gets an earful from the growing tide of folks saying \u2018wait a minute.\u2019<\/a> \u00a0He does link to Father Barron, who also has much glory and honor and praise to give to Dr. King. \u00a0I know, in the past I\u2019ve been somewhat harsh on my appraisals, not so much of Rev. King, but of the god worship directed at him. \u00a0As one who worked with some inner city missions in my ministry days, and came across many African American ministers of a\u00a0variety\u00a0of stripes, my starry-eyed view of the post-Civil Rights era was dimmed. \u00a0I used to think it was a holdover of racists white ideology to think there were\u00a0equivalents\u00a0in the Black community to racist white guys. But more than once I ran into Blacks who held more hatred for whites than\u00a0Khrushchev\u00a0had for shoes. \u00a0Not all were that way of course, but enough that it was beyond a\u00a0negligible\u00a0number.\u00a0Which\u00a0made me wonder what part of King\u2019s message they actually followed. \u00a0What I noticed was an almost propensity for many to lean more toward\u00a0Malcolm\u00a0X than King\u2019s message, all the while flaunting King as the end all to everything.<\/p>\nPlus, I just happened to be of that particular generation that was old enough to remember the death rattle of pre-Boomer liberalism, and young enough to see the emergence in full force of our post-Christian, post-traditional culture. \u00a0So growing up, I listened to more\u00a0than\u00a0one teacher or professor draw a thick line between hip, enlightened progressives who were all about the brave new world and the backward thinking, hayseed hicks and bigots and dolts who did such quaint and mindless things like, you know, venerating old dead people. \u00a0I can remember lectures in which the statues of\u00a0Jefferson\u00a0and Lincoln and the Washington\u00a0Monument\u00a0were just evidence of how low and pathetic the old way was, and why it was time to break the chains of simple\u00a0minds\u00a0and small thinking.<\/p>\n
So naturally it came as quite a shock\u00a0when\u00a0the issue of a national holiday for Dr. King came up, and I noticed many who had mocked President\u2019s day and\u00a0ridiculed\u00a0the\u00a0celebration\u00a0of other traditional heroes were the first to line up and demand unqualified official veneration of Dr. King. \u00a0I also noticed the turmoil and vitriol that\u00a0accompanied\u00a0the\u00a0debate\u00a0 as states that didn\u2019t want to follow suit were threatened, and\u00a0districts\u00a0that questioned adding another day off of school were called racist and\u00a0summarily\u00a0smacked down in the name of this new tolerance.<\/p>\n
Again, the irony being that this sort of \u2018we\u2019re beautiful, you\u2019re evil\u2019 seemed like so many things that weren\u2019t based on Dr. King\u2019s\u00a0teachings. \u00a0I know, Dr. King was a complex person, as all great men\u00a0and\u00a0women are. \u00a0As all not-so-great men and women are. \u00a0Some of his tactics have been questioned\u00a0in recent years. \u00a0In the secular world, some younger atheists are meeting the\u00a0challenge\u00a0of \u2018what about Dr. King\u2019, when stating religious people never do good, by trashing Dr. King. \u00a0Others have now begun to look at certain potential\u00a0missteps\u00a0on the part of the good Reverend. <\/p>\n
For me, even if he turns out to be the scum of the earth, and his holiday reduced to a time for furniture sales, what he did will still be noteworthy. \u00a0But not for what it, and the holiday celebrating it, became. \u00a0To me, it is noteworthy to remind ourselves that no matter how noble the cause, causes are taken up by flawed people, and almost\u00a0inevitably\u00a0screwed up by their flawed followers. \u00a0And yet, we still need to remember the better parts of what was accomplished. \u00a0We\u00a0need\u00a0to remember the good that Dr. King accomplished and focus on that, without the need for starry eyed hero worship or just using it as a prop for less King-like tactics. \u00a0And, to be\u00a0consistent\u00a0 it might be time to start applying the lesson to other people and\u00a0movements\u00a0as well. \u00a0Perhaps like those other dead guys like Jefferson, Washington, and various former heroes of our old, simple nation, if not\u00a0applying\u00a0this principle to the nation itself.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
And gets an earful from the growing tide of folks saying \u2018wait a minute.\u2019 \u00a0He does link to Father Barron, who also has much glory and honor and praise to give to Dr. King. \u00a0I know, in the past I\u2019ve been somewhat harsh on my appraisals, not so much of Rev. King, but of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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