The Martin Luther King Jr. Was a Christian Argument
Whenever I talk about all the immoral and horrible things that Christianity is responsible for in the world, some Christian will always respond by reminding me that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Christian. Guess what? The Christian is correct Martin Luther King Jr. was indeed a Christian. So what?
Hitler was a Christian too. Does that then make Christianity responsible for the holocaust? The real question is did Martin Luther King Jr. become a model for non-violence because of his Christian faith? Maybe in small part he did, but there are plenty of extremely violent passages in the Bible to support a very different outlook of tolerance and equal right. Mostly though, Dr. King learned about the principles of non-violence from Gandhi rather than Jesus. Gandhi for the record was not a Christian. Gandhi also did not originate the principles of non-violence. He learned those principles from the Jains.
The Jains are so non-violent that they wear masks so that they don’t accidentally swallow insect. When the Jains say that they wouldn’t hurt a fly, they take it literally.
Martin Luther King Jr. is a hero to me. He was a champion of justice and tolerance. He believed that people can stand up to unjust laws without having to take up arms. He was also a Christian. But it wasn’t his religious views that made him great. He was great for his secular humanist dream that people ought not be judged my the color of their skin, but rather for the content of their character.
I don’t believe in judging people by their skin color or their clothing. I don’t believe in judging people by their gender or their sexual orientation. I don’t believe in judging people by how much or how little money they make. But I do believe in judging people by their ridiculous beliefs and by the content of their character in relation to those beliefs.
Dr. King spoke out against injustice and inequality. I speak out against one of the largest sources of those things… theistic religion.
Filed under: Evils of Christianity, Martin Luther King Jr., Religion
