From Every Mountainside…
Let Freedom Ring!
Keynote Address
Celebrating the Life and Legacy of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Kin, Jr.
Archdiocese of Chicago
April 4, 2003

Rev. Bryan N. Massingale, S.T.D.
Saint Francis Seminary
Milwaukee, WI

There is an ancient, so-called Chinese curse that runs: "May you live in interesting times!" I think I can assert, without fear of contradiction that we gather tonight in the midst of "interesting times."
· We gather tonight in a world where the gap between the affluent rich and the destitute poor- a gap that Catholic social teaching has consistently called "scandalous"- is no longer a "gap" but a "chasm."
· We gather tonight in a nation where one of every six children lives in poverty, and one out of four children at some time this month will not know when their next meal is coming, where they will eat it, or who will provide it.
· We gather in a country that is more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before, in a nation where people of color comprise about 40% of the population, in a city which- like many- is "majority-minority," part of a U.S. Catholic church that is nearly 50% people of color. Yet while more diverse, we still are often isolated, often connected by casual encounters, superficial meetings, and polite conversations where our deepest fears and real prejudices are seldom voiced but often covertly acted upon.
· Despite our diversity, we meet tonight in a nation still struggling with and arguing over the limits of inclusion, a country of continuing controversies over affirmative action, racial preferences, and so-called "reverse discrimination."
· We gather tonight in a nation where protests against "racial profiling" no longer come only from young men penalized for "driving while black." Racial profiling is now a concern for Muslims, Arabs, and those who look like they are Muslim and Arab- the new targets of public scrutiny, fear, discrimination, and even hatred.
· We meet tonight in a nation in the midst of war: a novel war, a war of preemption, fought not against a present danger but a possible future one; a war fought for reasons that are, at best, shifting and unclear; a war fought with terrifying weapons (JADAMS, bunker busters, and the threat of chemical and germ warfare; a war where euphemisms such as "surgical strike," "Softening up the battlefield," "Neutralizing the enemy" and "collateral damage" seek to hide from us the awful reality, horrors, stench, and gore of a massive killing enterprise (no matter how justified); a war that has perversely united the world by fear, as both American wives, husbands, parents, and children, and Iraqi mothers, parents, and children, wait in anxious concern over the fate of their loved ones.
Without a doubt, we are living in "interesting times," times that are precarious and perilous, times that many sense mark a decisive turning point, a moment of destiny and decision for our nation. No matter how we feel about the war (and with our Holy Father, I believe that it is a war without moral justification), and no matter how we feel about our racial and ethnic diversity (which I believe to be a blessing and gift of the Spirit), we cannot escape the fact that the years to come will pose a fundamental challenge to the human family: that of getting along with each other. Or, in the words of Pope John Paul II, the central question facing humanity is: "How ought we to live together?" How ought we to live together in a single world, a world of growing interconnection and interdependence, a world in which we have no choice but to live with each other?
In these times, and with this question, we come tonight to celebrate the wisdom and legacy of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. He was murdered only 35 years ago today, on April 4, 1968. Like us, King also lived in "interesting times," times of unprecedented opportunity, cultural upheaval, and personal danger. He, too, lived in an America poised at a decisive turning point, and in a nation in the midst of a divisive war. He, like us, lived in a country struggling with the triple evils of racism, poverty, and war. He, too, faced the haunting question: How ought we to live together? In the midst of these realities and challenges, he articulated a compelling vision of a transformed, just society. He named this vision, "the beloved community." This is the organizing principle that unified all of the noble and eloquent words that we have heard tonight. I believe that his vision of an inclusive community can provide us with valuable wisdom and insight as we make our way through the challenges that face us.
So, then, let us now look at King's beloved community ideal and its implications for the twenty-first century. After briefly describing his concept of the beloved community, I will apply King's insights to two of the major challenges that face this nation today as we struggle to live together: the ongoing controversy over affirmative action, and the use of war to settle differences between peoples and nations.
King's Beloved Community
What is the Beloved Community?
A short definition of the Beloved Community is that it is "an inclusive and interracial society characterized by freedom and justice for all." Or again, the Beloved Community is "that interracial fellowship that witnesses to the redemptive possibilities of reconciling love."
Kings' own words, taken from an address given at the founding convention of his signature organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, give us a key insight into his thinking: "The ultimate aim of the SCLS is to foster and create the beloved community in America where brotherhood is reality… SCLC works for integration. Our ultimate goal is genuine intergroup and interpersonal living-integration."
We must pause and dwell on this key statement. To grasp the meaning and challenge of King's vision, you have to understand what he meant by "integration." He means something much more than mere legal desegregation, which is what we are living with today.
Early on, King made a critical distinction between "desegregation" and "integration." Desegregation is necessary, but primarily negative; it "eliminates discrimination" and the obvious barriers that people of color encounter in public accommodations, education, housing, and employment. However, a desegregated society is not yet an integrated society, a beloved community. Legal desegregation can only create "a society where people are physically desegregated and spiritually segregated, where elbows are together and hearts are apart. It gives us social togetherness and spiritual apartness." A community that is only legally desegregated, King observed, is still all too often marked by suspicion, anger, resentment, tokenism, grudging toleration and wary coexistence.
In contrast, the Beloved Community is not only desegregated, but also integrated. Integration is more than merely living together, side by side, in tolerant coexistence. Integration, King believed, is "the positive acceptance of desegregation" made evident in the welcome embrace of the other as a full participant in social, economic and political life. Toward the end of his life, King declared: "Integration is meaningless without the sharing of power. When I speak of integration, I don't mean a romantic mixing of colors. I mean a real sharing of power and responsibility." Integration requires not only changes in laws and public policies- as necessary as these are. It demands "a change of attitudes, the loving acceptance of individuals and groups." Integration demands not only proactive social policies and changed economic structures. It also requires that we confront the "nonrational, psychological barriers" to human unity. It requires that we name and confront our fears, our fears of the other and our fears of living together with those I see as "stranger." King delineated these fears as "fear of loss of preferred economic privilege; altered social relations; intermarriage, and adjustment to new situations." King's words are even more relevant today: "A vigorous enforcement of civil rights will bring an end to segregated public facilities, but it cannot bring an end to fears, prejudice, pride, and irrationality, which are the barriers to a truly integrated society." Legal desegregation alone, King maintained, is "only a first step" toward the Beloved Community.
Thus for King, the Beloved Community is not only marked by just laws, but also welcoming hearts. The Beloved Community is a genuinely integrated society… not only in America, but across the world as well. The mature King uses another metaphor for the Beloved Community, "the great world house" where people relate across their differences according to the norms of love and justice: "We have inherited a large house, a great 'world house,' in which we have to live together- black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu- a family unduly separated in ideas, cultures and interests, who, because we can never live again apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."
In short, the Beloved Community is an inclusive human community where all are accepted whatever their differences; a community where difference is not a cause for fear, but a source of celebration.
King believed that this vision was not only a noble ideal, but a human necessity. Why? Because human life, King never tired of saying, is profoundly interdependent and interconnected. Human beings ere not created for solitary, isolated existence. Rather, King believed that human fulfillment could only be achieved in cooperation with others. He never stopped declaring that in America, "We are bound together in a single garment of destiny."
Thus King repeatedly insisted that what affects one, affects all. This is why "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." This is why he struggled against racism, poverty, AND war, because they were interrelated evils, and one could not be eradicated without struggling against the others.
Because we cannot live apart, King passionately argued that "world-wide fellowship," a transcending the boundaries of tribe, race, class, and nation, is "an absolute necessity" for human survival. "Together we must learn to live as brothers [and sisters] or together we will be forces to perish as fools." Our interdependent human condition, then, makes the Beloved Community an ethical imperative.
The second reason why this is a demand, and not just a noble vision, was that King believed that the beloved community was the will of God. In fact, for King the Beloved Community and the Kingdom of God were virtually synonymous: "The Kingdom of God will be a society in which men and women live as children of God should live…. It is humanity organized according to the will of God." The Beloved Community is the historical realization of God's reign: humankind living in accord with God's dream.
Since God intends that everyone should have what is needed for authentic human life, King "could not envision the Beloved Community apart from economic justice." He was impatient with a religion or Christianity which drew a division between religious piety and social concerns. Human dignity and the Kingdom of God were empty, hollow and meaningless rhetoric unless they found concrete expression in the structures of society.
Thus for reasons both practical and religious, King believed that the Beloved Community was not just a guiding vision or social ideal. It was an ethical imperative and religious duty. One could not be either an authentic human being or a genuine Christian and fail to rise to the challenge and possibility of the Beloved Community.
I choose t identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity. I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign. This is the way I am going. If it means suffering a little bit, I'm going that way. If it means sacrificing, I'm going that way. If it means dying for them, I'm going that way, because I heard a voice saying, "Do something for others."

King's Challenge and Contribution to Today's Issues
What wisdom, challenge, and contribution does King's vision of the beloved community offer us today? How does King help us address the critical challenge of learning to live with each other? I will examine these questions under two headings: the pursuit of racial justice and the controversy over affirmative action; and seeking alternatives to war.
The Pursuit of Racial Justice and Reconciliation
King dreamed that "one day little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys an white girls as sisters and brothers." Today, some thirty-five years after his death, King would be dismayed at how his dream has been deferred. For it is unlikely, increasingly unlikely, that black children and white children will join hands in a classroom or at a university. College campuses are becoming decreasingly diverse as many narrowly define "merit' only in terms of high test scores. And the modest remedies (e.g., affirmative action) used to make small steps toward the "equal share of power and responsibility" that King says is the hallmark of the Beloved Community are now being attacked and dismantled.
Late in his career, King realized that the majority of white Americans had never been deeply committed to the cause of racial equality. He noted that most understood calls for equality "as a loose expression for improvement." Thus he concludes: "White America is not even psychologically organized to close the gap-essentially it seeks only to make it less painful and less obvious but in most respects to retain it…. The majority of white Americans are suspended between two opposing attitudes: They are uneasy with injustices, but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it." Given both the legacy of historic injustices and the continuing white defense of their racial privileges, King repeatedly called for policies of preferential treatment in employment, housing, and education. These he believed necessary in order to compensate for past wrongs and to aid in the advancing of the Beloved Community
We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice.

His most direct articulation of this view is found in his text, Why We Can't Wait:
Whenever this issue [compensatory treatment] is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up.

Note that the rationale for Kings' defense of reparations and affirmative action is rooted in his understanding of the Beloved Community. If a truly just society is one where the different races not only freely intermingle, but do so on the basis of social, political, and economic equality, then policies that redress past and current racial injury are absolutely essential. [King thus provides a helpful perspective for addressing the current controversies surrounding affirmative action and reparations for slavery.] The key question, in a Kingian perspective, is not how much blacks are entitled to ( a zero-sum" question), but rather, what must we do to make things right, to work together against an injustice that wounds us all, though in different ways?
A New Paradigm for Evaluating War
Finally, what wisdom can King's understanding of the Beloved Community offer us as we live in a nation of war?
Let us first be clear: King never criticized men and women in uniform. He never denounced the military personnel who fought in the jungles of Vietnam. He always showed them love and concern. Indeed, he saw them as the unwitting sacrificial offerings of an unjust and misguided public policy. Regardless of King's views on war itself, he cared for those in uniform. What this suggests is that no matter what we think of the wisdom or morality of the Iraqi conflict, we offer to the men and women of the armed services our prayers and heartfelt concern, and we stand in solidarity and support of the families and loved ones they have left behind. What all soldiers, Iraqi and American, have in common is that they are involved in a fight that they did not choose and would rather not have to engage.
Nonetheless, King's writings leave no doubt that he would be utterly opposed to any recourse to war or military force:
Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminates even the possibility that war may serve any good at all. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.

King thus challenges us to keep two ideals in our heads and hearts at the same time: 1) Love and support our troops; and 2) oppose any resort to war that puts them in harm's way in the first place.
King's opposition to war as a means for redressing human conflicts is rooted in several convictions. One is his belief that war inevitably drains resources from social programs that help the poor: "When the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably suffer." Thus he denounced the Vietnam War as "an enemy of the poor," expressed dismay that the government was willing to spend $500,000 a year to kill every enemy soldier while investing only $53 a year for every poor person at home; and declared, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
A second reason for King's opposition to war and his embrace of nonviolence is his conviction that violence inevitably leads to a downward spiral of endless retaliation, retribution, and revenge: "If I hit you and you hit me and I hit you back and you hit me back and go on, you see, that goes on ad infinitum. It just never ends. Somewhere somebody must have a little sense, and that's the strong person. The strong person is the person who can cut off the chain of hate, the chain of evil. And that is the tragedy of hate, that it doesn't cut it off." In another place, he writes: "For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder. You may murder a lair, but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that." (I note in passing the failure of violence to curb terrorism in Northern Ireland and the Middle East lends credence to King's views).
King maintained that a more adequate response to human conflicts rested in the effort to understand the motivations of one's adversaries. Why do they feel as they do? Why is the United States so hate, resented, and even feared by so many in the world? Granted, this is an unpopular counsel today; it was not more popular in King's lifetime. Yet there is no doubt that King himself pursued this course of action: "Surely we must understand their [our adversaries] feelings even if we do not condone their actions…. Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weakness of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition." Indeed, King observed that "Maybe we spend far too much of our national budget establishing military bases around the world rather than bases of genuine concern and understanding."
This leads to another counsel that King would offer, which is that peace is impossible in a world of extreme economic disparity among nations. King noted that the arrogance and selfish pursuit of profit on the part of the West could not but give rise to resentment and indignation- the breeding ground of desperation and war:
…this is the role our nation has taken- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment…. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."

Finally, King would root an alternative approach to war and human conflict by posing the haunting question: What kind of world do we want to live in when the conflict is over? Recall that the goal of every nonviolent campaign was the establishment of a redeemed, reconciled community at peace with itself. This was one of the reasons for King's determined commitment to nonviolence, because he believed it was the only means that could transform an enemy into a friend, and provide the possibility of a renewed social life. This is why he passionately believed that humanity "must evolve for all human conflict a method, which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation." Because the beloved community is a "world house," and we live in a world where "no nation can win a war," King repeatedly gave these apocalyptic warnings: "The choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence." And again, "We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation."
This means that we must weep for all the widows and orphans of war, both American and Iraqi. We pray for the American grandmother who tries to explain why a child's parents are far, far away, and also for the Iraqi mother who, in the midst of falling bombs, tries to soothe her children's fears. We pray for both the American family who struggles with financial hardship because they must live on the smaller wages the military pays, and for the Iraqi family who must live without running water, electricity, and food. We live in one world, and all of these are the victims of war. The Beloved Community requires that we do nothing less than this.

Conclusion
We live in interesting times, times of momentous decision and commitment, of peril and promise. But these are also times of hope. King warned us that there are difficult days ahead. There will be times when we feel our dreams are destined for futility, and our hope is more an act of desperation. Fighting for justice, working for peace, and speaking the truth is never easy and seldom popular. No one said it would be easy. Only that it is necessary. Perhaps King's greatest gift to us is the reminder that we when we work for justice, we do so not with our own power, but with the power of God. This is perhaps King's gift to us, especially when we are weary, confused and can't see the way, and feel what we do is useless and nothing will make a difference. We take courage and hope from a sermon that he often preached (perhaps he needed to remind himself): "God is able."
At that moment, I felt the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced him. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, "Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at you side forever." Almost at once my fears began to pass from me…. The outer situation remained the same, but God had given me inner calm…

[Our God is able.] Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better men [and women]. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.

Let the Church say, AMEN!

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