The life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. have been the topic of ongoing debate ever since his assassination on April 4, 1968.

Right this moment, these invoking King’s reminiscence vary from Black Lives Issues organizers and President Joe Biden to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Educators making an attempt to show Black historical past name on his rules, at the same time as their opponents declare that classes about systemic racism go in opposition to King’s need to not decide individuals “by the colour of their pores and skin.”

In an age of polarization, it’s value remembering that one of many pillars of King’s philosophy was pluralism:
the concept of a number of communities participating each other, acknowledging
their variations and shared bonds, and striving to create what King
known as a “Beloved Neighborhood.”

As an African American thinker who research comparative faith, I’m particularly focused on what position non secular pluralism performed in King’s struggle for civil rights in america of America and human liberation world wide.

A refrain of faiths

King’s worldview was deeply nurtured
by his experiences within the Black Church, the place the Bible’s tales of
freedom and oppression are central. The Guide of Exodus, for instance,
tells the story of Hebrew slaves in search of deliverance, and the message
has been a frequent theme in Black hymns and preaching for hundreds of years. In
the Guide of Amos, the prophet cries out, “Let justice roll down like waters” – which is a line King famously quoted in his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Constructing off the work of different pioneering Black Christians, King embraced interfaith management. His mentor Howard Thurman,
who based the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, traveled to
India to fulfill with activist Mahatma Gandhi, who was Hindu.

Gandhi’s method to nonviolent protest was additionally influential for
Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard College, whose sermon on the
topic after a visit to India in 1949 profoundly formed King’s non secular philosophy.

The non secular variety of King’s coalitions was evident in occasions just like the 1965 March on Selma, the place some contributors have been severely overwhelmed by police on “Bloody Sunday.”

Marchers got here from a refrain of faiths that included clergymen and nuns, Episcopal seminarian, high-profile Unitarian Universalists like James Reeb, who was murdered days later, in addition to Jewish leaders like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Complementing his Black Church upbringing, King was impressed by knowledge throughout continents and cultures, from the Greek classics and Gandhi to Buddhist leaders like Thich Nhat Hanh. Regardless of their differing dogmas, he hoped leaders from throughout the non secular spectrum and people of no explicit religion would be a part of efforts to advertise financial and racial justice and stand in opposition to imperialism.

‘The good world home’

When King used the phrase “pluralism,” he assumed that its supreme of
belonging had each non secular and racial connotations. For instance, King
praised the Supreme Court docket’s choice in Engel v. Vitale,
which concluded that public colleges couldn’t sponsor prayers, and
which segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace opposed. “In a pluralistic society resembling ours, who’s to find out what prayer shall be spoken, and by whom?” King mentioned in a 1965 interview.

Greater than a decade earlier, throughout his time at seminary, King had written a paper
exhibiting a eager consciousness of Christianity’s connections with different
faiths: “To debate Christianity with out mentioning different religions
can be like discussing the greatness of the Atlantic Ocean with out the
slightest point out of the numerous tributaries that hold it flowing.”

Different vivid imagery like “the good world home” underscored how King interpreted all individuals and all faiths as residing in an interconnected internet.
Figuring out frequent themes within the discrimination in opposition to Indian Dalits,
the castes previously referred to as “untouchable,” and the plight of African
People within the U.S., King surmised, “I’m an untouchable.” He additionally noticed parallels between the African American wrestle for freedom and the work of labor unions such because the Nationwide Farm Employees Affiliation.

“Injustice anyplace is a risk to justice in every single place,” King insisted.

King then, at present, tomorrow

King needed individuals to embody the very best types of their very own faith and morality. Faith at its finest, he thought, promoted peace, understanding, love and good will. That is true of “all the nice religions of the world,” he wrote in a press release for Redbook journal.

These have been the sorts of ethics King hoped to meet in his personal
Christian ministry, as is evident in his needs for what is likely to be mentioned at his personal funeral.

“I’d like someone to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr.
tried to offer his life serving others,” he mentioned. “I’d like for someone
to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to like someone. … I
need you to say that I attempted to like and serve humanity.”

But King’s objective of a world with out starvation, struggle and racism stays unrealized. Poverty persists. Conflict continues. Black individuals’s security continues to be imperiled.

Resolving present social and political crises in America could require the true integration and power-sharing that King’s radical imaginative and prescient demanded.

Nevertheless, the controversy about King’s pluralist legacy is just not solely about him, but in addition about us. How can we wish to be remembered? What world are we leaving future generations?