Honor Martin Luther King, and Justice Antonin Scalia, by Returning America to Its Christian Foundation of Brotherhood and Love

TODAY AS WE CELEBRATE THE LIFE OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., THERE IS A LOT THAT REMINDS US OF HIS CHRISTIAN MESSAGE. The 1960s civil rights movement that was led by Martin Luther King and America's major civil rights leaders was a nonviolent war against racial segregation. Dr. King emphasized their Christian belief that love is stronger than hate. We would do well to think about that today, in 2019, as we remember MLK. In place of the love and nonviolence of Dr. King, we see those who favor identity politics cynically using race not for brotherhood and peace but to divide and kill people. Some like to portray Dr. King as a communist militant or a soft, anemic anachronism. I have no way to judge those accusations. But, I can say that Dr. King accomplished work that needed to be done in order to bring racial peace to America. • That makes MLK a a great American leader, writes Dr. Ben Voth, "true to the civic character of a nation that has done more to unite humanity beyond ethnic lines than any other nation present or past." Dr. Voth is an associate professor of corporate communication and public affairs and director of speech and debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He has published three academic books about debate, including James Farmer Jr. : The Great Debater, about one of the four major Civil Rights leaders who worked alongside King and created the nonviolent direct action techniques used by the movement. • Dr. Voth says that Martin Luther King understood American idealism and knew that cynicism cannot bring reform or human improvement : "In his hallmark speech, "I Have a Dream," Dr. King told us that we should be aiming for a culture that judges people on the basis of the 'content of their character' and 'not the color of their skin.' America's current charges of 'white privilege' and DNA tests to prove political superiority are profound attacks on Dr. King's dream." • Dr. Ben Voth reminds us that : "If one is working for a just society, he should use just methods in bringing about that society. If one is working for the goal of an integrated society, then he must seek to work with integration as a fact as he moves toward that....I think this is what Jesus meant when he said to love your enemies. And I'm so happy he didn't say to like your enemies. I must confess that there are some people pretty difficult to like. But Jesus said love them, and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, creative goodwill for all men -- when you stand up against the evil system and yet understand the perpetrator of that evil system. King theologically believed in an integrated society and that stands, as a challenge to our re-segregationist impulses to judge all people on the basis of race. Moreover, the transcendent practice of love stands in contrast to our angry discourse pervading all of our political conversations. Love as a political practice is largely unknown in 21st-century politics, as we have grown more secular and selfish. In our present time, the remembrance of King can be accomplished by challenging the cynical reactionary use of the term 'racist.' Our intellectual culture views the term 'racist' as a political tool for enforcing blue privilege and attacking Republican political leadership in defense of Democratic political leadership. President Trump is falsely said to be in alliance with the KKK, white supremacists, and white nationalists. The use of this language by the media elevates these groups and gives them power. Pretending to see an alliance legitimizes those who would never have such a platform. Covering up profound racism in the Democratic Party as seen by President Woodrow Wilson, President Franklin Roosevelt, and even Hillary Clinton, only reduces the real problem of racism to a political tool. King sought to redeem his most hardened racist adversaries. Today's political leaders seek character assassination through the charge of racism. This is neither fitting nor honoring to King. This holiday must become a true honor to a leader who deserves this much from us." • In American Thinker on Monday, Simon de Hundehutte put it this way : "Barack Obama's nomination and subsequent two terms in office ushered in the worst kind of racism : acceptable racism. It's okay now to champion skin-color over character (for one of the major parties, at least). And it's okay to demand diversity, as long as it's diversity of, most notably, skin color and sexual preference, not diversity of ideas. True racism has gone unchallenged in almost every area of politics, academia, the culture, and unfortunately, the church. Christians have become phobaphobic, afraid to challenge the advance from the aggressive left because they will be called all sorts of 'phobic' -- homophobic, Islamaphobic, transphobic -- plus some phobics yet to be invented. Racists are boldly making their accusations, and no one seems to be challenging them. Not long ago, philosophy professor George Yancy was speaking at Wheaton College, a Christian college in Illinois, and he boldly proclaimed to the students and faculty in the audience that all white people are racist who have all profited from racism. Did no one tell him that his statement was racist and that he himself is a racist? Think of it like this : Yancy is a 400-pound obese person telling a guy ten pounds overweight that he needs to go on a diet. Here's another way to look at it, Professor Yancy: There are plenty of racists in America today and, yes, some of them are white. It's not true that the answer to the movement 'Black Lives Matter' is that 'All Lives Matter.' 'All' is too general and impersonal of a statement. The Declaration of Independence says that 'all men are created equal,' which is what the Bible also tells us. Each individual person is unique, created in the image of a loving God. So, it's better to say, 'Individual Lives Matter.' And since each person is unique, each is created equal; therefore, no person should ever be referred to as a 'minority.' Minor to whom? If you call someone a minority you are raising your status above theirs. If each person is a 'majority of one' because of their uniqueness -- not better or worse in worth and human dignity -- then true diversity is defined as any two, three or more people in any gathering. They can be any color, have any ideas, anything. You don't need representation by groups that have been described as 'minorities.' So, Reverend King’s dream was not realized with the election of a black man to the presidency. With Obama’s election (and, sadly, re-election), Americans voted for their own punishment for the national sin of acceptable racism. Will we wake up as a nation and color-correct so that the future can be based on a person’s individual integrity? Can and will that happen? I guess I can dream." • • • RUSSIA AND CHRISTIANITY. The Central Bank of Russia reported purchasing 8.5 million troy ounces of gold in the period from January-November 2018. With its 67.6 million ounces of gold Russia is now the world’s fifth largest holder behind the US, Germany, France and Italy. China dropped to sixth place as it reported an increase in gold reserves just once in more than two years – to 59.6 million ounces in December 2018 from 59.2 million ounces in October 2016. David Knight says studying gold can be a powerful indicator of geopolitical activity. Industry sources told Reuters that Western sanctions against Russia lifted the country’s gold buying to record highs in 2018. One of the reasons Russia’s Central Bank was betting on the yellow metal was because it could not be frozen or blacklisted, sources explained. Russia is the world’s third largest gold producer, and it boosted its 2017 gold output by 6%, according to data from Russia’s Finance Ministry. • BUT, something else is happening in Russia. American Thinker's Stephen Ryan wrote on Monday that : "After the Soviet Union's collapse, the conventional wisdom was that Russia would become an inconsequential, backward nation easily ignored by the developed world. But somehow it didn't work out that way....A greater mystery than Russia's newfound political prominence is Russia's sudden role as the world's leading defender of Christianity. It seems inconceivable that former KGB operative Vladimir Putin now chastises Western nations for abandoning their Christian roots. Putin says : 'The people in the West are actually ashamed of their religious affiliation and are indeed frightened to speak about them. Christian holidays and celebrations are abolished or neutrally renamed as if they were ashamed of those Christian holidays. With this method one hides away the deeper moral value of theses celebrations. And those countries try to force this model onto other countries, globally. I am deeply convinced that this is a direct way to the degradation and primitivization of culture. This leads to a deeper demographic and moral crisis in the West.' " • Ryan says that Putin has not only talked the talk of defending Christianity; he has backed up his talk with military intervention : "Russia has repeatedly made the assertion that his country's move into Syria to support the embattled government was, in part, motivated to protect Christians sects who were victims of genocide at the hands of ISIS. The disturbing irony of the spiritual awakening in Russia is the sudden embrace of religious bigotry by United States media and many powerful members of Congress who represent this country with the motto 'In God We Trust.' 'The dogma lives loudly within you,' opined Senator Feinstein, unhappy that the person she was speaking to was Catholic. Senator Kamala Harris went in for her own kill shot by expressing her outrage toward a judicial nominee for being a member of a Catholic volunteer organization that would dare to have religious beliefs. This is Bolshevism -- bigotry, plain and simple. Left-leaning intellectuals in this country would scoff and such labels -- they are the 'tolerants,' after all, the ones with those awful neighborhood signs about 'welcoming all' -- but then so did members of the Russian Revolution, who had great slogans as well before they started killing priests and blowing up churches. Today, the United States government is taking away religious freedoms and moving forward into the future with a toxic relationship with people of faith. Major corporations have gathered their torches and pitchforks alongside government and joined the rebellion. Facebook censors images of the crucifix; TV hosts call Christianity a 'mental disorder' and everybody laughs; major universities hold classes mocking Christianity with topics like 'Christian privilege.' Pro-life organizations are labeled as 'hate groups.' " • Ryan tells us that : "In contrast, the Russian government is funding the restoration of Orthodox churches with public dollars. Russian Orthodox bishops are regularly seen at military installations conducting religious ceremonies, chanting prayers, carrying icons of the Virgin Mary, and madly tossing holy water everywhere. At a ceremony at the opening of a new Russian Orthodox cathedral, Putin said, 'It is impossible to imagine Russia without Christianity.' The Christian renewal taking place in Russia is a real event with incalculable geopolitical consequences, so it is imperative that USA policymakers understand Russia's total commitment to defending its culture, a culture that begins with Russians' belief that Christianity is the foundation of their country." • President Putin two weeks ago expressed his outrage with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for interfering in a major dispute between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Russian Church. Pompeo had said, "This political move is not good news for religious freedom. This is a clear and flagrant violation of freedom of religion. The split could turn into a heavy dispute, if not bloodshed. " In July of last year, at a ceremony celebrating the 1,030th anniversary of the [Russian] adoption of Christianity, Putin said : "Christianity was the starting point for the formation and development of Russian statehood." • Stephen Ryan sees this as an inevitable clash between two superpowers, "one spiritual, the other secular. Ominously, it seems that Russia and the United States are on some inevitable path toward conflict guided by an invisible, sinister force determined to usher in the apocalypse." • • • WHAT WOULD MLK SEE FOR THE FUTURE? Especially on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we might see other possibilities in the state-blessed Christianity of Russia and the state-imposed secularity of the United States. MLK saw another America. • On November 4, 1956, Dr. King delivered a sermon to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. The sermon was in the form of a letter from St. Paul to American Christians. Dr. King began his sermon this way : "I would like to share with you an imaginary letter from the pen of the Apostle Paul. The postmark reveals that it comes from the city of Ephesus. After opening the letter I discovered that it was written in Greek rather than English. At the top of the first page was this request : 'Please read to your congregation as soon as possible, and then pass on to the other churches.' For several weeks I have worked assiduously with the translation. At times it has been difficult, but now I think I have deciphered its true meaning. May I hasten to say that if in presenting this letter the contents sound strangely Kingian instead of Paulinian, attribute it to my lack of complete objectivity rather than Paul's lack of clarity. It is miraculous, indeed, that the Apostle Paul should be writing a letter to you and to me nearly 1900 years after his last letter appeared in the New Testament...I can imagine the Apostle Paul writing a letter to American Christians in 1956 AD. And here is the letter as it stands before me." • MLK then read the letter, and here are excerpts : "I, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to you who are in America, Grace be unto you, and peace from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere. So in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France. I have also heard of your skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward. I have heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases, and thereby prolonged your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being. All of that is marvelous. You can do so many things in your day that I could not do in the Greco-Roman world of my day....You have made tremendous strides in the area of scientific and technological development. But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet Thoreau used to talk about 'improved means to an unimproved end.' How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances. 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. But American Christians, I must say to you as I said to the Roman Christians years ago, 'Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.' Or, as I said to the Phillipian Christians, 'Ye are a colony of heaven.' This means that although you live in the colony of time, your ultimate allegiance is to the empire of eternity. You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and eternity; both in heaven and earth. Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God's will, it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God....I am afraid that many among you are more concerned about making a living than making a life. You are prone to judge the success of your profession by the index of your salary and the size of the wheel base on your automobile, rather than the quality of your service to humanity....You can work within the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth. You can use your powerful economic resources to wipe poverty from the face of the earth. God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deepening poverty. God intends for all of his children to have the basic necessities of life, and he has left in this universe 'enough and to spare' for that purpose. So I call upon you to bridge the gulf between abject poverty and superfluous wealth....Let me rush on to say something about the church. Americans, I must remind you, as I have said to so many others, that the church is the Body of Christ. So when the church is true to its nature it knows neither division nor disunity. But I am disturbed about what you are doing to the Body of Christ. They tell me that in America you have within Protestantism more than two hundred and fifty six denominations. The tragedy is not so much that you have such a multiplicity of denominations, but that most of them are warring against each other with a claim to absolute truth. This narrow sectarianism is destroying the unity of the Body of Christ. You must come to see that God is neither a Baptist nor a Methodist; He is neither a Presbyterian nor a Episcopalian. God is bigger than all of our denominations. If you are to be true witnesses for Christ, you must come to see that, America. But I must not stop with a criticism of Protestantism. I am disturbed about Roman Catholicism. This church stands before the world with its pomp and power, insisting that it possesses the only truth. It incorporates an arrogance that becomes a dangerous spiritual arrogance....There is another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church. You have a white church and you have a Negro church. You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 on Sunday morning to sing 'All Hail the Power of Jesus Name' and 'Dear Lord and Father of all Mankind,' you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the entertaining world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church. How appalling that is....I must say to you as I have said to so many Christians before, that in Christ 'there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.' Moreover, I must reiterate the words that I uttered on Mars Hill: 'God that made the world and all things therein...hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.' So Americans, I must urge you to get rid of every aspect of segregation....Segregation is a blatant denial of the unity which we all have in Christ....The underlying philosophy of Christianity is diametrically opposed to the underlying philosophy of segregation, and all the dialectics of the logicians cannot make them lie down together....May I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against this evil. Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter. As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. Always avoid violence. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. In your struggle for justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as yourself. Let him know that the festering sore of segregation debilitates the white man as well as the Negro. With this attitude you will be able to keep your struggle on high Christian standards....I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may....So the greatest of all virtues is love. It is here that we find the true meaning of the Christian faith. This is at bottom the meaning of the cross. The great event on Calvary signifies more than a meaningless drama that took place on the stage of history. It is a telescope through which we look out into the long vista of eternity and see the love of God breaking forth into time. It is an eternal reminder to a power drunk generation that love is most durable power in the world, and that it is at bottom the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. Only through achieving this love can you expect to matriculate into the university of eternal life. I must say good-bye now. I hope this letter will find you strong in the faith. It is probable that I will not get to see you in America, but I will meet you in God's eternity. And now unto him who is able to keep us from falling, and lift us from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, from the midnight of desperation to the daybreak of joy, to him be power and authority, forever and ever. Amen." You can read the entire sermon at < https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/publications/knock-midnight-inspiration-great-sermons-reverend-martin-luther-king-jr-1 >. It is entirely worth the tilme to read it. • • • DEAR READERS, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was speaking 63 years ago. But, his words ring true today. • Another American spoke of Christianity in America for our generation -- Justice Antonin Scalia. We could easily call Justice Scalia the Christian Conservative. On October 1, 2014, the Washington Times published an article about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia telling his audience at Colorado Christian University that secularists are wrong when they argue that the Constitution requires religious references to be banished from the public square. He told them that a battle is underway over whether to allow religion in public life, from referencing God in the Pledge of Allegiance to holding prayers before city hall meetings : “I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true : that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion. That’s a possible way to run a political system. The Europeans run it that way. And if the American people want to do it, I suppose they can enact that by statute. But to say that’s what the Constitution requires is utterly absurd.” Justice Scalia said that even President Thomas Jefferson, who’s credited with creating the concept of separation of church and state, wrote in the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom that, “God who made the mind of man made it free." Justice Scalia told his audience : "We do him [God] honor in our pledge of allegiance, in all our public ceremonies. There’s nothing wrong with that. It is in the best of American traditions, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I think we have to fight that tendency of the secularists to impose secularism on all of us through the Constitution....Our [the court‘s] latest take on the subject, which is quite different from previous takes, is that the state must be neutral, not only between religions, but between religion and nonreligion. That’s just a lie. Where do you get the notion that this is all unconstitutional? You can only believe that if you believe in a morphing Constitution.” He noted that references to God by government officials are already forbidden in many European countries, thanks to a widespread policy of secularism. “There are those who would have us adopt that rule for America, and if they want us to adopt that rule, let’s put it to a vote,” Justice Scalia said. “But they want to do it through the Supreme Court. And that is simply not what our Constitution has ever meant.” • Will the early groundwork of Martin Luther King Jr. to keep America Christian and the current effort of Vladimir Putin to put Christianity back into the center of Russian life finally lead Americans to realize that without Christian principles as guidance, America is doomed to travel a secular road to political damnation. Forcing religion on others is not constitutional. Allowing Christian ethics and morality to govern the actions of American individuals and communities is perfectly in harmony with the Founders' vision. If Americans do not recapture the initiative and, as the French say, put the church back in the middle of the village square, nothing will save the Republic from its radical atheist tormentors. Nobody could agree with that more than did Justice Antonin Scalia and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.