Remembering Dr. King

In case someone from our Pepperdine Heidelberg group is reading, let's take a walk down memory lane...it's a cold evening in January. You and several of your classmates find yourselves bundled up, sitting in a church that's down the street from Essig Haus (I forget the name--that was a LONG time ago). You've gathered here for a Martin Luther King Day tribute service, which you learned about from your Intercultural Comm/Sociology professor Dr. Holmes. An American man takes the stage...all I remember about him is that he had wild white hair and that we found him a little wacky. He proceeds to lead us all in singing a song he wrote for the occasion, a song with a chorus that goes something like this: "Remembering, remember-i-i-ing. Dr. King, remembering." That's all I remember of the song, too. I know there were lots of verses, and then we all joined in the chorus, which was pretty easy to pick up. So easy, in fact, that every year, on the third Monday in January, I can't get it out of my head. This year is no exception.

I remember listening to the famous "I Have A Dream" speech in 6th grade and being really impressed by it. I knew what Dr. King was saying was very important to our country's history. But I don't remember being exposed to any of Dr. King's other works (at least not in a way that made a lasting impression, obviously) until our Church History class in college. I remember sitting in a circle, reading and discussing "Letters From A Birmingham Jail." It was then I realized how much he had to say to Christians, not just to Americans. He wrote about some principles that I was starting to find very important to my life and to my faith.

The head of Advocacy at the organization where I work sent out an e-mail on Friday with some excerpts from "Paul's Letter To American Christians." If you'd like to read it in its entirety, you can find it here. A part I found particularly challenging and inspiring:

I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unChristian world. That is what I had to do. That is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially. They live by some such principle as this: "everybody is doing it, so it must be alright." For so many of you Morality is merely group consensus. In your modern sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways. You have unconsciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallup poll of the majority opinion. How many are giving their ultimate allegiance to this way.

The paragraph following this one is especially relevant to us all in 2008, and I'll let you look it up yourself if you're interested.
Remembering, Dr. King.