by Joseph Nangle, OFM
Pax Christi USA 2023 Teacher of Peace
This Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend lends itself to serious reflections on his message beyond the soaring and idealistic rhetoric of the “I have a dream” speech – inspirational as those phrases were. We should listen again to the hard messages this prophet left as his legacy.
In his 1967 book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, we read: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
What would Dr. King say today as the United States gives lip service to nuclear disarmament while spending $1.5 trillion to modernize its nuclear arsenal?
What would he say about the Biden administration’s direct responsibility for encouraging and financing the ongoing genocidal attacks on Palestinians in Gaza?
What would he say about the report in the Washington Post on January 10 that Biden is hiding from Congress the recent sale of conventional weapons to the Netanyahu regime? ($147.5 million at the end of December.) (Biden has also requested authorization from Congress for $10 billion in additional military assistance to Israel.)
In one of Dr. King’s most incisive but often forgotten “Beyond Vietnam” speech, given on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church, just one year to the day before his assassination, he warned: “If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved as long as it destroys the hopes of people the world over.” Part of that autopsy will surely read, as one observer has said, “the United States has been good at starting wars, but not preventing or ending them.”
This weekend must also remind us of the scathing critiques Dr. King launched at U.S. churches. In his iconic “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in 1963, this ordained minister of the Baptist Church said: “So often the contemporary Church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the Status quo. The Church must be reminded that it is not the master or the slave of the State, but rather the conscience of the State. It must be the guide and the critic of the State, and never its tool.”
He continued, “… [T]he Church at times has preserved that which is immoral and unethical. Called to combat social evils, it has remained silent behind stained glass windows.”
All thinking church people are witnessing the truth of this condemnation today. We immediately think of our Catholic bishops. We ask, where is their backbone, where is their understanding of the Teacher who never shrank from calling out courageously the corrupt leaders of His time? Our critique must go further. Every person, clergy, or lay, who mounts a pulpit in the United States must consider King’s criticism. As theologian Karl Rahner once lamented: “[I]t is more often the case that the words of the preacher fall powerlessly from the pulpit, like birds frozen to death and falling from a wintry sky”!
In addition to these observations, on this Martin Luther King, Jr holiday we must consider a new and deadly reality in the life of our churches and country – Christian Nationalism (CN). Without going into the details of the CN agenda, here are some general observations.
- CN is in direct opposition to Catholic Social Teaching
- It is schismatic – a parallel (national) sect
- It is demonstrably un-Christian
- It is contrary to Jesus’ prayer “that all may be one”
Christian Nationalism is a cancer in the Christian churches today. It stands in direct opposition to Pope Francis’ plea when he inaugurated the historic Synod of Synods last October: “There is room for everyone in the church, and wherever there is not, please, we must make room, including for those who make mistakes.”
Wouldn’t the Black pastor from Alabama thrill to hear the Latino pastor from Argentina!
Joe Nangle OFM is a Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace and the 2023 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace. As a member of the Assisi Community in Washington, D.C., he is dedicated to simple living and social change. Joe also serves as the Pastoral Associate for the Latino community at Our Lady Queen of Peace, Arlington, Virginia.