Fox News star Glenn Beck staged the show at the Lincoln Memorial, and then fired up his flock by claiming, \u201cSomething that is beyond man is happening. America today begins to turn back to God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin almost stole the show with a political shot at President Barack Obama, telling her fans, \u201cYou too know that we must not fundamentally transform America as some would want. We must restore America and restore her honor!\u201d<\/p>\n
But there was only one African-American preacher present whose last name was spelled K-I-N-G. There was only one orator who could infuriate pundits simply by standing with Beck on the 47th anniversary of her martyred uncle\u2019s \u201cI Have a Dream\u201d speech.<\/p>\n
Tears of rage? Tears of joy? The Rev. Alveda King knew she would cause both by linking the Rev. Martin Luther King\u2019s classic cadences with the religious and cultural issues that loomed over what Beck insisted was a nonpolitical rally. Once a Democrat in the Georgia Legislature, the evangelical minister now leads African-American outreach programs for the Catholic group Priests For Life.<\/p>\n
First, she reminded listeners that her \u201cUncle Martin\u201d had compared America\u2019s promise of equal protection to a check marked \u201cinsufficient funds.\u201d But when, she asked, will \u201cwe know that the check Uncle Martin spoke of is good?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will know when prayer is once again welcome in the public squares of America and in our schools. We will know when our children are no longer in mortal peril on our streets and in our classrooms, and in the wombs of our mothers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will know when righteousness rolls down like waters, and justice like a mighty stream. Yes, I too have a dream \u2026 that America will repent of the sin of racism and return to honor. I have a dream that white privilege will become human privilege and that people of every ethnic blend will receive everyone as brothers and sisters in the love of God. I have a dream that America will pray, and God will forgive us our sins and revive our land.\u201d<\/p>\n
Critics were not kind.<\/p>\n
Chatting with MSNBC\u2019s Keith Olbermann, columnist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post<\/em> dismissed Alveda King as a \u201cconvenient figurehead or puppet. \u2026 She\u2019s a fundamentalist, very conservative Christian. \u2026 She\u2019s estranged from the rest of the King family, and from the keepers of his legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n And in a Washington Post<\/em> essay before the rally, Martin Luther King III anticipated the coming efforts to embrace the causes now identified with the first family of civil rights. His father\u2019s dream, he stressed, \u201crejected hateful rhetoric and all forms of bigotry or discrimination, whether directed at race, faith, nationality, sexual orientation or political beliefs. \u2026 Throughout his life he advocated compassion for the poor, nonviolence, respect for the dignity of all people and peace for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n For Alveda King, these debates are signs of painful divisions \u2014 many of them theological \u2014 inside the Civil Rights Movement, black churches and the extended King family. While the late Coretta Scott King supported abortion rights and gay rights, other members of the family have fiercely questioned whether the views of her husband would have evolved in that direction.<\/p>\n One debate, for example, focuses on the significance of the decision by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to accept the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood in 1966. Alveda King and other opponents of abortion note that this was six years before Roe v. Wade and only three years after a Planned Parenthood pamphlet warned that, \u201cAn abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.\u201d<\/p>\n America\u2019s ongoing battles over abortion, insisted Alveda King, are one of many symptoms that her uncle\u2019s work remains unfinished.<\/p>\n \u201cOur material gains seem to be going the way of our moral losses,\u201d she said, in her Aug. 28 sermon. \u201cWe are still suffering from the great evil divide of racism. Our children are suffering in failing school systems. Our sons and daughters are being incarcerated at astronomical rates. Sickness, disease and poverty of the spirit, soul and body are plaguing our communities. The procreative foundation of marriage is being threatened, and the wombs of our mothers have become places where the blood of our children is shed in a \u2018womb war\u2019 that threatens the fabric of our society. \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cYet, we are not without hope. Faith, hope and love are not dead in America. Hallelujah.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fox News star Glenn Beck staged the show at the Lincoln Memorial, and then fired up his flock by claiming, \u201cSomething that is beyond man is happening. America today begins to turn back to God.\u201d Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin almost stole the show with a political shot at President Barack Obama, telling her fans, \u201cYou […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[37,44,126,231,282,394,916],"class_list":["post-1974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-godbeat","tag-abortion","tag-african-american-church","tag-black-church","tag-civil-rights","tag-dc","tag-glenn-beck","tag-washington"],"yoast_head":"\n