Martin Luther King the Christian

No human can fully fathom the presence of God in another. In the case of Martin Luther King, all we can do is gather the information we have at hand and paint a picture of how his faith might have influenced his time on Earth.

It's no secret that MLK was a pastor and the son of a pastor. Jesus was not a stranger in the the household of King's childhood, nor in his adulthood. Living generations have relatively few first hand, concrete accounts of Dr. King's faith. We can assume he believed in personal salvation. We can assume he read the Bible front to back, and we can assume he prayed before every meal. But those tenets of mainstream Christianity didn't propel MLK's work. Instead, it was the life of Jesus that sparked MLK's passion. Mainstream Christianity teaches love because Jesus lived it, and MLK sought to do the same.


Love for MLK, like the rest of us, took many forms in his life. He loved his wife. He loved his children. He loved justice, willing to put his needs aside in order to assert it whenever possible. In MLK's writings, "love" and "justice" pop up frequently, as in an excerpt from his 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail":

"But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? ...  So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?"

Martin Luther King lived a very public life in adulthood as he eventually became known around the world. He preached renowned sermons that still echo today. Despite what we could call his famous faith, his faith was actually rooted very deeply and privately. A religious studies professor at Vanderbilt University told the Houston Chronicle that prayer was essential to MLK's fight for racial justice amid threats and challanges.

"He writes that 'prayer was King's secret weapon in the civil rights movement,' a key to its success as people found the strength to continue despite arrests and killings."

It seems King grew his faith inwardly until his body could no longer hold its potential, and he had to express to the world what he felt and what God sent him to do. He expressed it at segregated lunch counters, at the Lincoln Memorial, on the streets of Montgomery, and in the pulpit.

So, where has your faith been, and where has mine been? Mine's been to eastern Europe and a couple U.S. states. Maybe your faith is still humming inside you, growing and budding silently. Martin Luther King's faith left its mark wherever he went. Maybe you don't consider yourself a so-called person of faith--do you make a place more englightened by being there, or a person more englightened by having a conversation with them? MLK didn't bust out the philosophical big guns to inspire. He used small words with big implications. Like "love."

MLK in deep thought while in the Birmingham jail.

Sources: Martin Luther King, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and Adelle M. Banks, "Behind a mighty civil rights icon, a public and private prayer life"