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Mayflower
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 445

Posted 1/19/2004 1:41 AM (GMT -6)

Attached below is the website for:

"The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project -- at Stanford University":
http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/

Peace & blessings...

<><

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 1/19/2004 5:30 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
"I am thankful that we worship a God who is both toughminded and tenderhearted. If God were only toughminded, he would be a cold, passionless despot sitting in some far-off heaven 'contemplating all' as Tennyson puts it.... But if God were only tender hearted, he would be too soft and sentimental to function when things go wrong and incapable of controlling what he has made.... God is toughmingded enough to transcend the world; he is tenderhearted enough to live in it. He does not leave us alone in our agonies and struggles. He seeks us in dark places and suffers with us and for us in our tragic prodigality."

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Mayflower
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 445

Posted 1/19/2004 6:52 PM (GMT -6)

Honorman -- please refrain from extrapolating the meaning and/or content of words of the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- to fit your own political maneuvering or bias.

Did you even read the article that you referenced?

Mrs. King spoke that day -- about reconciliation; and, hope.
Her son, Martin Luther King III told congregants that his father would have wanted people to work together for peace and justice even when they seem impossible to achieve.
"How many Iraqi children have been killed? When will the war end?
We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others."
Coretta Scott King said, "Peaceful ends can only be reached through peaceful means...."

*Honorman, instead of continually judging others -- practice a new mindset by repeating daily:

..."I will learn to walk well with those who disagree with me ... "

-----

*See:
• Blessed are the peacemakers.....
http://gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1906

Peace & blessings,
<><

.

PhilTheThrill
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 95

Posted 1/20/2004 9:29 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by Mayflower

"How many Iraqi children have been killed? When will the war end?
We all have to be concerned about terrorism, but you will never end terrorism by terrorizing others."
Coretta Scott King said, "Peaceful ends can only be reached through peaceful means...."

.

Those are cute sayings but they are simply untrue. I'm pretty sure it took some unpeaceful means to end the brutality of Hitler's regime and restore peace to Europe. Coretta Scott King would do well to crack open a history book before she runs her mouth about things she doesn't really understand.

Mayflower
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 445

Posted 1/20/2004 10:18 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

PhilTheThrill wrote:

Those are cute sayings but they are simply untrue. I'm pretty sure it took some unpeaceful means to end the brutality of Hitler's regime and restore peace to Europe. Coretta Scott King would do well to crack open a history book before she runs her mouth about things she doesn't really understand.

quote:

Honorman wrote:

Amen, Phil, amen. It is easy for people who live in a country protected by a strong military to spout off about things they have no idea about. "Terrorizing others." What an idiotic statement. If her husband was alive, he would be truly embarressed by such a stupid statement.

Blessed Be The Peacemakers.

<><

.

Tigress
Registered Member

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252

Posted 1/20/2004 11:14 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
Originally posted by Mayflower
Blessed Be The Peacemakers.

<><

.

Very true. But sometimes peace can only be brought about through temporary unpeaceful means - or would you have preferred that the concentration campers languished there until the peacemakers were done talking it out with each other first?

Tigress

"Name a shrub after me. Preferably one that's prickly and difficult to eradicate."

-Captain Jack Aubrey
"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World"

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 1/20/2004 2:15 PM (GMT -6)

MLKjr was also an activist against the Vietnam war. He was a thorough believer in non-violence. He also thought extensive unionization was needed in the US.

The problem with saint-hood is that people forget the aspects of the person that were much in discord with the main-stream sentiments of today.

I do not agree with MLKjr on the above, but I'm not going to begrudge those that purport to carry his touch from using the day as a chance to call for changes or to say unpopular, political things.

I'll just disagree with them.

dlw

Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes."

DLW
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457

Posted 1/21/2004 6:25 AM (GMT -6)

Where did MLK not rule out the use of violence?

It would be good to point to where in his writings there is precedent, since the issue at hand is the interpretation of his teachings or how best to keep his "spirit" alive.

I would be very loathe to describe "anti-war" sloganeering as hatred.

Also, sloganeering isn't mutually exclusive with dialogue. Bush's speech was full of what can be correctly termed as sloganeering, which puts forth views of the world that many will dislike quite a bit.

If Bush can do this, then so can others who have quite different slogans and, hopefully, we can find it in our hearts to turn the acrimony down quite a few notches so that such sloganeering doesn't drown out real discussion.

dlw

kingsaint
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2003
Total Posts : 80

Posted 2/2/2004 3:09 PM (GMT -6)

Here are some things Martin Luther King said in Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, an article which appeared in Christian Century for their "How My Mind Has Changed" series:

"While I was convinced during my student days of the power of nonviolence in group conflicts within nations, I was not yet convinced of its efficacy in conflicts between nations. I felt that while war could never be a positive or absolute good, it could serve as a negative good in the sense of preventing the spread and growth of an evil force. War, I felt, horrible as it is, might be preferable to surrender to a totalitarian system. But more and more I have come to the conclusion that the potential destructiveness of modern weapons of war totally rules out the possibility of war ever serving again as a negative good."

"I am no doctrinaire pacifist. I have tried to embrace a realistic pacifism. Moreover, I see the pacifist position not as sinless but as the lesser evil in the circumstances. Therefore I do not claim to be free from the moral dilemmas that the Christian nonpacifist confronts."

So, just given these statements, could King be in favor of a (notice I do not say the) "war on terror"? I do not think the answer is obvious. The threat of "modern weapons" (probably nuclear for King) has to do with mass death. However, a war on terror could in principle (even if not always in practice) selectively target an "evil force" bent on mass death.

Has the nonviolent philosophy of Martin Luther King been used to critique the current methods of certain Palestinian groups? If not, why not?

"Nobody who omits doing good works nowadays does so in order not to be tempted to become self-righteous; he omits it because it is easier."

--Philip Merlan, "Toward the Understanding of Kierkegaard"

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