Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Martin Luther King Jr. gave his magnificent speech “I Have a Dream” 56 years ago today, on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Since we are hearing dust ups in the press about crowd sizes, let’s note that the Washington Mall was packed from end to end for King’s speech. Americanrhetoric.com ranks this speech first among the great American speeches of the 20^th Century.

King’s speech was one event during the famous March on Washington. Given the year before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, King’s speech was beyond question a major factor in making the larger public aware of the terrible injustices and cruelties of racial discrimination. Like most people of my generation, I attended schools that were either totally segregated, or integrated only in a token fashion. Although there is a long way yet to travel, King’s speech set the nation on the right road.

Many commentators note that King’s speech was a biblical exposition: that is text, moral ideas, and political project all came directly from his understanding of the Bible.  He referred to the biblical books of Isaiah, Amos, Galatians, and Psalms. Biblical language rang out throughout his entire speech, and it wasn’t just the language, but also biblical ideas about morality and justice that lay behind his rhetoric.

This is important because, during the past generation, the Christian Right has consumed Christianity’s political oxygen, distorting biblical morality beyond recognition and, in the process, driving too many decent people away from Christianity. For it is a terrible mistake to let biblical morality excuse injustice. Issues of economic and political inequality ran through King’s entire speech, and King’s argument against injustice arose from quotations and allusions to biblical morality. 

Let’s look at two of those allusions.

First, Amos 5:24. One of the Twelve Prophets whose widely-ignored writings are found tucked in at the end of the Hebrew Scriptures, Amos’ prophecy rails against economic and social inequality and injustice. As Lesli White points out in BeliefNet, “Throughout Amos 5 to 6, the prophet lashes out against those who have become rich at the expense of the poor and against public – but hollow – displays of piety.” So, when King quoted Amos, he tied the Civil Rights to a biblical imperative: “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.’” King was responding to the many conservatives and moderate liberals who kept asking, “When will you be satisfied?”  King stated that African-Americans could never be satisfied until they were free from “the unspeakable horrors of police brutality,” signs that say “For Whites Only,” and so forth. He insisted on the full measure of biblical justice.

Second, Isaiah 40:4-5. The complete text, which King paraphrases closely, reads, in the King James Version: “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

In King’s speech, he referred to Isaiah like this: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’”

These passages metaphorically call for social and economic equality. The valleys – the low places are to be raised up. The mountain shall be lowered. And, in this equalizing, “the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” Justice is to rollover the land “like a mighty stream.” That’s hard to misunderstand.

Different biblical moralities?

Conservative speakers and liberal speakers often quote the Bible, but usually quote different parts of the Bible. Being conservatives, they often focus on individual moral choices. As my friend and colleague, communication professor James Darsey, points out in an award-winning book, radically liberal speakers often quote the Hebrew prophets. As Darsey explains, "Particularly in the United States, with its early self-conception as the new Israel, the 'shining city on the hill,' the rhetoric of the Christian Bible has had an enormous presence in our public discourse." King  was a highly-educated Christian minister to whom the prophets’ words came easily. 

In contrast, conservatives often quote biblical passages that are judgmental or that regulate sexual behavior. They quote biblical injunctions that attack homosexuality or promise judgment against one's enemies. Thus, in an earlier blog post, I noted that Christian Right minister Paula White railed against Trump's political opponents by citing the Bible: “Let the counsel of the wicked be foiled right now.”

Yet, concern for the poor, the immigrant, the downtrodden, and the oppressed is fundamental to biblical morality and permeates the writings of the Hebrew prophets. Instead of offering harsh judgments of individual people, such arguments placed morality in a community context. The prophets often made morality an obligation of the entire community, not just of individual charity. It is likely that most of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s audience was acutely aware of the passages he was quoting and recognized them automatically. Recent exposés of police being filmed shooting unarmed Black suspects with minimal provocation should help us remember that King warned us about the horrors of police brutality two generations ago.

The interested reader can find many scholarly research articles about Martin Luther King Jr.’s use of biblical interpretation to prove his case. Most of the articles are behind paywalls, but your local library can probably find copies in its databases.

P.S.: I’ve blogged about speakers on the Christian Right and commented on their speech techniques.

P.P.S.: Sunday school classes in my own (liberal Protestant) denomination sometimes irritate me. You hear lots about the miracle stories in Genesis, and yet hear very little about the Bible’s moral messages. What we don’t say or teach is as important as what we do say or teach, especially when what we leave out is the core.