Thread by @jrforasteros

White people: Can we talk about Dr. Martin Luther King for a minute? (Since today is his day and all.)

Did you know that the week Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, he had a national disapproval rating of 75%? Three out of every four Americans disagreed with his position and activity.

That's hard to imagine, particularly on this weekend that most Americans are celebrating as a national holiday, flooding our social media with choice quotes about equality.

But when he was actually alive and at work... three out of every four.

What haunts me is the question of whether I would have been numbered among those three disapproving. It's easy from our vantage point looking back with the 20/20 vision of hindsight to imagine ourselves to be part of that quarter who loved Dr. King, who saw him as a prophet.

But we can't all have been approving (again, three quarters of us weren't.)

That question is more than just an historical thought experiment, because the struggle for justice and equality isn't over. Plenty of would-be prophets cry out today, and face similarly stark disapproval ratings.

(Two ends of the spectrum as illustrations: President Trump currently has a 39% approval rating, while the Black Lives Matter movement carried just over a 40% approval rating in 2016.)

It's easy for us to look at the 75% who opposed King in his day and see they were on the wrong side of history. But they obviously didn't think that at all. How do we know whether we're on the right side of history today? History itself demonstrates it's trickier than we think.

This is part of the lamentation Jesus weeps over the religious elite of his day. Matthew 23 is a devastating critique of the religious establishment. Jesus delivers it as a lament following on the heels of his Temple showdown during holy week.

The day after he cleansed the Temple, he comes back and debates the scribes and Pharisees, making them look like fools every time they try to trap him.

And then, as part of his lamentation, he speaks words that are haunting me today:

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed, and you decorate the monuments of the godly people your ancestors destroyed.

"Then you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would never have joined them in killing the prophets.’ “But in saying that, you testify against yourselves that you are indeed the descendants of those who murdered the prophets.

"Go ahead and finish what your ancestors started. Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgment of hell?"

-- Matthew 23:29-33

Am I, with regards to Dr. King - and, by extension, the whole of the Civil Rights Movement, just like the Pharisees of Jesus' day as they look back at the prophets? Am I a white-washed tomb, a dirty cup?

Jesus' larger critique of the Pharisees (throughout Matthew, but also in the whole lament of chapter 23) is that they have a form of religiosity that is ultimately oriented toward themselves rather than the most vulnerable.

He cites multiple examples of how they twist the Torah for their own benefit rather than for the benefit of widows and orphans (and even their own aging parents!).

How is Jesus so sure that the religious leaders he's addressing would be numbered among that 75% who killed the prophets? Because those ancient prophets were critiquing the exact behaviors the religious leaders embodied.

The prophets again and again insisted that what God desires of God's people is not acts of religious piety, but transformed lives that work for the flourishing of all peoples. (Check out the blistering first chapter of Isaiah or Amos 5, for great, painful examples.)

How can we tell whether we're following God's way in our day? The prophets pointed to widows and orphans as those their system excluded.

That make sense, because the social structure of ancient Israel was patriarchal, which means everything was centered on the eldest male. Widows and orphans were those who had no male to tether them to the social structure. They slipped through the cracks.

There's an easy critique of patriarchal culture here, but there's a deeper reality, too: every society has cracks. There will always be those who slip through the cracks. God's call on us is to recognize those persons as our neighbors, to attend to those persons as ourselves.

Or as Dr. King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

What earned Dr. King low approval ratings wasn't just his flowery speeches about equality. It was that he took a hard look at why inequality persisted, & insisted we make substantial systemic changes to seal some of those cracks while also attending to those who slipped through.

(Who in American culture slips through the cracks in our system? Who else if not those our governing documents consider to be only three-fifths of a person?)
blackpast.org/aah/three-fift…

King was in Memphis to support a garbage collectors' strike. He was among the loudest critics of US involvement in Vietnam. He had a dream that poor white Americans would join with their black brothers & sisters to demand wealth equity from the US government. Among other things.

In other words, for Dr. King, race equality went far beyond sentiment. Dr. King wasn't interested in having more white friends. He was interested in partnering with white Americans to work for real, measurable change.

(And his famous letter from the Birmingham jail illustrates how grieved and angry he was that White Christians weren't joining his struggle.)

So how can I tell whether I would have been among that three-quarters of disapprovers of Dr. King? I can start by looking at my own life today. What does my religion do for me?

Is it mainly about making myself comfortable and content? About providing for me and mine? Or does my religion drive me to consider those who are further from the center than I am? (James reminds us that true religion God approves of is care for the widows and orphans.)

I've found a good place to start has been to educate myself. Over the last couple of years, I've read a lot, listened a lot and worked to understand what cracks exist in our system and how Americans of color are particularly vulnerable to slipping through those cracks.

I am learning a ton. I have tons left to learn. And it has taken a while for me even to begin to see how that information can translate into real justice work.

But we all have to start somewhere. Here's some advice from Dr. King himself, from his book Where Do We Go From Here? It's a quote you don't here much on a day like today.

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”

I have a lot to learn, friends. Don't we all? So maybe this week, instead of sharing another inspirational quote from Dr. King, take his advice. Read his letter from the Birmingham jail. Or another book on race by a writer of color. Start doing the work for yourself.