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Pam King: To realize MLK’s vision of a beloved community, we’re all called to live from a moral conscience that interconnects and permeates society with justice and peace.
Working at the intersection of politics, religion, and education, Dr. Lerone Martin of Stanford University is carrying forward that vision.
The legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In a social context, desperately in need of renewed moral imagination, connection across racial and economic divides, and the transformative power of love.
Lerone Martin: King would see love as an action because the means that you use have to be commensurate or match the ends that you seek.
And campaign for, for peace and justice for King always has to be nonviolent a law that is not conducive to human thriving, that is an unjust law, that King would argue that we have a moral obligation to break. But you do it openly, nonviolently, and you willingly pay the consequences. Because you believe that form of suffering, that form of protest, will awaken your community.
Pam King: I’m Dr. Pam King and you’re listening to With & For, a podcast that explores the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and thriving on purpose.
Today, as we celebrate the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. I’m delighted to share with you a conversation with one of the most charismatic and generous educators I know.
Dr. Lerone Martin is the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor in Religious Studies and the Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute. At Stanford University.
He’s a historian of 20th century religion and a cultural commentator.
He’s written books about white Christian nationalism in the FBI, as well as the making of modern African American Christianity.
Thank you. and as a developmental psychologist, I’m particularly excited about the new book he is working on about MLK’s teenage years and early sense of calling and vocation.
In addition, he stays deeply connected to teaching and community service. He teaches the renowned required freshman course, Y College at Stanford. He inspires underserved high school students in Los Angeles and St. Louis. And he is also developing programs and teaching courses for those that are incarcerated.
You can learn more about his work on Martin Luther King Jr. at kinginstitute.stanford.edu.
In this conversation with Lerone Martin, we discuss:
how his spirituality integrates with the meaning of education and formation,
the legacy of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., his vision of thriving and justice, and the relevance of his life and writings for our contemporary world,
the role of emotion, affect, and music in Christian faith and spirituality.
We dive into the core elements of MLK’s famous letter from a Birmingham jail.
We explore the joint power of courage and love in nonviolent action.
We look at practical insights about the kind of morality that leads to thriving. and we close by asking the question posed in Martin Luther King’s final book, where do we go from here?
Lerone, welcome to With & For.
Lerone Martin: It’s a blessing and a privilege to be with you. I love your show and I’m thankful to have the opportunity I’m so grateful to have this conversation with you and hear, this wonderful work that you are doing.
Pam King: You’re the MLK Centennial Professor, an executive director of the MLK Research and Education Institute. I’d love to hear just a bit about your sense of vocation calling
Lerone Martin: Well, first my, my position, I think a lot of it comes out of my upbringing. I was raised in a Pentecostal home, and it brought me to the faith, but it was a faith that was primarily concerned with personal morality,
It felt as if, the primary concern was remaining free of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in order to get oneself to heaven. And
Lerone Martin: think by the time I got to college and began to meet other people, other Christians of different backgrounds, that I began to realize the particularity of my own faith.
And really started asking questions about, what does my faith have to say about the here and now so I went on a journey of really trying to read other theologians, read other types of authors to figure out different traditions. And one of the many folks that I read, in addition to, Dolores Williams, and James Cone and others, I read Martin Luther King Jr.
And that really began to give me language and perspective about what my faith had to say about the here and now and the type of human being that I needed to be for others, in the world. And so when this opportunity for this position came up throughout my journey, it was a complete honor and a complete privilege to, have the opportunity to run the King Institute at Stanford.
And to be, vested with the responsibility of being in the repository of King’s, personal papers.
Yeah, I see myself, to be called to be an educator. And to help equip people with the tools to reflect on their faith, and reflect on who they are to be in the world. I originally went to college thinking I was going to be a minister, and so I, after that I went to seminary at Princeton Theological Seminary, and it was during my second year there, in teaching at a church when I just really fell in love with teaching, and I realized that.
I think good preaching obviously should be good teaching, but, I felt more called to the classroom. and the space where people are allowed to ask questions, allowed to be in dialogue, allowed to generate new knowledge in the classroom. That’s the place that I feel called to. And so the work that I do now is both with undergraduates here at Stanford, in a class called Y College.
where students are reflecting on what is a liberal arts education, and also working with high school students and trying to help them have a conversation with Martin Luther King Jr. for their own personal, ethical, and moral reflection. So, I’m surrounded by young adults who keep me on my toes, who help make me to be a better teacher, and it’s a complete joy.
Pam King: To me, to get to the heart of Lerone’s expression of thriving, you have to appreciate King’s understanding of individual conscience and life in the beloved community.
The term Beloved Community was coined in 1913 by an early 20th century philosopher and theologian named Josiah Royce, and it was later popularized by King.
It was a vision of flourishing and thriving, grounded in peace, harmony, and reconciliation. characterized by widespread justice and freedom, compassion for all living things, and the view that everything is interconnected and interdependent. But central to this vision was non violent resistance.
And this is where Beloved Community depends on individual conscience.
In order for society to enact such a community, individual members need to act from deep within their moral intuition and become actively, but peacefully, opposed to injustices of all kinds.
I’d love to hear what thriving is to you.
Lerone Martin: Thriving to me, begins with the love of God and the love of neighbor. I think that those are the two places where it starts. I think that then enables one to love oneself.
Pam King: And then from there, one’s relationships and one’s life and work. exudes that kind of connectedness to the divine and and the connectedness to other human beings.
Lerone Martin: And I think that’s where I see thriving. I thinkit’s very challenging. I think in the world we live in and in the aftermath or arguably current moment of a prosperity gospel, think to see thriving as connected solely to material possessions.
Pam King: But I see thriving as much more about being in community, being in a space where you are working through your vocation and your calling and making connections to your loved ones and your community.
Lerone Martin: I think for me that’s the place of thriving. Becauseyou could, we know lots of people who have a job that allows them to have a great deal of material possessions, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they actually love what they do.
Pam King: Absolutely.
Lerone Martin: have an opportunity to live out your vocation and make a livable wage,and love your neighbor and love yourself, I see that as thriving,
Pam King: That’s beautiful. In a world where we hear so much, about self care, and that stresses individuality and differentiation, I think that is so refreshing because the name of the podcast is With & For, and I completely agree that we thrive only when we’re with and for others
I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more. Even if there’s like a sense of individual morality, like you talk about, being good, holiness had much more to do with.
No sex, drugs, rock and roll, and memorizing Bible verses, and being on the ministry team. then it did with wholeness, whether wholeness of person or wholeness of society. And I hear so much of what you saying, your work seems to, your personal holiness has gone from individual morality to this sense of social justice,
Lerone Martin: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Because I because I feel likeif we’re going to be sanctified or set apart,
Pam King:
Lerone Martin: it has to be for something, right? It has to be for some, a type of service.
It can’t just simply be an end into itself right That I don’t engage in these. behaviors because that’s going to seal me for heaven, right?
I think sanctification is always set apart for something and not just being set apart. I mean that, that does no one any good. I
Pam King: And an interesting, the irony of set apart, but set apart to be together. So,
we might have kind of a sanctification of a sacred call that’s set apart, but yet we are perhaps set apart for the beloved community.
Lerone Martin: That’s right.
I mean, I think that often, talked about, you know sin being, um a state of separation, right? And that separation both from creator but
also one’s neighbor. And I think for him, you said it really well. It would be about sanctified being set apart, but also set apart to be together.
And I think that’s a really beautiful formulation that fits well with the way that he thought about beloved community.
Pam King: As a scholar of King, how do you think he personally was able to procure or sustain a sense of individual conscience, set them apart in such a way that in depth and like transformative engagement for this idea of beloved community. What, what gave him the strength for that?
Lerone Martin: I’m working on this book right now about his adolescence and his childhood. And he said that one moment that really transformed him was actually outside of the church. It was actually about, going to Connecticut one summer. King, was picking tobacco. he was going to Morehouse and Morehouse had a program for college students to make money in the 40s for tuition.
And he wrote several letters home during this journey, which we have here at the King Institute and we’ve published. And they’re available online as well. And he just says that this experience outside of the South for the first time,
Pam King: Hmm.
Lerone Martin: in Connecticut. Being away from segregated, stores and movie theaters, he wrote about, Oh my God, I’m seeing things I never thought someone my race would see.
He was 15 years old, so he’s going to a movie theater for the first time and sitting in the front row.
Pam King: Hmm.
Lerone Martin: to a nice restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut, and he’s sitting in the main dining room. walking around Hartford, Connecticut and doesn’t see whites only signs or colored only signs.
And he says that experience there in the Connecticut Valley really began his process of dreaming of a beloved
community about a world in which
Pam King: Um,
Lerone Martin: stigmatized or limited simply because of the color of their skin. And he says that summer is when he began to feel an urge within himself, to serve humanity.
And he begins the process from there to shift from, I’m going to be a lawyer. I’m going to work in the courts to tear down segregation, to know I’m going to, I’m going to be a minister and I’m going to work on forming community through my faith.
Pam King: That is so powerful. I love that it took him to be embedded in a community
where he could see an alternative reality,
but that takes such deep root in him and begins to cultivate this moral imagination that he would not have been ignited his community. And that’s it.
I’d love to hear how you think about how that experience like integrated into his identity or became a vision or how that led to such an extraordinary, pivot in his life.
Lerone Martin: Yes, it did. he came home, and his sister reports and his father reports that he was just raving about the freedom that he experienced.
Pam King: Hmm.
Lerone Martin: and also, and these have been lost to history, but for whatever reason, while he was on that farm, all his coworkers they chose him to be the religious leader.
And so every Sunday he had to lead devotion.
And this was the first time he had ever done anything like that. And the friends who were there, don’t remember the sermons, verbatim, they remember the sermons being all about community and helping others and serving others. And as you say, this is the first, the moral imagination comes in.
He also, he was. He was a terrible worker. He,was short. He was maybe five, five, five, six, trying to pick tobacco, plants that were growing to be about six feet tall. So he was removed from working in the tobacco field. And was placed in the kitchen. And while working in the kitchen, he was serving others their food and their meals.
And this is of course, the first time someone like King, who’s from a middle class family, is serving others at home. They had a,domestic, help at home. He would have been always served, but there in Connecticut, he was serving others, serving their food and preaching to them. And I think all of this experience shaped his ideas about service and moved him away from thinking he could only, serve his fellow, his community.
Through the law, I think it helped him realize it could be about serving others through the ministry and serving others through feeding of food and material possessions. So all of this began to change him. He came back from that experience and went to Morehouse. And continued to waver and fight about,maybe being in Connecticut was just a moment.
Maybe that was just a moment and I should focus on law, but he kept on struggling with this. And finally,he went back to Connecticut,during his junior year and that sealed the deal. He came back and said, I’m ready. I’m ready to, I’m ready to go into the ministry. I’m ready to pursue this. And from there, he went from being just Martin Luther King Jr.
to Minister Martin Luther King Jr. and
Pam King: Hmm.
Lerone Martin: Reverend Dr. King.
Pam King: Amazing.
This story about what made young Martin into the Reverend Dr. King made me think of Lerone’s work with young people today, high school and college students at such a formative moment in their intellectual and spiritual journeys. Seeking to inspire and support them in cultivating their own moral imagination and their own dreams.
I’m so
curious, Lerone, to think,
how you think about his journey regards to the young people that you work with today that I know you are eager to form and nurture and grow.
Whether the high school students that I know you’re working with online, one students,
Lerone Martin: or it’s. The Stanford students in your classroom that are all young people in a journey of growing up. Yes.
Pam King: One of the things that’s been so powerful is to watch them as I tell them these stories and they hear about a teenage Martin Luther King Jr. It gives them permission to dream as well. Because they realize you don’t have to be perfect or have it all figured out in order to engage in a perfect work for your community. And it’s been beautiful to see many of them identify with the fact that he Waivers back and forth about his major. They identify with the fact that, at times he’s lazy. they identify with the fact that he was just a teenager in every sense of the word.
hmm.
Lerone Martin: it gives them permission to say, he was like that and he still figured it out, right? And it, I’ve watched it and it’s been beautiful to see that there are times when you will have to make mistakes and decision making that you’ll make, but you learn from them like King did.
Pam King: and so across the board, whether it’s been the Stanford undergraduates or the title one high school students that you mentioned, who are, these are high schools where at least 40 percent of the population is on free or reduced lunch.
Mm.
Lerone Martin: Across the board,I watched the young adults rediscover Martin King. And he’s stripped of the shirt and tie that they often see him in, which seems very buttoned up and very,distant and very old, to, wow, he had similar experiences that I had, and maybe I should have a conversation with him.
I should hear his reflections. And so when they hear his sermons, when they hear his writings, his addresses. They remember, wait, this was a kid who was a lot like me. And yet here he is giving these amazing, beautiful
Pam King: Mm.
Lerone Martin: addresses about democracy and about faith. And I think they are able to see him and hear him in a new way as a result.
Pam King: That’s amazing. I love that. I love your ability and willingness to convey that view, very human, gritty part of Martin Luther King, where it’s so easy to idealize our heroes, which then does end up sanctifying them and setting them apart so that
unreachable. And that seems to exclude us from catching onto that dream or participating in that dream.
And.
Lerone Martin: with you more.
Pam King: You are inviting young people and equipping them to participate in his dream.
Lerone Martin: It’s been a joy to do. and There’s another part of translation, I think, in this part, Pam,that, that is challenging, but a beautiful challenge is that much of King’s
Pam King: Mm
Lerone Martin: dresses and sermons and books, his writing, so much of it is steeped in, biblical tradition, whether it’s, scripture or biblical metaphors or sayings such as let justice roll down like waters and righteousness, like a never flowing stream, right?
That’s from Amos, right?
Pam King: Mm
Lerone Martin: the fact that King is using
Pam King: hmm.
Lerone Martin: references in relationship to America had a power at the time when he was living. When you’re dealing with young adults now who may not know the Bible, they don’t know the references. that brings about a different challenge, but it’s a fun challenge to help students discover ancient texts and ancient narratives and to be able to explain to them, why is it so powerful that he’s using Amos here?
Why is it powerful that he’s using the Exodus story here or there? Or, for my, Stanford students, it’s also powerful to see the way he’s using Plato and Socrates as
So it gets them to want to be curious about the sources upon which King draws from. And that’s a nice educational challenge as well.
And also a challenge for ethical, spiritual, and moral formation.
Pam King: In drawing out the many influences on King, it’s impossible to ignore the centrality of love. Obviously in the beloved community, But Lerone pointed out the Christian roots of one unifying and encompassing love that inspired and captured and motivated King’s political activism and ethical teachings.
I was curious how you might think, based on King’s theological imagination, what he might describe thriving as.
I had that question in the back of my head, then you said, let justice roll down. And I wondered if that might be a definition of thriving for him, but I’d like to hear what you have to
say.
Lerone Martin: Oh, man, that’s a wonderful question. Um,his, his, college president, Benjamin Elijah Mays had a great impact upon King and Mays always would say the love of God and the love of humanity are one love.
Pam King: And so Mays would often say one love. I know we hear that from Bob Marley a lot, but. Benjamin Elijah Mays would say that back in the forties, during, King was a college student in the fifties, during these chapel sermons. So I wonder if that would be it. The love of God and the love of humanity are one love, but that would kind of encompass the community aspect. And I would think the love of humanity would also encompass the justice aspect, that if we’re going to love other human beings, we want to make sure that we see them.
Lerone Martin: thriving and that they are able to live with dignity and respect.
Pam King: I’m just trying to hold space for those two very simple words, one love.
Yeah.
and in a world today where You know, statistics show us that less and less people turn to God for love, or have belief in God, or perhaps have some threads of belief in God, but that doesn’t really come to bear on their life.
In your teaching, in really pluralistic settings,I’m so curious how,
how might you think about this expansive notion of one love a pluralistic setting? It’s like Stanford or nurturing that. Mm.
Lerone Martin: You know I think, I try in my classroom to let my students know,just to let you know who I am. It’s a little bit about where, who I am. I’m a historian. I’m this.
Pam King: mm
Lerone Martin: also a Christian.
Pam King: hmm,
Lerone Martin: but I also am a Christian who recognizes that it’s not my job University to
Pam King: engage in a confessional kind of educational experience.
Lerone Martin: It’s not my job to try to convert students to Christianity, but I do encourage them, right, to have some framework or grounding for their moral and ethical reflection. That we can’t simply just rely on expediency. That whatever is the fastest, best, or new technology, is going to create the kind of community and thriving and beloved community that we all say we want to live in. a university is many things, but one thing that it is a community. And it’s a community where lots of different people from different parts of the globe have to live, work, and play. And if we’re going to be a community, we’ve got to have some type of values and guiding North Star, if you will, to help us through that.
And so I’m very clear about what mine is. And I try to encourage students, both I expose them to voices, especially in my teaching on the civil rights movement that all had their varying frameworks. this past quarter, I taught women of the civil rights movement here at Stanford.
Pam King: Wow.
Lerone Martin: a great class.
We focused on just the women, of the civil rights movement. And the different frameworks for morality and ethics that these women had, many of which were faith based. But I just expose students to these conversations, but also encourage them to find one, that will lead them to thriving, to a beloved community.
And I think that’s how I see my work here, as a teacher, as a guide to helping students discover this within history and then try to apply the lessons of history.
Pam King: to the current moment in their own lives.
Very cute. Very powerful. I love that you’re offering these different frameworks, in an environment where people can in wrestle with them and reflect on them and perhaps even try acting them out. But you’re thinking about one love. in a pluralistic society. I think that’s such a very open posture and such an invitation to not be confessional or judgmental or to be able to share one’s own beliefs. This is how I understand one love, but to invite others into that. And even King,was influenced broadly, obviously by Christian theology, but also nonviolence of Gandhi and Howard Thurman.
how did, how does his sense of spirituality inform this understanding of a very enacted thriving? Thriving for him was not just oh, I’m doing great. Obviously it, had to do with justice and the beloved
Lerone Martin: community, but how did his spirituality inform that? Do you think? spirituality is shaped a great deal, by his mother and his mother was a school teacher, who, because of Georgia state law, when she, became married, she had to leave her teaching position. She could not, you cannot be a married woman and teach. So she was at home, but still teaching her children.
And she also was a trained musician. And I think those two things I think really influenced Martin King in terms of being a teacher
Pam King: Mmm,
Lerone Martin: the musicality of
his voice the musicality of his spirituality where he
Pam King: hmm
Lerone Martin: gospel music. He loved classical music. He took Coretta on a date to hear.
Pam King: mm,
Lerone Martin: symphony in Boston when they were dating.
I think all of this, his mother, music, teaching, I think all of that shaped his spiritual formation. And his father, of course, being a pastor of a church. and this is where I think he picked up the emotive aspects of a Protestant faith. I think all of this kind of goes into this brew that makes, if you will, Martin Luther King Jr.
And I think that we see all of this throughout his life, his willingness to try to teach America about love. That this is not a passive, weak love, right? He often would teach about how the Bible would, in the Greek New Testament, would use different words for love to try to help us understand there is a kind of, romantic love, there’s a kind of love that you wish for a friend, but there’s also a kind of unconditional love, a kind of love where you want what’s best for everyone in your community.
And it was an active love. It wasn’t something that was passive and anemic. It was powerful. And I think all of that, I think, is what shapes his spirituality and why he tried his best to be a preacher and a teacher. And he did it with such musicality in his voice.
Pam King: And he did it, with such reference to America’s founding documents.
Lerone Martin: a wonderful job of weaving in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So, I mean, I say all that to say I really see him, to use another music metaphor, I really see his spirituality in some ways as a jazz man.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: And then I got into Memphis and some began to say the threats of talk about the threats that were out well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now because I’ve been to the mountain top.
I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place, but I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over and I’ve seen. The promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know the night that we as a people will get to the promised land.
So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not. in a man, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Pam King: Really powerful, I can almost feel the studied nature of King, like
constitution, Plato, the prophets, like very
studied man. But yet this, impassioned music, rhythm pulses through his body.
And that powerful combination
of being able to be well thought through and well read, and yet also have this emotional tenor that literally reverberated within people and
somewhat seem to shake them and into action.
And that’s so
powerful and so unique.
Lerone Martin: I just want to say yes. and in the classroom obviously we read a lot, but there’s something often I try to assign purposely
Pam King: Mm.
Lerone Martin: where they have to hear him. Right. because I think you’re right. the musicality of his voice, moves, moves people in a way that people, Both then and now still attest to right about how it reverberated as you stated through their body and All of that.
I think a lot of that comes from mom,
Pam King: .And you also have been a great listener.
A beautiful rhythm that brings a power to your teaching. But I’m curious, given your past with music, like what is the role of music in your life now? Like, where do you find rhythm and where does
that heart come from in your speaking?
Lerone Martin: Oh, man, I appreciate that question. I love music. I find music to be very helpful and spiritual in the sense of You I find in some hip hop
poetry that is beautiful and encourages me to engage in self reflection.
Pam King: I find, in some older gospel music, reminding me of the awesomeness of the creator of God.
And I find, in jazz music, a beautiful mixture. of so many different strands and a beautiful sense of teamwork
Lerone Martin: Mm-Hmm
what encourages me in my own intellectual work, to not just be siloed into one style and only read one thing, only, to only read history, for example, but also to encourage me to read novels, encourage me to, engage in, other,forms of thought, to read theology, to read ethics, to read morality, political science.
So I take a lot of cues from music in my life that, that remind me of who I am as a total person, right? I am, you know a scholar, but I also have a heart, right? I also have a body. I also have emotions and music helps to remind me of that, to get me out of my head and into more into my body. And more into my heart.
Pam King: that’s really powerful coming from a Stanford professor. no, I even think there’s, I don’t think, I know there’s a burgeoning psychology that really speaks to the power of affect and emotion. in, in being whole people and also in the process of meaning making of like how like beliefs or ideals out there, actually become something we’re devoted to or something that gets internalized into our identity and it motivates how we live our lives.
So think
that’s really important to not just, present people with rules and laws, but, that they have the opportunity to interact with them, the emotional salience of them.
in the nonviolent direct action theory of MLK and others in the 20th century, there is very close attention to means and ends.
Means are the path, ends are the destination. In nonviolent campaigns, the means you use must be commensurate to the ends you seek.
So I wanted to hear from Lerone about how the very active direct love of King Gets implemented practically,
and perhaps the key word here is gritty.
It’s the grit. Of withstanding fire hoses on the children’s march from Selma to Montgomery. It’s the grit of withstanding the horrifying slurs at a lunch counter sit in. It’s the grit of keeping that seat on the bus. It’s the grit of enduring unjust imprisonment and burning crosses on your front lawn.
There’s really nothing passive or weak about nonviolent resistance.
and You were talking about how love moves us to action.
and in many ways people are like, oh, nonviolence is passive.
But it’s not, it’s extremely powerful and one has to be extremely proactive, in embodying that love in a way that’s non violent, especially when one is retaliated against. And so I guess my question is, How would you say a king would see non violence as a proactive expression of love?
Lerone Martin: Yes. King would see a love as an action. For him, it’s love in action because the means that you use have to be commensurate or match the ends that you seek.
Pam King: Mm
Lerone Martin: So if King is seeking a beloved community that’s filled with love of self and love of others, you have got to use those same means to achieve that end.
he would see nonviolence as doing that because despite the fact that someone is oppressing you, you still love them, and you refuse to strike them or hurt them because you are seeking a society that is at peace with itself and that has love for self and others. So nonviolent direct action puts that forward.
And campaign for,for peace and justice for King always has to be non violent. And I think part of the reason is that people feel this way is that we see these videos in black and white of these non violent campaigns and we see people being brutalized. And I think that people see that as passive.
See, you’re just standing there and you’re allowing someone to hit you. But. Because of those images, the nation was moved. It moved people from the White House to the farmhouse to change legally in this country how we define citizenship. And people were actively putting their bodies on the line to make a tremendous change.
And political scientists have now, studied this for decades. For more UN videos visit www. un. org And shown about how nonviolent campaigns have been so effective in toppling regimes and toppling,oppressive practices more so than violent campaigns. And I think that we have lost that today.
We see it as passive and weak, but we don’t realize that it forced America to say yes to a civil rights bill and a voting rights bill when Most of America wanted to say no
Pam King: Mm
Lerone Martin: I think that we lose that, that how powerful the nonviolent campaigns that King led and others led actually were in their
time.
Pam King: We close with a deeper look at King’s powerful Letter from a Birmingham Jail, a text Lerone actually reads devotionally as a spiritual practice.
There is a long history of prison letters that change the course of history and call us toward conscience injustice.
And this letter in particular, written by king from prison on April 16th, 1963, is a stirring call to the kind of strength and courage and moral conscience that leads to social justice.
The letter is an outright call to civil disobedience of unjust laws.
He would write, quote, In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist.
as part of a Birmingham campaign to end segregation and get the attention of John F. Kennedy, King was arrested for leading peaceful demonstrations and disobeying a court injunction against public protests. In the span of three days, King penned this famous letter from his cell.
In the margins of a smuggled newspaper in scraps of paper, four months later, he’d be on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, declaring, I have a dream.
for context, Lerone walked me through the steps of a nonviolent campaign before turning to a central passage from the letter from a Birmingham jail.
Pam King: I know another place of inspiration, um, or perhaps orientation or grounding is, Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘s letter from a Birmingham jail.and I’d be interested to hear if there a particular passage or two has stood out over the years or that is particularly moving you today.
Lerone Martin: There is,there’s the letter from Birmingham jail is a letter that King wrote over a process while he was in jail in Birmingham. For, engaging in a public demonstration without a parade permit. He was put in jail for that. And, while he was in jail, he saw in the New York Times and local newspapers, a group of ministers, clergy I should say, Protestant, Catholic, and Jew as well,
Pam King: Hmm.
Lerone Martin: written a letter basically saying, that King should slow down.
He should stop.
Pam King: Hmm.
Lerone Martin: these, the campaign in Birmingham to desegregate the downtown stores was,was causing violence. This nonviolent campaign that King was involved in, they accused him of causing violence and he was moving too fast. So while he was in jail, he began the process on the margins of a newspaper and then from there began writing a letter.
His attorney, Clarence Jones. was coming in to see him, sneaking him a yellow legal notepad in which King was writing on and Clarence Jones was sneaking the letter out, to, King’s colleagues and they were editing the letter and piecing it together. And that became known as the Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which to me is one of the most profound writings.
About what it means to be a person of faith and to, engage in activism and what is required of us if we’re going to engage in that.
Pam King: And
one of the things that he says before I read the portion, one of the things that he says I think is so powerful is that he points out that a nonviolent campaign,has more than one part.
Lerone Martin: And a nonviolent campaign, he says, has four basic steps. And I think people need to hear this because we often think of. We’re going to get together and we’re going to go protest and that’s not how it worked, right? It’s a long process and King says the first part is a collection of facts to determine Whether injustice exists and then after you’ve collected the facts to determine it There’s an injustice King says you then go to negotiation and I think that’s important You don’t just simply start protesting you actually talk to someone who you disagree with You Or someone who you feel is wrong.
You actually speak to them, and you try to go through a period of negotiation. They did that in Birmingham. Then, this is key, this is the religious part, once you decide negotiations break down and you’re going to protest, then you go through a process of self purification. King says that this is where you have to begin to engage in self reflection, to be committed to non violence, and actually rehearse it.
They had workshops where people were rehearsing being hit and being spat upon and having water and food thrown on them so they could rehearse and cultivate those muscles so that they would not want to fight back, right? that was an important part of the campaign. And then finally, of course, is direct action, is what King says.
Then you engage into the nonviolent direct action campaign. But one of my favorite parts of the letter from Birmingham Jail is where King is talking about time. And I’m just going to read, what he says. He writes in the letter from Birmingham Jail. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas.
He writes, quote, All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2, 000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth. King says, Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills.
Actually, time itself is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more, I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. And that’s probably one of my favorite parts, just at this point in my life, because it’s about this idea of progress.
I live in Silicon Valley, and this idea that progress is somehow always going to lead us to a beloved community, or somehow is going to alleviate all social ills, is just wrong. People of goodwill, have to use time constructively if we’re going to create a beloved community, and we can’t expect that it’s just going to roll in on the wheels of inevitability.
But we have to be constructive to make it happen.
Pam King: That is so powerful. And, earlier you talked about people rushing, and trying to get places, and doing things quickly, and innovation. and the importance of that. of waiting and being patient and training, but also not waiting too long. there is a, patience can turn into passivity. and that may not be the call.
So how do you discern when you’re
to be patient
or that’s becoming passive?
Lerone Martin: Mm.I think we have to recognize whatever we find ourselves struggling with, most of these ills, whether they’re personal or social, didn’t happen overnight. And they probably have more than one cause. So I think for me, I think about this, that if it didn’t happen overnight, it may not be solved overnight. And it may require multiple sectors or multiple people or multiple groups, multiple solutions to come together. And so I think as long as you are engaged in a struggle that is deliberate, I think that you will find it rewarding because you are constantly every day committing yourself to making progress, recognizing that it may not happen today, right?
it may not happen tomorrow, but you’re going to continue in the, along, along the journey. And I think that’s what’s most important, is to continue along the journey in the struggle.
Pam King: I appreciate that throughout our interview, you have named that’s not a journey or struggle that is alone, but that is one that is connected
Within for others and God, I’d love to ask, how do we today live out this very important letter that was written in
1963, what are the practices that we need to live out the vision of King’s letter?
Lerone Martin: I think I would first say, try to make a devotional habit of reading it, first and foremost
Pam King: hmm.
Lerone Martin: to read the entire letter, make it a form,a site of meditation,
Pam King: Mm.
Lerone Martin: a side of prayer. And, that’s the first point, I think. And in doing that, you’ll discover why non-violence. is so important to King and why it can be effective, much more effective, but harder than engaging in a violent action.
I think from there, I think it’s so important to recognize what I just read about the importance of time, not being fooled into thinking that things would just get better with time.
Pam King: I think that will allow us to not rest easy, not to believe that things would just get better, but there’s actually a possibility that community can revert and go back, right?
Lerone Martin: also the difference where King talks about laws in the letter from Birmingham jail between just laws and unjust laws and how we recognize the difference. And one way he says in this letter that I think is good for us in 2021, in the 2020s. Is to say that, a law that does not lift up human personality. a law that is not conducive to human thriving,
Pam King: All human thriving.
Lerone Martin: All human thriving.
That’s right. That is an unjust law.
Pam King: law that King would argue that we should have a moral obligation to break. But if we break it, we do it nonviolently, and we do it openly. And here’s the part that a lot of my college students miss out on.
Lerone Martin: And you do it willingly, to willingly pay the price of breaking the law. You do it openly, nonviolently, and you willingly pay the consequences. Because you believe that form of suffering, that form of protest, will awaken your community. to the fact that this is an unjust law that doesn’t allow for all human thriving. I think that’s what we can learn from the letter from Birmingham jail. that’s how we can honor the legacy of this wonderful civil rights movement and how we can continue to, live in that tradition today.
Pam King: you know, I believe we’re in a world today in this very pluralistic world where we are very individually divorced from sacred texts, whether it’s,
a religious text or in this text,
the very fiber of this nonviolent social justice movement, but words are so powerful and at least for the human brain, like being rooted, knowing your beliefs, understanding the texts that ground you is a really important part of life.
But many young people are raised today without, a sacred text or without
Lerone Martin: Yeah.
Pam King: I just, I think that’s really. Amazing to hear the power of that text your life. And yet you also said just because you know what you believe or you think of law is wrong, there’s this building the muscles,
how do we cultivate courage, discipline and find the will
Lerone Martin: Yeah.
Pam King: the potentially huge sacrifice of nonviolence.
Lerone Martin: I think I’m a firm believer in that courage is something that has to be cultivated. It has to become a habit. And I think that you know it’s not just a one time act, and I think discipline is another thing, Raising a teenager right now, man. And I’m often talking about cultivating better habits.
And I think all of these things, they don’t happen overnight. starts with small things. It can be cultivating the habit of courage
Pam King: mm Mm, mm,
Lerone Martin: a friend who maybe said something that hurt your feelings. Instead of just letting it go, actually having the courage to articulate it and say, the other day when you said this, you kind of hurt my feelings.
That is cultivating a habit of courage that you are no longer going to allow certain things to slide. You are no longer going to allow things to happen. You’re cultivating a habit of speaking truth. That has to be cultivated, right? And, but with that, love has to be cultivated, right? we can’t be rolling around just telling people off, right?
Like just, that’s also not healthy. So we also have to, with that, cultivate the habit of love. And I think the King Tries to do that here in the letter from Birmingham Jail when you go through this process of self purification you go through this process of seeking to the habit of loving others Despite of what’s happening Loving our enemies loving our God and loving our neighbor I think all of this is something that it has to be cultivated every single day and Whether that’s through prayer meditation, whatever it is your North Star you This is something that has to be done every day
Pam King: earlier you said King changed how we define citizenship. And what I’m hearing you say is that citizens today need courage compassion and love. and discipline So King’s final book, where do we go from here?
Lerone Martin: Yeah.
Pam King: Chaos or community? That is a question for this moment from my perspective.
And in that book, he also articulates, a path towards spiritual life as opposed to spiritual death.
And, Lerone, what is the path forward from here to spiritual life and towards community or chaos?
Lerone Martin: You know I really do think what we’ve lost and what we need to rediscover is cultivating it. This type of values and virtue, and it needs to be something that is done, not just behind closed doors, but in public. And unfortunately, we’re not going to see that a whole lot from our public officials on a national scale.
Pam King: It’s going to take all of us and faith communities and nonprofit organizations to begin to
hmm.
Lerone Martin: erect a kind of civic virtue. to rediscover people like Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin Luther King Jr. And the list goes on and on who challenged us to have a civic virtue. We’ve got to, bring that back into our politics and to our homes.
unfortunately, faith communities and especially Protestant churches. I’ve unfortunately fallen prey to the temptation of a kind of pragmatism, right, that whatever is going to help us achieve our ends, our goals, we’re going to do it. Even if it means, being quiet about certain types of,immoralities, we’ve got to move away from that and really rediscover the fact that our main, our means have to be commensurate with the ends that we seek.
So, if we seek a society that is virtuous, that is beloved, we’ve got to be virtuous and beloved in,seeking that and going after that and creating that. And I think the way forward is for faith communities, non profit organizations to really begin to cultivate a kind of civic virtue.
And it starts with faith communities practicing it out loud and living it out loud and not being so identified. with a pragmatism or amoral pragmatism, but actually virtue and values, right? That stands for human beings, all human beings being able to thrive. I think that’s the way forward.
Pam King: It sounds like
the hard work of civic virtue and virtue development that us to pursue a just society so that all persons can thrive.
Lerone Martin: absolutely. Amen.
Pam King: Thank you so much. That was so rich. I’m so blessed. I have much to consider and on
Lerone Martin: I appreciate the opportunity to be with you and have this discussion. It means a lot to me, and my own work and sharpening my own ideal. So thank you.
Pam King: Lerone Martin’s scholarship and leadership invites us to pursue life as active members of the beloved community, commending Martin Luther King Jr. as an exemplar of truly living with and for others.
The key takeaways that I will carry with me from this conversation are the following.
For justice to roll down, we need to see our interdependence, interconnectedness, and live into the unity of one love.
There’s a difference between just and unjust laws. The challenge is in cultivating the moral sense to tell the difference and the courage to do something about injustice.
Furthermore, the civil disobedience of MLK was grounded in the wisdom of community, accountability, and integrity.
Courage and love are deeply connected. and work together to guide us toward love of neighbor, stranger, and enemy.
And finally,
Pursuing justice takes true grit and agency that emerges from deep character formation, spiritual connection, and an unwavering commitment to realizing the beloved community
With & For is a production of The Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. For more information, visit our website, thethrivecenter.org, where you’ll find all sorts of resources to support your pursuit of wholeness and a life of thriving on purpose. I am so grateful to the staff and fellows of the Thrive Center and our With & For podcast team.
Jill Westbrook is our senior director and producer. Lauren Kim is our operations manager. Wren Jeurgensen is our social media graphic designer. Evan Rosa is our consulting producer. And special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy.
I’m your host, Dr. Pam King. Thank you for listening.
Dr. Lerone Martin
Dr. Lerone Martin is the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor in Religious Studies, and the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. He’s a historian of 20th-century religion and a cultural commentator. He’s written books about White Christian Nationalism in the FBI, as well as the making of modern African American Christianity—as well as a book about MLK’s adolescence and his early sense of vocation and calling. He stays deeply connected to teaching and community service, teaching the “Why College?” freshman course at Stanford, inspiring underserved high school students in Los Angeles and St. Louis, and developing programming and teaching courses for the incarcerated. Visit the King Institute online at kinginstitute.stanford.edu or follow him on X @DirectorMLK (https://x.com/DirectorMLK).
Episode Summary
To realize MLK’s vision of a Beloved Community, we’re all called to live from a moral conscience that interconnects and permeates society with justice and peace.
Working at the intersection of politics, religion, and education, Dr. Lerone Martin of Stanford University is carrying forward the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a social and historical context desperately in need of renewed moral imagination, connection across racial and economic divides, and the transformative power of love.
In this conversation with Lerone Martin, we discuss:
– How his spirituality integrates with the meaning of education and formation
– The legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., his vision of thriving and justice, and the relevance of his life and writings for the contemporary world
– The role of emotion and affect and music in Christian faith and spirituality
– We dive into the core elements of MLK’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
– We explore the joint power of courage and love in non-violent action
– We look at practical insights about the kind of morality that leads to thriving,
– And we close by asking the question posed in Martin Luther King’s final book, ‘Where do we go from here’?
Show Notes
- The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute
- Lerone Martin’s spiritual background and early Pentecostal faith, concerned with personal morality
- Teaching and Preaching
- “Why College?” Course at Stanford University
- Individual Conscience and Life in the Beloved Community
- Josiah Royce (1913) coined the term “Beloved Community”
- Lerone Martin on: What is thriving?
- Connections to community
- Thriving as living out your vocation, love God, neighbor, and self
- Set apart for something
- “Set apart for the beloved community.”
- What gave MLK his strength and resilience?
- MLK’s adolescence and early sense of vocation for ministry, pastoral service, and leadership
- Working in a Hartford, Connecticut kitchen to serve others and catch a vision for Beloved Community
- The rediscovery and inspiration of MLK on young people today
- References to Old Testament scripture in civil rights language
- Centrality of “One Love” in MLK’s political activism
- “Let justice roll down!”
- Benjamin Elijah Mays: The love of God and love of humanity are one love.”
- Thriving and living with dignity and respect
- One love in a pluralistic setting
- “We can’t just rely on expediency.”
- Values and guiding North Star for morality
- Teaching as a guide for students
- His spirituality was shaped by his mother’s moral and cultural formation and his father’s ministry.
- MLK and music
- “The musicality of his voice.”
- Spirituality as a jazz man
- “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” (Delivered by MLK in Memphis on April 3, 1968, a day before his assassination)
- “I’ve seen the Promised land.”
- “The musicality of his voice moves people.”
- What is the role of music in Lerone Martin’s life: hip hop poetry, awe in gospel music, and improvisation and teamwork in jazz
- “Music reminds me to be in my body.”
- Non-violent direct action theory
- The grit of practitioners of non-violent resistance
- “ There's really nothing passive or weak about non-violent resistance.”
- “ King would see a love as an action. For him, it's love in action because the means that you use have to be commensurate or match the ends that you seek.”
- Despite the fact that someone’s oppressing you, you still love them.”
- Changing how we define citizenship
- The effectiveness of non-violent campaigns
- “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (April 16, 1963)
- “In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”
- The four steps of a non-violent campaign: (1) collection of facts, (2) negotiation, dialogue, disagreement, or communication, (3) self-purification and self-reflection to cultivate resilience, and (4) then direct action.
- When does patience become passivity?
- How do we live out “Letter from Birmingham Jail”?
- Read it regularly, recognize the difference between just and unjust laws
- Practice civil disobedience, but willingly, openly, and non-violently
- The power of sacred texts
- Cultivating the will to do justice, via love, courage, and discipline
- Where Do We Go from Here?: Chaos or Community?
- A path toward spiritual life or spiritual death?
- Cultivating civic virtue, bringing it back into our politics and our homes
- “Means must become commensurate to the ends we seek.”
- Virtue and values
- Pam King’s Key Takeaways
- For justice to roll down, we need to see our interdependence, interconnectedness, and live into the unity of One Love.
- There’s a difference between just and unjust laws, the challenge is in cultivating the moral sense to tell the difference, and the courage to do something about injustice.
- Furthermore, the civil disobedience of MLK was grounded in the wisdom of community, accountability, and integrity.
- Courage and love are deeply connected, and work together to guide us toward love of neighbor, stranger, and enemy.
- Pursuing justice takes true grit and an agency that emerges from deep character formation, spiritual connection, and an unwavering commitment to realizing the beloved community.
About the Thrive Center
- Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
- Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
- Follow us on X @thrivecenter
- Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter
About Dr. Pam King
Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.About With & For
- Host: Pam King
- Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
- Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
- Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
- Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa
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