Reverend Martin Luther King on Christian Activism

"Expressing God's Love in a Whole New Kind of Way"

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. on Christian Activism
Composed by Church of the Divide | Jan., 2006

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that Christians must actively advance the kingdom of God by presenting their bodies to Him, for His service. Reverend King warned the cowardly Christians and pastors of his day that “The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”
Rev. King said that “Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God.”
Rev. King strongly promoted Christian activism - something he called “direct action”. King explains direct action as a means “whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community.” His rationale was that “[n]onviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word ‘tension.’ I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”
“The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation…Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.”
“My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain [in] civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure.”
“For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’”

So “stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, stand up for truth. ‘And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.’” –Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.