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Anti-racism
A Sermon Given
by The Reverend Roger Fritts
on January 17, 1999
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
Occasionally there arises in our midst an individual who has the rare capacity to teach us to love, to touch our spirit to make us better human beings, to show us that there is meaning to this confusing thing we call life. Such a man was the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Today seventy years and two days after his birth, I want to talk a little about his ministry.
Martin Luther King arrived in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954. He was 25 years old. One of the members of the downtown Baptist church said, "You mean that little boy is my pastor? He looks like he ought to be home with his mother."
He did not start the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott. That distinction belongs to a woman, Rosa Parks. However after the boycott began, he was asked to serve as President of the Montgomery Improvement Association. The evening of his election King spoke to 5,000 people. He said:
No one must be intimidated to keep them from riding the buses. Our method must be persuasion, not coercion. We will only say to the people, "Let your conscience be your guide." . . . Our actions must be guided by the deepest principles of the Christian faith . . . Once again we must hear the words of Jesus, "Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Pray for them that despise you." If we fail to do this, our protest will end up as a meaningless drama on the stage of history and its memory will be shrouded in the ugly garments of shame. . . . If you protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, future historians will say, "There lived a great people -- black people -- who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization."
In these words, King struck a theme that set the blueprint for the civil rights movement he was to lead for 13 years.
By Monday evening , January 30, 1956, the Bus Boycott had been going on for nearly two months. King was speaking that evening at a mass meeting when he received word that his house had been bombed with his wife and baby inside. I find it almost impossible to imagine what I would do, if my home were bombed with my family inside because of a stand I had taken as a minister. King went home and found that his family was unharmed. In front of his house was a crowd of angry people. He said to them.
I want you to go home and put down your weapons. We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with non-violence. Remember the words of Jesus: "He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword." . . . Remember, if I am stopped, this movement will not stop, because God is with this movement. Go home with this glowing faith and this radiant assurance.
I find this to be an extraordinarily courageous statement. And it is only one example. King received hundreds of threats against his life and his family. He was stabbed with a letter opener, struck with fists and with rocks. He was kicked and spit on. His churches were bombed. His friends were attacked and murdered, and throughout it all the message was the same. Equality through nonviolence. Strength with love. Courage through community and through the vision of a better society.
In my own ministry in my own small ways I have tried to help King's dream come alive.
As a minister in Lexington, Kentucky in the 1970s, I joined with others in investigating the treatment of blacks and whites by apartment owners and real estate agents. My partner in this process was an African American who I would meet in parking lots around the town. We would flip a coin to see who would go in first. We would note whether we were offered a cup of coffee, whether the agent shook our hands, whether they offered to show us the multiple listing book, and whether we were allowed to take the multiple listing book home. Altogether we recorded three hundred details of our visit. We found a pattern of discrimination that led to an agreement between the city, the clergy and the Board of Realtors to better educate everyone about fair housing laws.
As a minister in New Bedford, Massachusetts I joined with others in creating an Ethnic-Racial Alliance of the city's ethnic groups to build bridges between the African Americans, the Portuguese Americans, the Jewish community, the French Roman Catholic and the Anglo-Saxon Protestants. When the rape of a young woman on a pool table led to racial attacks on all Portuguese Americans, our alliance joined together to fight the prejudice against the Portuguese.
As a minister in Evanston, Illinois we provided space in the Unitarian church for two social workers in the community who wanted to develop a dialogue between whites and African Americans. Twice a month a group, equally divided between the races, would meet for honest conversation, navigating the minefield between black and white Americans. Members of the congregation who participated said it was the most important experience they had ever had in the church.
As a minister in Bethesda, Maryland, I am interested in a new organization that is in the process of being established in our County. Action In Montgomery or AIM is based on the community organizing approaches developed by Saul Alinsky. Alinsky, who died in 1972, won fame for his efforts to help poor people help themselves. A professional organizer, he helped the poor in more than 40 communities to form groups to gain a voice in local affairs and improve their economic and social positions. These groups used various methods of social protest, including boycotts, picketing, rent strikes, and sit-down strikes. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Alinsky's first community action project was the "Back-of-the-Yards" program in the stockyards area of Chicago in 1939. In 1940, several wealthy Chicagoans gave him money to establish the Industrial Areas Foundation. Action In Montgomery is a continuation of the work of the Industrial Areas Foundation. They have large organizations in Baltimore, Prince Georges County and in the District. If AIM gets organized in Montgomery County it can form alliances with the other groups.
I see this as one of the ways I participate in continuing the work of Dr. King. However, an individual minister cannot be a member of AIM by his or her self. Clergy can only be members if they are part of a congregation that votes to have membership in AIM. The organizers of AIM would like members of Cedar Lane to learn about the organization, and to consider voting to become members. Membership is a serious commitment. It includes a commitment by each church to pay dues equal to about one percent of the church's operating budget, which would be about $7,000 in the case of Cedar Lane.
So far it has been a struggle to get Action In Montgomery County started. It turns out that the people who go to churches in Montgomery County are distrustful of an organization whose model comes from organizing the community around the stockyards of Chicago back in 1939. It turns out that it is more difficult for the people who go to churches in Montgomery county to consider pooling one percent of their operating budget into a common organization than it was for people who go to churches in Baltimore, or Prince Georges County or in the District.
Nevertheless, I believe that of all the religious organizations in our county, AIM has the most potential to help continue the work of Dr. King.
Martin Luther King himself was sometimes depressed and despondent. However, a basic confidence and an optimism came out again and again in his sermons and speeches. At the end of the march from Selma in the spring of 1965, he stood on the steps of the building that was once the capitol of the Confederacy and is now the capitol of the State of Alabama. Down the street was the Baptist Church where he had begun his ministry 11 years before. He spoke to the crowd of civil rights marchers, including a number of people from this congregation. He said:
I know that you are asking today, "How long will it take?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because truth pressed to earth will rise again . . . no lie can live forever . . . the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
This hope and optimism stemmed from his faith in God. In one sermon he said:
Religion endows us with the conviction that we are not alone in this vast uncertain universe. Beneath and above the shifting sands of time, the uncertainties that darken our days, the vicissitudes that cloud our nights, is a wise and loving God. This universe is not a tragic expression of meaningless chaos but a marvelous display of orderly cosmos.
These are some of the teachings of Dr. King that I use as a model as I work as a minister, as I try to lead a religious life.
- First, I learn from his commitment to the dignity of every human being.
- Second, I learn from his courage to trust non-violence.
- Third, I learn from his trust in the future.
- And fourth, I learn from his faith in God.
The dignity of every person, the courage to trust non-violence, the trust in the future, the faith in God; these can stand as a model not just for ministers but for everyone who is trying to discover what it means to live a religious life.
Finally, there is one more quality I want to mention. I am inspired by the power of Martin Luther King's preaching. In the summer of 1983 I was living in New England. On a Friday in August I took the train down to Washington. I stayed with my friend, Rev. Sydney Wilde. She drove me over to show me the church she served as minister, Cedar Lane Unitarian Church. The next morning I visited the historic All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, where I joined with other Unitarian Universalists. Together we marched from All Souls to the Mall where we join with thousands of people, commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the 1963 march.
The day was hot, but two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered anyway around the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. A long procession of men and women spoke, one after another, on into the afternoon. Late in the day, I remember starting to walk away from the Lincoln Memorial, heading for the metro. Many people had left, the crowd filtering out through the trees on either side of the pool. Then suddenly from the loudspeakers, a tape recording of Dr. King's great sermon filled the space as his voice had filled the space twenty years before. Back then his words, and his presence, had given people hope and confidence. Twenty years later, as I looked around, many people were crying.
Every year at the time of his birth I remember, not with blind hero worship, but with open eyes, the ministry of Martin Luther King. And each year I remind myself that it is my responsibility to carry on his work.
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