Beloved.

"Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives."

~ MLK jr

I often reflect on the fact that the Civil Rights Act was signed into law in 1964, just one year before I was born. Which means that the shock waves of that seismic event were still rippling across our nation as this southern white boy emerged into the world, a world still branded by gross inequities.

Here is just one of many injustices: the G.I. Bill, enacted in 1944 to help soldiers returning from active duty get federal aid for education, went almost entirely to white soldiers, while one million black soldiers returning from World War II were excluded.[i]

The Voting Rights Act came next, during “my” year of 1965, and helped roll back the egregious voting practices rampant across southern states, such as requiring a literacy test in order to participate in the democratic process. How much has changed since then?

Everything. And nothing. Depending upon your perspective. What’s certain is that Martin Luther King Jr’s vision for “a beloved community” remains elusive.

Born as I was, on the threshold of this sluggish but momentous shift toward inclusion, my childhood world was still largely segregated, particularly in the private school I attended. While Fayetteville, North Carolina was close to a 50/50 ratio of black and white, you wouldn’t know it unless you drove to the other side of town… or onto Fort Bragg, one of the largest Army bases in the country embedded in our little town. I have been told that the military was “integrated” long before the rest of the country, that the emblem on your sleeve defined your place in the pecking order, not the color of your skin. But that was a white man’s perspective. Personally, I have my doubts.

What I know is that I never once heard a sermon on the topic of race inside a church until George Floyd’s death. And I never wrote anything on the topic until Floyd. Why is that? The answer is obvious: as white people we had the luxury of ignoring it, of pretending that the laws at my birth had solved everything. As if a piece of paper changes hearts or opens eyes.

While President Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, it would be another seventeen years before all 50 states officially observed this day to honor that one American voice who best championed racial equality through nonviolent means.

With the benefit of hindsight, and we can all be grateful for that, I find it astonishing that every church in the nation (the world?) does not take the opportunity of MLK Day each year, at a minimum, to speak to his vision for “a beloved community.” Surely this was deep in the heart of Jesus as he spoke constantly of his kingdom—a place where all are included, a place of welcome, freedom, and enrichment. A place where justice prevails and goodness reigns.

As we pause this year to remember the man and message that was Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, let us ask ourselves what is in our power to do that will nudge all races forward, not just black and white but Asian, native American, middle eastern, and every indigenous tribe, toward full fellowship and mutual respect inside the Beloved Community.

[i] William H. Smith and Ellen Ternes, The Invisible Soldiers: Unheard Voices, DVD, directed by Jonathan J. Nash (Sudbury, MA: WHS Media, 2004).