Often through the years when I have found myself experiencing pushback from those telling me to prioritize unity over speaking out for what is right and for those being harmed, I have found comfort in Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It’s a letter I return to almost annually in my own justice work with faith communities today. King’s words in 1963 remain relevant and challenging in my life, encouraging me when I’m faced with my fear of speaking out and when I’m tempted to embrace what King names a “negative peace.”
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This is Part 2 of When Justice Means Division
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
He later calls the agents seeking positive peace “nonviolent gadflies”:
“Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Being a nonviolent gadfly reminds me of Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Being a peacemaker is not the same as being a peacekeeper. Peacekeepers are primarily motivated to keep King’s “negative peace”, one where no one is rocking the boat and where injustice continues to be unaddressed. But as Frederick Douglass reminded us, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Demands from those experiencing injustice disrupt the peace while they seek to establish a positive peace rooted in justice. Zechariah 8:12 teaches that “there shall be a sowing of peace.” Peace is something sown. The seed of peace is distributive justice. Justice grows and produces the fruit of peace. Peace, then, shouldn’t be the primary goal. It’s the secondary result of establishing a just, compassionate, safe environment for all. And to plant that initial seed of justice, to push the analogy a little further, the ground for that seed must be broken up, tilled, turned over, and disrupted. We’ll consider what that can look like, in Part 3.
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