Martin Luther King Day

This Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, let us remember his radical advocacy of love as expressed in the Gospels. This love extends to everyone, even under the harshest structural injustices, which he sought to help us all change so we could be closer to God. And let us remember his heterodox Christian martyrdom and nonviolent civil disobedience. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." Read a summary of the Catholic and interfaith commemoration of the person whose faith in action we honor this weekend.

The Catholic News Agency offers this summary of the Catholic and interfaith commemoration of the person whose faith in action we honor this weekend: "King is remembered as the most visible leader of the civil rights movement, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and as the founding president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. But he was first a pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and remained active in pastoral leadership throughout his life. . . . . Shortly after King’s death, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches, the Synagogue Council of America, and the Standing Conference of Orthodox Bishops in the Americas released an interfaith statement, mourning their colleague in ministry. We “bow together in grief before the shameful murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a unique apostle of the non-violent drive for justice, [and] affirm that no service of remembrance or local memorial is equal to the greatness of his labor or the vastness of our national need.”

Would you like to read a book (if you haven't already) by Martin Luther King with heavy emphasis on permanent religious values? Strength to Love was published in 1963 as a collection of his sermons primarily on the topic of racial segregation in the United States and love as expressed in the Gospels. Here is what Stanford University has to say about the work. You will enjoy it.