{"id":1373,"date":"2004-01-19T13:56:24","date_gmt":"2004-01-19T17:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/01\/19\/mlk-the-saint\/"},"modified":"2004-01-19T13:56:24","modified_gmt":"2004-01-19T17:56:24","slug":"mlk-the-saint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/01\/19\/mlk-the-saint\/","title":{"rendered":"MLK, the saint"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a227'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s probably trite to write about this today, but I thought I might<br \/>\nnote that today&#8217;s the &#8220;heavenly birthday&#8221; of (St.) MLK.&nbsp; He&#8217;s<br \/>\nbeing played all day on the Harvard radio station, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whrb.org\">WHRB-FM<\/a>,<br \/>\nand the sermons are fascinating.&nbsp; MLK is often discussed as the<br \/>\nmore acceptable of the civil rights leaders of the 1960s (as opposed to<br \/>\nthe less acceptable Malcolm X).&nbsp; But if you listen to these<br \/>\nsermons and speeches, much of what he says is clearly radical, not in<br \/>\nits call for violence of anything like that, but by the very fact that<br \/>\nhis steeping in the fullness of the Christian tradition and especially<br \/>\nthe black American tradition.&nbsp; Every phrase rings with Biblical<br \/>\nallusion, with the cries of the agony Psalms, the prophets, and the<br \/>\nGospel, and with the radical upending of social power, complacency,<br \/>\nvarious kinds of violence, and death.<\/p>\n<p>The man is a saint and a martyr (we include him in my church&#8217;s calendar<br \/>\nof commemorations, essentially a modern-day calendar of saints).&nbsp;<br \/>\nBut since we are so close to him, and we can remember him, we often use<br \/>\nhim to our own purposes, using him (like the Bible or other highly<br \/>\nrevered texts) to support whatever we happen to advocating.&nbsp; As<br \/>\nBody and Soul points out, <a href=\"http:\/\/bodyandsoul.typepad.com\/blog\/2004\/01\/post.html\">George Bush just did it<\/a>.&nbsp;<br \/>\nBut W. is not the only offender, nor is the Right the only piece of the<br \/>\npolitical spectrum who has tried to twist this saint and martyr to<br \/>\ntheir own expediency.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, join in the listening, or listen to some of his sermons<br \/>\nsomewhere else, or just read one of them.&nbsp; Or even listen to the<br \/>\nU2 song, &#8220;MLK&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Sleep, sleep tonight<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">And may your dream be realized<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">If the thundercloud passes rain,<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">So let it rain, rain on me.<\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s probably trite to write about this today, but I thought I might note that today&#8217;s the &#8220;heavenly birthday&#8221; of (St.) MLK.&nbsp; He&#8217;s being played all day on the Harvard radio station, WHRB-FM, and the sermons are fascinating.&nbsp; MLK is often discussed as the more acceptable of the civil rights leaders of the 1960s (as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-m9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1373\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}