My buddy Chip Scivicque got me reading and listening to A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Over the last week, I’ve been blown away by the power of his words, his call to conscience and his call to action. I’ve been wanting to study in-depth the Civil Rights Movement as a historical case study on movement-building. Hopefully, I’ll get to it. King’s speeches have certainly motivated me to study his leadership of the movement.
To whet my own appetite, I wanted to draw out four “movement-building” points from a speech he gave at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 7, 1957. The speech was titled “The Birth of a New Nation.” It dealt with King’s study of the independence of Ghana from the domination and oppression of the British Empire, tying the liberation of Ghana to the liberation and freedom needs for people in America and the world.
After accounting the story, King concludes his speech with four lessons from the liberation movement of Ghana. “Ghana,” he said, “has something to say to us.” These lessons helped guide his own leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, serving as guiding principles or values. I was struck with their application to the hard task of movement building. (I’m hesitant, though, of pulling them out of the Civil Rights context and applying them to spiritual movements. I’m hesitant, not because I don’t think they apply, they do; I’m hesitant because by pulling them out I may appear to belittle their guiding impact in so important a movement. Nevertheless, with that caution, I proceed.)
What Ghana has to say to us:
1. It says to us first, that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have to work for it. . . . Freedom is never given to anybody. For the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there, and he never voluntarily gives it up.
In spiritual movements, we should never expect the oppressor to give up easily. We’ll have to work and pray to overcome “spiritual forces of of evil in heavenly places.” The Devil has no plans to voluntarily give up in your location. You’ll have to wrestle “freedom” from him.
2. It says to us, second, that a nation or people can break aloose from oppression without violence. England and Ghana will be able to live together and work together because the breaking aloose was through nonviolence and not through violence. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption . . . reconciliation.
In spiritual movements, we must not appeal to “earthly” power in whatever form. We need not get our hands dirty thru falsehood, hate, violence or malice. We need not struggle outside the constraints of Scripture. We fight, King says, with love.
3. It says to us, that freedom never comes on a sliver platter. It’s never easy. Ghana reminds us that whenever you break out of Egypt, you better get ready for stiff backs. You better get ready for some homes…some churches to be bombed. Freedom never comes with ease. It comes only thru the hardness and persistence of life. . . It comes thru hours of despair and disappointment. The road to freedom is a difficult, hard road. it always makes for temporary setbacks. . . And it is never brought about without temporary periods of tension.
I’ve been also working thru Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery and was struck by the long hard road toward building lasting movements of God. The anti-slavery movement in England lasted over 30 years. Wilberforce only saw his dream come true right before his death at the age of 74. He began the fight at age 27. I think we may be fooling ourselves to think that we can launch movements easily. Movements come thru hardness and persistence; they arise after setbacks. The leaders of movements must be ready for hours, maybe years, of despair and disappointment.
4. It says to us, finally, that though the road to freedom is difficult, the forces of the universe are on the side of justice. (In another speech, King used a wonderful phrase worth repeating here: “Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”)
Though the struggle involved in building movements is hard and long and discouraging, we can know that God is intent on establishing his rule and reign over ever square inch of the planet. He is calling every heart to believe and every knee to submit. We can know that the forces of the moral universe are on our side. God is helping us make the kingdom of this world into the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, in which “he shall reign forever and ever.”
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