(no subject)
Long before Occupy, there was Martin Luther King Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign.
Most Americans think of King as the "I Have a Dream" preacher at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. But the man who made his final trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 had become radical, scholars and activists say. King was gambling his legacy on a final crusade that was so revolutionary, it alarmed many of his closest advisers. Some became concerned about his emotional stability.
King called his crusade the Poor People's Campaign. He planned to march on Washington with a multiracial army of poor people who would build shantytowns at the Lincoln Memorial -- and paralyze the nation's capital if they had to.
The campaign's goal: force the federal government to withdraw funding for the Vietnam War and commit instead to abolishing poverty.
What King was saying by this time was even more provocative than what he planned. In his final presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he said the movement should address "the question of restructuring the whole of American society."
He called for a guaranteed annual wage for all able-bodied people, he urged the nationalization of some industries, and he told people to "question the capitalistic economy."
The King we like to remember today is not usually this radical. We like to water him down and sanitize him. We like to place him in a relatively warm-and-fuzzy imagining of a triumphant Civil Rights Movement, rather than a front-line warrior in a cause that should make all of us in positions of privilege profoundly uneasy.
King understood that racism and poverty go hand in hand. He understood that you can't tackle one without tackling the other, and the road that leads you down is revolutionary in every important sense--political, social, and theological. The last made first and the first made last. You can't deal with racism and not deal with wealth inequality, and vice-versa. To steal from CS Lewis, he has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
On the final Sunday of King's life he delivered a sermon at the National Cathedral here in DC in which he talked about Jesus Christ's parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, which remains one of my favorite parts of the Gospels. The sermon is a challenge to us, and it's a challenge that remains unanswered. It should be a goad. It should sting. That was, after all, probably what Jesus intended.
Jesus told a parable one day, and he reminded us that a man went to hell because he didn’t see the poor. His name was Dives. He was a rich man. And there was a man by the name of Lazarus who was a poor man, but not only was he poor, he was sick. Sores were all over his body, and he was so weak that he could hardly move. But he managed to get to the gate of Dives every day, wanting just to have the crumbs that would fall from his table. And Dives did nothing about it. And the parable ends saying, “Dives went to hell, and there were a fixed gulf now between Lazarus and Dives.”
There is nothing in that parable that said Dives went to hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth. It is true that one day a rich young ruler came to him, and he advised him to sell all, but in that instance Jesus was prescribing individual surgery and not setting forth a universal diagnosis. And if you will look at that parable with all of its symbolism, you will remember that a conversation took place between heaven and hell, and on the other end of that long-distance call between heaven and hell was Abraham in heaven talking to Dives in hell.
Now Abraham was a very rich man. If you go back to the Old Testament, you see that he was the richest man of his day, so it was not a rich man in hell talking with a poor man in heaven; it was a little millionaire in hell talking with a multimillionaire in heaven. Dives didn’t go to hell because he was rich; Dives didn’t realize that his wealth was his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he was passed by Lazarus every day and he never really saw him. He went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible. Dives went to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimized the maximum. Indeed, Dives went to hell because he sought to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty.
And this can happen to America, the richest nation in the world - and nothing’s wrong with that - this is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.
This entry was originally posted (with
comments) at my Dreamwidth.
Most Americans think of King as the "I Have a Dream" preacher at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. But the man who made his final trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968 had become radical, scholars and activists say. King was gambling his legacy on a final crusade that was so revolutionary, it alarmed many of his closest advisers. Some became concerned about his emotional stability.
King called his crusade the Poor People's Campaign. He planned to march on Washington with a multiracial army of poor people who would build shantytowns at the Lincoln Memorial -- and paralyze the nation's capital if they had to.
The campaign's goal: force the federal government to withdraw funding for the Vietnam War and commit instead to abolishing poverty.
What King was saying by this time was even more provocative than what he planned. In his final presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he said the movement should address "the question of restructuring the whole of American society."
He called for a guaranteed annual wage for all able-bodied people, he urged the nationalization of some industries, and he told people to "question the capitalistic economy."
The King we like to remember today is not usually this radical. We like to water him down and sanitize him. We like to place him in a relatively warm-and-fuzzy imagining of a triumphant Civil Rights Movement, rather than a front-line warrior in a cause that should make all of us in positions of privilege profoundly uneasy.
King understood that racism and poverty go hand in hand. He understood that you can't tackle one without tackling the other, and the road that leads you down is revolutionary in every important sense--political, social, and theological. The last made first and the first made last. You can't deal with racism and not deal with wealth inequality, and vice-versa. To steal from CS Lewis, he has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
On the final Sunday of King's life he delivered a sermon at the National Cathedral here in DC in which he talked about Jesus Christ's parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, which remains one of my favorite parts of the Gospels. The sermon is a challenge to us, and it's a challenge that remains unanswered. It should be a goad. It should sting. That was, after all, probably what Jesus intended.
Jesus told a parable one day, and he reminded us that a man went to hell because he didn’t see the poor. His name was Dives. He was a rich man. And there was a man by the name of Lazarus who was a poor man, but not only was he poor, he was sick. Sores were all over his body, and he was so weak that he could hardly move. But he managed to get to the gate of Dives every day, wanting just to have the crumbs that would fall from his table. And Dives did nothing about it. And the parable ends saying, “Dives went to hell, and there were a fixed gulf now between Lazarus and Dives.”
There is nothing in that parable that said Dives went to hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth. It is true that one day a rich young ruler came to him, and he advised him to sell all, but in that instance Jesus was prescribing individual surgery and not setting forth a universal diagnosis. And if you will look at that parable with all of its symbolism, you will remember that a conversation took place between heaven and hell, and on the other end of that long-distance call between heaven and hell was Abraham in heaven talking to Dives in hell.
Now Abraham was a very rich man. If you go back to the Old Testament, you see that he was the richest man of his day, so it was not a rich man in hell talking with a poor man in heaven; it was a little millionaire in hell talking with a multimillionaire in heaven. Dives didn’t go to hell because he was rich; Dives didn’t realize that his wealth was his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he was passed by Lazarus every day and he never really saw him. He went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible. Dives went to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimized the maximum. Indeed, Dives went to hell because he sought to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty.
And this can happen to America, the richest nation in the world - and nothing’s wrong with that - this is America’s opportunity to help bridge the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. The question is whether America will do it. There is nothing new about poverty. What is new is that we now have the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty. The real question is whether we have the will.
This entry was originally posted (with
comments) at my Dreamwidth.