Wednesday, January 23, 2008

From Slavery to Jim Crow and Right Back to Slavery

The Slavery of Literalism

Jan. 21-Jan. 24


This period of time between Martin Luther King Day and the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade should have given African-Americans a time to reflect on the subject of suppression. MLK was a Baptist minister, but was he a biblical inerrantist? A literalist? A young-earther? A creationist? In other words, was Martin Luther King, Jr. a Southern Baptist Minister?

No.

His early years were frought with scepticism:

San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 15, 2007
Writings show King as liberal Christian, rejecting literalism
by Mattai Chaoko Karuvila - Religion Editor
...King was not a conformist Christian. He not only eschewed literalism, he was a strident critic of how the Christian church perpetuated injustices such as slavery and segregation.
"Too often has the church talked about a future good 'over yonder,' totally forgetting the present evil over here," King wrote in 1952 to Coretta Scott, his future wife.
"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and not concerned about the city government that damns the soul, the economic conditions that corrupt the soul, the slum conditions, the social evils that cripple the soul, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood," King preached in 1962 to his congregation at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
King "wanted to develop an intellectually respectable form of Christianity that did not require people to simply abandon their rational, critical abilities," Carson said. The essential truth King saw, according to Carson, was the social gospel -- "to see the Bible as a message of spiritual redemption and global social justice."

[From Wikipedia's oh-so-liberal slanted article on Margaret Sanger]

In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city's health and social services. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community's elder statesman, W.E.B. DuBois.[22]

To set the record straight, Margaret Sanger was against abortion and proposed that there would be no need of abortion if contraception were used effectively.

But millions of the self-righteous don't see things that way:

What is also fairly well known among pro-lifers who know about what a wicked institution Planned Murderhood is, is the fact that Sanger callously planned on using black ministers (willingly or by deceit) to trick their flocks into going along with PP’s agenda. [From: The Myths of Martin Luther King, by By P. Leslie Riley, Chairman, Constitution Party of Mississippi]

But is this self-righteous way of looking at pro-choice a cover-up for something more seminal and sinister? Is it possible to be enslaved by the Church? Please feel free to discss.