Warp & Woof
Books in the fabric of everyday life

Strength to Love

CardinalBook's "official" existence started on January 19, 1998 -- the holiday observing the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. So it fits to say something about this great man.
      Atlanta is host to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, run by the U.S. Park Service. There you'll find the house where King grew up, the church that he and his father served as ministers, a museum, and his tomb. You'll find good tours and enjoy a meaningful day. Now, you'd expect it to be the perfect place to find copies of the various books authored by King, or one of the many good biographies of him. But, no, logic doesn't prevail. All you can find is a biographical coloring book or two for kids.
      Ironically, King's powerful book Strength to Love (Fortress Press paperback, 1981) was sold to me at a site commemorating the Confederacy at Atlanta's Grant Park. It is, for many, a profoundly moving book, serving to unambiguously crystalize the Christian message. Nevertheless, today's jaded observer -- burned by countless stories of duplicitous heroes falling from their pedestals -- has to ask "Is this really King, or is it all a sham?"
      Enter Stephen B. Oates with his Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (HarperPerennial paperback, 1994). Here is told the story of King's upbringing in a sheltered middle-class black community, his role as a "preacher's kid," his undergraduate education at the black Morehead College in Atlanta, his ministerial training at Crozer Seminary in Pennsylvania, and the earning of his doctorate at Boston University. It's told how he wanted to be a scholar, to study and teach theology, but felt it necessary to first gain the real-world experience of serving a few years in the pulpit. The saga is told of how he took his first church in Montgomery, Alabama, where the times (and some would say, God) propelled him almost immediately into his first leadership role as an exponent of nonviolent resistance to civil wrongs. The story from there is the familiar step-by-step drama of the civil rights movement as it unfolded -- and later began to unravel -- over the few remaining years of King's life.
      King's religious development -- and his expression of it -- is well-treated in The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and The Word That Moved America by Richard Lischer (Oxford University Press, 1995).