Martin Luther King & The Revolution of Values

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr Day. Here in Summit many will be engaging in a day of service. For those of us who know only of Martin Luther King Jr's legacy with regard to civil rights for African-Americans this may seem incongruous.

A society that could oppress millions of African-Americans was a society that was clearly unjust. These injustices were not limited to the oppression of whites against blacks. Martin Luther King preached that it is these overarching injustices of unbridled capitalism, militarism and racism that lead to all the imbalances of wealth and power which create policies (domestic and foreign) and laws that serve to oppress and enslave one group or another.

Below is an excerpt from one of his sermons entitled "Beyond Vietnam" which talks about the "revolution of values" that is needed to to transform society:

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." From "Beyond Vietnam," April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City.