community. If we are serious about accepting the forceful invitation to join God in the struggle to restore cosmic community, King’s intellectual and activist legacy will prove to be highly relevant to our efforts in undertaking this human calling.” (Pg. 179)
This book will be “must reading” for anyone interested in the intellectual development of King’s theological and ethical ideas.
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