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Summer
2006, Vol.
3, No. 1
The Preaching of Martin Luther King,
Jr.
 Maurice Watson, D.D.
Senior
Pastor Beulahland Bible Church,
Macon, Georgia
A lecture presented to Assemblies of God
Theological Seminary, January 17, 2006
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It is with a deep sense of humility and trepidation
that I stand before you today to talk about an American icon,
a legend, a drum major for truth, and one of the most important
and significant figures of the twentieth century—Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. I do not consider myself a scholar
or an expert on the life and legacy of this great man of
God. There are numerous scholars and researchers who are
more qualified to speak on this subject than I. They have
spent many years plumbing the depths of the complex theological,
social and political tapestry of Dr. King’s life and
witness. They have put forth a gallant effort to capture
the crucial identity of Martin Luther King, Jr. Furthermore,
there are those who lived during King’s era, who walked
with him, talked with him, touched him and heard him preach
who, perhaps, could better articulate his life’s story
and the effectiveness of his preaching.
We know about Dr. King’s life as a civil rights leader.
That is well documented in the pages of history. We know
about the enormous struggles and the burden he carried as
the principal spokesperson of the movement. We know about
his Nobel Peace Prize. We know about the marches he led.
We know about the ultimate price he paid in Memphis, Tennessee.
We could spend a semester, or even a year, talking about
Martin Luther King as a religious, political and social leader—though
it is hard to separate these important roles. But I am here
to talk about Martin Luther King, Jr. as a preacher of the
gospel.
One of the great sources on the subject is a book written
by Richard Lischer, The Preacher King. It was named
the outstanding book of 1995-1996 by the Religious Speech
Communication Association. My lecture will be both a review
of and a response to Lischer’s seminal work on King
as a preacher.
Influences on King’s Life and
Preaching
While many would describe Dr. King as an iconoclastic hero
for social justice, King described himself in more humble
and down-to-earth terms. He often said, “In the quiet
recesses of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist
preacher.”1 Like
a preacher, he routinely cited the Bible as the authority
for his social activities and cast the civil rights movement
in light of biblical events and characters.2 Lischer
suggested that the substance of his sermons was translated
into civil addresses and fiery mass-meeting speeches, but
it was always preaching that he was doing. Even
when no text was cited and the Deity was not mentioned, the
audiences to these speeches considered themselves no less
a congregation. King’s self-proclaimed mission “to
redeem the soul of America” cannot be understood apart
from his self-designated identity as a preacher of the gospel.3
But who influenced Dr. King? What factors helped him to
become who he was? Lischer believed several factors helped
to shape Dr. King as a preacher. First, and foremost, King
was influenced by his childhood church, the Ebenezer Baptist
Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He loved the church and its people,
and they loved him like a son.4 At
Ebenezer, King heard his father, Martin Luther King, Sr.
(affectionately known as Daddy King), preach fiery and soul-stirring
sermons each week. In the 1930s and ‘40s, Ebenezer
is reported to have had more than 4,000 members, who came
from both ends of the economic spectrum—the black bourgeois
to skilled and unskilled workers. “Despite his congregation’s
influential membership, Daddy King saw to it that Ebenezer
never lost its mass identity as a talk-back, whooping, gospel
singing, working man’s church.”5
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a senior in high school, when
he began thinking seriously about entering the ministry.
His calling was not a spectacular eureka moment.
He said, “My call to the ministry was not a miraculous
or supernatural something, on the contrary it was an inner
urge calling me to serve humanity.”6 He
was eighteen years old when he preached his first sermon
that, according to Lischer, he borrowed from Harry Emerson
Fosdick’s “Life is What You Make It.”7
Lischer also asserted that King was influenced by the tradition
of black preachers and reformers who came before him. He
suggested two lines of influencing factors in the black church
tradition shaped King’s development as a preacher.
Lischer called them the “Sustainers” and the “Reformers.”8 He
described the Sustainers as those who ministered to the spiritual
needs of enslaved and segregated people but never attempted
to revolutionize the conditions under which they lived. Their
strategy was to preach a gospel that relied heavily on the
eschatological hope that circumstances would eventually change
in the great by and by. Lischer wrote, “King explicitly
rejected otherworldly preaching but admired the Sustainers’ strategy
of affirming the worth of the oppressed.”
Dr. King embraced the ideology of the Reformers. Lischer
wrote, “If King had been asked to place himself within
the African-American preaching tradition, he would have undoubtedly
identified with the Reformers—with Richard Allen, Henry
Highland Garnet, Harriet Tubman, Alexander Crummell, Edward
Blyden . . .Frederick Douglas” and others. The Reformers
were those who would raise holy Cain for the freedom of the
race. They insisted on having freedom and justice right now
instead of waiting on an eschatological rescue in the distant
future. They resisted oppression and called the nation to
be held accountable for its actions. However, for King, the
resistance was to be non-violent. He was a reformer who believed
evil must always be resisted but any suffering, however underserved,
that facilitates the good of the whole must be embraced.9
I find it ironic that Dr. King would embrace the Reformers’ strategy
because his birth name was Michael Luther King, Jr. In 1934,
his father changed his own name and that of his son from
Michael to Martin after returning from a trip to Germany,
the homeland of the man who sparked the Protestant Reformation—Martin
Luther. Martin Luther King, Jr., like the man after whom
he was name, was a reformer in the truest sense. The Reformers’ tradition
shaped Dr. King’s preaching.
Lischer also indicated that Dr. King’s preaching was
influenced by his role models and mentors who taught him
and made a difference in his life. When he arrived at Morehouse
College in Atlanta, he met the venerable Dr. Benjamin Mays.
Mays was an eloquent and erudite speaker—an orator.
May’s eloquent phrases and quotations impressed King
and, Lischer pointed out, King often borrowed them, weaving
them into his sermons and speeches throughout his career.
It was from Mays, for example, that King first heard the
challenge, “Clearly, then, it isn’t how long
one lives that is important, but how well he lives, what
he contributes to mankind and how noble the goals toward
which he strives. Longevity is good... but longevity is
not all-important.”10
Lischer saw Mays as an important figure in young Martin
King’s life because he offered a viable option to his
father’s style of preaching.11 King
Sr. had a flare for the dramatic. He was a whooper–at
various moments in the sermon, he gave his words a rhythmic
and musical value. King Jr. was a flat-footed, straight-laced
preacher–no antics. He actually disdained the showmanship
and loud emotional outburst of black preaching at the time.
However, King did appreciate his father and, from his father,
he learned what Lischer called, “a composite impression
of the pulpit’s authority in the community.”12 In
other words, King learned how to use the pulpit as an agent
of change.
Some of the other mentors who influenced King’s preaching
were: William Holmes Borders, pastor of the Wheat Street
Baptist Church in Atlanta. The young King and some of his
friends would sneak away from Ebenezer to hear this educated
and learned man preach.13 There
was also Dr. Sandy Ray, pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church
in Brooklyn New York. Most of all, King was influenced by
Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, also of Brooklyn, who some would argue
was one of the greatest preachers of the twentieth century.
Lischer wrote, “To King he (Taylor) was an example
of John Chrysostom’s observation: ‘he is a rare
preacher who can move the masses without losing his soul.’”14
King’s preaching was also influenced by his seminary
and graduate school training at Crozer Seminary and later
at Boston University. Each of these institutions exposed
King to a theology different from what he had learned at
Ebenezer and Morehouse College. At Crozer, King’s main
focus was systematic theology with an enormous concentration
of courses on the person and work of Jesus Christ. Boston
University, in the late 1940s and ‘50s, was a center
of liberal theological thought.15 At
these institutions, King was introduced to the tradition
and vocabulary of Western theology. He was exposed to “higher
criticism,” which questioned the historicity of the
Bible. Concerning the liberal bent of King’s education,
Lischer wrote, “In seminary and graduate school King
internalized the vocabulary and values of theological liberalism;
he did not become a liberal but embraced a new language with
which to rationalize his more original religious instincts.”16 Lischer
concluded that King’s theological education provided
the vocabulary and conceptual framework of his sermons at
Ebenezer and his larger message to the nation.
While King was learning the vocabulary of liberalism at
Crozer, he was receiving classroom instruction in homiletics.
His transcripts reveal that he took nine courses in homiletics.17 The
dominant preaching style King was taught at Crozer was topical
rather than textual. He was taught that the sermon should
begin, not so much with a biblical text in mind, but with
a “felt difficulty,” which the preacher then
would define, classify and solve. While King used different
kinds of topical methodologies, Lischer pointed out that
he was devoted mostly to the Hegelian “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” style
of topical preaching.18 King
fine-tuned this approach to preaching under the tutelage
of the great J. Pius Barbour, a friend of his father. Barbour
was known to have put the black students at Crozer through
his rigorous homiletical drills. For King, the drill began
on Saturday when he came to the parsonage to eat at the Barbour
table and to practice his sermon before a mirror in the parlor.
He is remembered to have worked harder on pronunciation and
memorization than the other students in his class.19
Other important factors that influenced the preaching of
Martin Luther King, Jr. were his call in 1954 to pastor the
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and
his almost simultaneous appointment as the principal spokesperson
for the civil rights movement in America. In light of the
many hats that Dr. King wore, it is easy to forget he was
a pastor of a local church. As a pastor, he visited the sick,
managed the daily affairs of the church, performed weddings,
baptized candidates and preached sermons, all while completing
his doctoral dissertation.20 Lischer
was also careful to point out that during his first year
in Montgomery, King presided over a church that was usually
one-half to two-thirds filled. Around black Montgomery, the
word on the young pastor was that he was a good but not great
preacher.21
One can only imagine how busy King must have been once the
boycott began in Montgomery and his national responsibilities
increased. All of this undoubtedly had an effect on his preaching.
Lischer wrote, “During his five years at Dexter, King
established his canon of sermons. His schedule did not permit
him to prepare new messages every week. Modifications and
developments in his thinking as well as changes in current
events he simply integrated into the old familiar sermons,
which he repeated again and again.”22
How King Performed As a Preacher
In the second section of the book, Lischer moved from the
factors that helped to prepare Martin Luther King for ministry
to factors that had an impact on the sermons he preached.
It is well documented that the issue of plagiarism hangs
as a weight on the King legacy. Lischer dealt with the issue
head-on. He cited examples of how King often borrowed sermonic
material, outlines and phrases from the sermons of such great
and noted preachers as Phillips Brooks, Harry Emerson Fosdick,
Howard Thurman, Wallace Hamilton and George Buttrick. According
to Lischer, King rarely cited his sources or gave any attribution
to those from whom he borrowed. However, Lischer insisted
that we not judge Dr. King on the basis of plagiarism, but
that we look at the bigger picture of what he did with the
material. He suggested that King often borrowed an outline,
a thought or a phrase and used it as the scaffolding around
which he went on to build his own convictions in his sermons
and speeches. “The outlines [that King borrowed from
others] provided a method for organizing the convictions
and applying them to the problem of race in the twentieth
century.”23 Lischer
concluded that we should consider the full force of his preaching
and not merely the printed records of some of his early sermons.24 No
one can accuse King of borrowing the event he created through
what he preached. The change he helped to bring about is
something no one can accuse him of borrowing. No one can
accuse him of borrowing the fact that God used his sermons
and speeches to prick the conscious of a nation.
My opinion is that Dr. King, as a young preacher (before
he ever dreamed of becoming larger than life), borrowed sermon
material from others (as many of us have). He had no way
of knowing he would one day become so famous that nearly
every word he wrote or spoke publicly would be subjected
to the scrutiny of researchers. The lesson for all of us
is that it is best to be honest because one never knows how
famous one might become.
In terms of style and delivery of sermons, Lischer presented
King as a master of rhetoric. The musicality, intonation
and rhythm of his speaking did for his preaching what his
written sermons could never capture. King powerfully used
allegory, metaphor, typologies and other literary devices
in order to move the hearers’ hearts and minds.
King spoke as a prophet to the nation, often under great
stress because of personal threats against his life. Lischer
wrote, “By 1968, the FBI had investigated fifty plots
to kill him. He was also the recipient of an enormous volume
of hate mail that poured into SCLC headquarters on a daily
basis.”25 Again,
Lischer wrote, “Staffer John Gibson remembers that
toward the end of his life, King was able to relax only when
surrounded by friends in rooms without windows. In public
he let his eyes unconsciously dart from face to face, looking
for his assassin.”26
Imagine yourself trying to preach under those circumstances.
Imagine how difficult it would be to prepare sermons–with
death threats looming–and you are worried not only
for your own safety but that of your wife and children. When
I look at what he accomplished as a preacher, in light of
the very personal and real-life pressures he was facing,
my admiration for Dr. King (in spite of his shortcomings)
is deepened.
The Substance of King’s Preaching
In the third and final section of the book, Lischer moved
into the substance and/or theology of King’s preaching.
Lischer suggested that, during a time when higher criticism
was (and still is) challenging the Bible’s credibility
as a historically reliable book, Dr. King embraced a progressive
interpretation of scriptural truths. He started with the
major ideas of the Scripture, followed them as they developed
across redemptive history and saw them as they culminated
in Christ and his gospel.27 In
his review of this section of the book, Kirk Jones suggested
that Lischer portrayed King as having effectively linked
(as many black preachers have done) the suffering and hope
of persons in biblical narratives to the suffering and hope
of black people.28
Endnotes
1. Richard Lischer, The
Preacher King (Oxford University Press: New York,
1995), 3.
2. Ibid.,
4.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 16.
5. Ibid.,
21.
6. Ibid.,
27.
7. Ibid.,
28.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.,
34.
10. Ibid.,
43.
11. Ibid.,
44.
12. Ibid.,
46.
13. Ibid.,
49.
14. Ibid.,
51.
15. Ibid.,
51, 58.
16. Ibid.,
53.
17. Ibid.,
65.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.,
69.
20. Ibid.,
78.
21. Ibid.,
80.
22. Ibid.,
81.
23. Ibid.,
95.
24. Ibid.,
109.
25. Ibid.,
171.
26. Ibid.,
171.
27. Ibid.,
200.
28.Christian
Century (June
5, 1996), http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_n19_v113/ai_18408213/pg_3 ;
accessed 6/26/06.
Updated:
Friday, July 14, 2006 2:48 PM
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