Monthly Archives: January 2012

“The choice today is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr. – “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The gospel at its best deals with the whole man, not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well-being, but his material well-being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damned them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr. – “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” in A Testament of Hope

“A large segment of Protestant liberalism defined man only in terms of his essential nature, his creative capacity for good. Neo-orthodoxy tended to define man only in terms of his existential nature, his capacity for evil. An adequate understanding of man is found neither in the thesis of liberalism nor in the antithesis of neo-orthodoxy, but in a synthesis which reconciles the truth of both.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr. – “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence” in A Testament of Hope

“At that time Duke University was somewhat withdrawn from what went on in the world. But that changed abruptly on 4 April 1968. We were sitting with theologians from all over the country in one of the university halls at a ‘Theology of Hope Conference’. I was just arguing with Van Harvey about the distinction between Geschichte and Historie when Harvey Cox burst into the room crying ‘Martin King has been shot’. We immediately broke off the conference, and participants hurried home, for by the same evening shops and businesses in the American cities were going up in flames. The black population rose with a cry of rage, while whites tried to protect themselves. Then the unbelievable happened: 400 students sat down in the quadrangle of Duke University and mourned for Martin Luther King for six days and six nights, in rain and heat. At the end of the week of shame and mourning, black students from a college nearby came and danced through the rows of white students and we all sang together: ’We shall overcome.’ From that day, the blacks in Durham became more self confident and the conscience of whites woke up.” ~ Jürgen Moltmann – “Black Theology for Whites” in Experiences in Theology

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King – The Trumpet of Conscience