Dr. Robert Franklin
President, Interdenominational Theological Center
"Tough Love: How Religion Enriches and Complicates American Public Life"
March 26, 2002

Dr. Robert Franklin: The German social theorist, Jürgen Habermas, has observed that every social order requires a legitimating myth. This myth is constituted by martyrs, symbols, rituals and codes that affirm the existing power configuration. Certain institutions are designated to maintain the status quo through exegesis, interpretation, adaptation and application of the legitimating myth.

In our case, this task falls to organized religion, to the media, the arts and to the educational system. When these societal maintenance and legitimations systems behave according to the script, they are rewarded through subsidies, access to the power elite and relative freedom from scrutiny, and interference. But, when these privileged institutions transgress the social contract, they are marginalized and often suppressed. When the systems of social legitimation are incapable of accomplishing their mission this may lead to what Habermass refers to as a legitimation crisis.

When moral suasion, moral rhetoric and the strategies of social control are neutralized then the state itself my intervene usually through force to reassert it’s authority. However, the assertion of authority and the exercise of coercion do not constitute nor are they adequate substitutes for moral legitimacy. Hence, a legitimation crisis…the title of one of Habermass’ later books…a legitimation crisis may persist instances of repressive police action being the most obvious reminders of it’s persistence until a new order and a new legitimating myth arise from the ashes of the decay.

Let me illustrate this theoretic or conceptual framework with the case of the public role of Protestant/Christian churches during and since the modern Civil Rights Movement. And so I ask you to consider an image…an image I suspect that all of you have seen no doubt, and perhaps you are aware of some controversy surrounding a certain communications company that employed the image of Dr. King delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

That is the image that I would like to invite you to reflect on for a moment. I think that image of King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, with Lincoln in the background is one that is so familiar that we may fail to grasp it’s extraordinary, multi-dimensional character. Here you have a black, Baptist preacher standing at the foot of the Monument to the emancipator. And I regard that as a stunning, riveting symbol suggestive of many values and issues that interest those of us who think about and care about the role religion in the public square. King is before Lincoln, this monument there at the uh…at the great Mall in Washington.

For instance, in that portrait, one encounters religion restraining…restraining it’s sectarian energies and harnessing them in the service of public order. I mean, King didn’t stand there and preach the standard black, Baptist sermon, making an appeal for conversion of a particular sort…uh…that he might have engaged in in the pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. It was a very different set of rhetorical moves he was making on that August 28^th afternoon.

Also one sees a representative in King of a particular Christian view of human nature and destiny standing in solidarity with other faith traditions. And one perceives in the King-Lincoln juxtaposition the graceful and mysterious power of religious faith to transform imperfect human beings into courageous exemplars of moral citizenship. Lincoln and King both proclaiming the importance of good citizenship. But, both Lincoln and King themselves flawed individuals, embodying the effort to sort of carry on despite their own personal limitations.

In that 1963 portrait, Lincoln is but a figure carved in marble. His complexity and his contradictions concealed in cold stone. Before the stone, however, stood a vibrant incarnation of the indomitable African-American spirit of authentic freedom. Recall the manner in which King began the famous speech: "Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But, one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free." With those words King paid respect to one of the nation’s sacred ancestors. He underscored the rude fact that Lincoln’s agenda was unfinished. And he positioned himself as a moral successor to the slain president.

Also in that extraordinary speech, King drew upon the two major philosophical traditions that have shaped the American culture and character. What might be referred to as the Covenant tradition or the sort of Biblical tradition that proclaims these notions of American exceptionalism and the Enlightenment tradition of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Immanuel Cant, and others who asserted the inviolable rights of the individual. King has this sort of biblical material, the covenant tradition along side the philosophical, secular arguments of the Enlightenment rationalists. Constantly interweaving the great noble ideas from these varying intellectual traditions. And hence, I would argue part of the power and the extraordinary resourcefulness of King’s own mind.

Recall his words that day as he placed his dream in the context of the hard work that labored for his listeners. "Even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. That one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of it’s creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal." King believed that a dream inspired by reference to particular biblical sources could live in dialectical and fruitful tension with ideals embraced by non-theistic rationalists. "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted." This is biblical language. "Every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places shall be made plain. The crooked places shall be made straight. And the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." King did not merely search for common ground; he sought to create it out of the stuff of living traditions. In so doing, he was able to use theology and ethics as resources for renewing American public life. A surprise to many who would regard only secular philosophy and the law as resources for improving democracy. King found in theology and ethics resources for rehabilitating and renewing democracy.

He used theology to prompt people to vote, to run for office and to be concerned about the moral state of the society. A person who seeks to create common ground, build traditions, craft narratives and negotiate coalitions exemplifies a quality of character that moral education should seek to inculcate.

We should also acknowledge that using theology and ethics as resources for renewing public life can have unforeseen negative consequences. For instance, many religious people…let me focus more specifically on the Christian tradition here, will regard the concept of grace as central and significant to their faith may construe that doctrine or concept to mean that they are acceptable to God despite their admitted racist behavior and attitudes or their indifference to racial justice. Some people suggest that there are limits to what humans can accomplish through hard work and heroic effort. And that to push further might be in fact, counter productive. That to strive for justice can in fact be counter-productive.

We should now focus, rather, they argue, on celebrating our progress rather than rousing bitter feelings by advocating additional progress. Grace, thereby this otherwise largely thought to be innocent sort of Christian doctrine, becomes a psychological mechanism that absolves responsibility for the contemporary condition of race relations and civil rights. This is the double edge of Grace. Ironically theology…theological shift from salvation by works to a salvation by Grace may encourage complacency with the racial status quo.

Now, King understood clearly that the Bible and theological concepts could be misappropriated to justify social evil and felt that an important check upon this tendency would involve keeping the Bible and human reason in a mutually critical dialogue. A risky move for a young, black, Baptist preacher in the South.

Let me move on to illustrate further this idea of the good…the public good that may be served by a certain kind of religiously inspired citizenship. And I refer to this as the revolution led by preachers, churchwomen, and Sunday school children. I wish I could be here next week to hear professor Bonds comments because he might add the category…and college students…to this list.

In order to understand Dr. King’s journey from Atlanta to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963…Atlanta being his birthplace, we need to understand something about the culture that produced him. Whence cometh such moral citizenship? And thereby revisit the ways in which culture becomes a vehicle for moral education. The culture in which you are reared becomes a vehicle for the shaping of your understanding of citizenship and the limits of citizenships and the obligations of citizenships…the imminent theologian, Paul Tillic taught for many years at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard Divinity School, University of Chicago…Paul Tillic said that culture is the form of religion and religion is the substance of culture.

If that claim is true, what system of values is available to children today who are being reared in neighborhoods that are scarred by violent crime, adult joblessness, multi-generational dependence upon Welfare, aimlessness, disease, hopelessness and wretched schools? King’s biographers all note that the black church and the black family were the context in which the boy King learned something about racism, poverty and religion as a resource for mobilizing social change.

A theologian, African-American theologian at the Union Theological Seminary James Cohn has gone further noting that the culture of the black church included theological concepts that played a critical role in shaping King’s worldview and his moral compass. These included specific and rich notions of love, power, justice, human freedom, human dignity. Historians such as Albert Rabito of Princeton, the late James Melvin Washington of Union Seminary, Evelyn Brooks Higgenbottom of Harvard, and others have noted that the black church culture is itself an amalgam of numerous symbolic and ritual traditions including African traditional religions, Catholic popular piety, Protestant evangelicalism, and Islam…all amalgamated to create this extraordinary social phenomenon that we now refer to as the black church in America.

This collection of religious traditions infused the core practices of progressive African-American Christianity that produced King. Among the core practices of black church culture are the following: First, a multi-sensory worship experience in which all of the human being’s capacity to respond to God are engaged. Worship is conceived to be a sacred drama, a dance with the Gods. Hence, drums are often present to orchestrate the antiphonal call and response between the people and deity. Colorful choir robes and clergy vestments provide visual stimulations. Brass horns, electric guitars, tambourines and clapping hands electrify the air with sound. Usually a church kitchen, if one exists, is in operation sending aromas of soul food wafting throughout the neighborhood. And this sacred space is animated by lots of touching, hugging, holy kissing, and high-five greetings that bridge the social distance that is common in the larger culture, the larger community. So, I would argue against this notion of the absence of social trust if one looks at this particular mediating institution in which people’s senses and sense of connection…bridging social distance is in fact not permitted, but is encouraged.

Second is this notion or practice of intimate communal prayer. When such prayer…the congregation is urged to stand and to gather in the front and at the altar. When that such prayer is led by a skilled leader, it succeeds in weaving lonely detached individuals into a community of pain, struggle, reconciliation and hope. Worshippers who approach the altar as separate individuals, atomized agents, experience…can experience a transformation that sends them away as members of one body.

Third, choirs give triumphant voice to the church’s confidence that it will not be vanquished by evil in the world. One can almost hear the voice of young, Aretha Franklin and Maheila Jackson and others who sort of provided the song text that shaped and framed the Sunday morning experience as people gathered for worship. Triumphal songs in particular…one listens…visit a local, black church and listen to the kind of quality of music at work. And one hears on one hand the sort of naming of the suffering and grief and the sense of pains and travails and troubles and tribulations we experience in this world. But, there is this other side, more kind of Utopian discourse. This little seeing the world that is yet to come and urging people to already participate in that world. And far from mere escapism, I want to argue that holding the two together…clear real sense of what it takes to live and function in this world but also seeing a world beyond that critiques the existing reality is an important component of empowering ordinary people to become moral agents.

And fourth, talked about this multi-sensory worship, about the communal prayer that connects individuals that often feel themselves even though they are sitting next to a person next to them…really not connected, they are connected in the experience of this worship journey, drama, the choirs triumphal music that declares that we are more than the world declares that we are. And then fourth, prophetic preaching in the black church tradition. The focal point of worship. All moments lead to the preacher who stands behind what Daddy King used to refer to as holy desk. It is this preaching moment, the high holy moment in the liturgical drama.

The brilliant historian of religion, Romanian scholar who has spent many years at the University of Chicago, Mircea Eliade, notes that and I quote, "for people in traditional societies, religion is a means of extending the world spatially upward so that communication with the other world becomes ritually possible. And extending it temporally back ward so that the paradigmatic acts of the Gods and mythical ancestors can be continually reenacted and indefinitely recoverable." Eliade helps to illumine the genius of black preaching as he reminds us that words can be deployed to mediate and encounter with the holy. Words can usher the imagination into a transcendent realm where one may be empowered to give one’s life on behalf of a noble cause.

The black preacher, through the virtuosity of imaginative, narrative, lyrical and poetic language and the co-creativity of a call response…the people talking back to the preacher as she or he delivers this word unites the sacred and the human realms. Stated briefly, the entire liturgical culture of progressive black churches…not all black churches by any means, nurtures political sensibilities, forms moral citizens. These are the congregations that shape moral character and teach people to care about the moral condition of existing society.

The biblical scholar, Walter Brugerman, offers a cogent observation about such transformative liturgy. "Every act of a minister who could be prophetic…who would be prophetic is part of a way of evoking, forming and reforming an alternative community. This applies to every facet and every practice of ministry. It is a measure of our enculturation of the various acts of ministry, for instance counseling, administration and even liturgical leadership have taken on lives and functions of their own rather than being seen as elements of one prophetic ministry, formation and reformation of alternative community." Now, Dr. Brugerman’s comment about alternative community reminds us again of King’s dream narrative, "I have a dream." What is up there? And the fact that it was crafted in the genre of a sermon rather than an essay, a philosophical argument or a lecture…although there are many who would argue that the oration, "I have a dream," on that August 28^th day was not in a technical sense a sermon.

King and his counterparts were products of a liturgical culture that cultivated the capacity to engage in utopian discourse and to sort of focus boldly on moving toward a better vision of the just society. Not simply accepting the world as it is. And praying for these mean people who mistreat us, but rather try to figure out how do we move beyond this social order. How do we critique and transform it drawing upon the resources of prayer and song and preaching, etc?

Now we should note briefly that African Americans reared in the kind of congregational context that I am describing in which I elaborate in the book that was mentioned…Another Day’s Journey…opted for a variety of political responses than simply that embraced by Dr. King. The point here simply being one could be nurtured in this culture of song, prayer and preaching, be shaped as a moral citizen who cares about an oppressive and racist society, and is being empowered to sort of go out and do something…Rosa Parks…go out and do something…ministers…go out and do something…students of North Carolina A&T, February 1^st, 1960 sit down in Woolworth’s and refuse to get up…I mean, this church culture sort of mobilizing people to engage in risky action to move the system beyond it’s current axis.

But not everyone was motivated to act in those ways. In fact, a variety of responses that emerged to a religious message that says you are not permitted to be indifferent to evil in the world. That is not an option. You really do have to act. You have to do something. You have to respond. You can’t sit this one out.