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AN EXPERIMENT IN LOVE: Martin Luther King and the Re-imagining of American Democracy William Gregory Thompson Charlottesville, Virginia A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Religious Studies University of Virginia May, 2015 We must love one another or die. W.H. Auden, 1939 2 Contents INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE: “A More Excellent Way:” Love and Democratic Imagination A. “I Knows Something is Wrong:” The Crisis of Democratic Imagination B. “Upon the Backs of these Black Men:” King’s Democratic Inheritance 1. The Colonial Origins 2. The Sectional Crisis 3. The Post-War Reawakening a. The Separatist Strategy b. The Gradualist Strategy c. The Activist Strategy i. Political Activism ii. Economic Activism iii. Cultural Activism 4. The Inherited Struggle C. “We Must Meet Hate With Love:” King’s Theological Improvisation 1. The Vocation of Love a. “I am Fundamentally a Clergyman” b. “The Gospel I Will Preach to the World” 2. The Sources of Love a. “A Family Where Love was Central” b. “The Ethic of Love” c. “A Theological Basis for Social Concern” d. “The Selfishness of Men” 3. The Shape of Love a. Agapic Recognition b. Agapic Obligation c. Agapic Expectation D. “A More Excellent Way:” King’s Theological Re-Imagining of Democracy CHAPTER TWO: “All God’s Children:” Love and Democratic Identity A. “The Darkest Hour Before the Dawn:” The Conflict over Democratic Identity 1. The Assault on Democratic Identity a. Private Terror b. Public Theater 2. The Centrality of Democratic Identity B. “There’s a Danger Here:” Identities of Racial Supremacy and Liberal Equality 1. The Identity of Racial Supremacy a. White Supremacy i. White Supremacy as White Identity ii. White Supremacy as Black Identity 1. Black Animalization 2. Black Demonization 3. Black Infantilization iii. Resisting White Supremacy b. Black Supremacy i. Black Supremacy and Black Identity ii. Black Supremacy as White Identity iii. Resisting Black Supremacy 2. The Identity of Liberal Equality a. The Problem of Conferral b. The Problem of Provisionality c. The Problem of Self-Referentiality C. “Brothers, One of Another:” The Turn to Agapic Identity 1. “A Child of the Almighty God” 2. “The Gone-Wrongness of Human Nature” 3. “Lifted from the Valley of Hate” 4. “Inseparably Bound Together” D. All God’s Children: King’s Theological Re-imagining of Democratic Identity CHAPTER THREE: "The Absolute Power:” Love and Democratic Action A. “The Protest is Still on:” The Movement from Identity to Action B. “Between These Two Forces:” Radicalist and Gradualist Political Action 1. Radicalist Action a. The Transcendence of Ideals b. The Imperfection of History c. The Burden of Action d. Radicalism in America 2. Gradualist Action a. The Peril of Abstraction b. The Wisdom of History c. The Discipline of Patience d. Gradualism in America C. “I Could See the Light:” The Turn to Agapic Action 1. “God in History” 2. “Evil in All of Its Tragic Dimensions” 3. “We Have a Moral Obligation” a. Love as Compulsion b. Love as Constraint D. “The Bright Days of Justice:” The Dream of Agapic Action CHAPTER FOUR: "I May Not Get There With You:” Love and Democratic Possibility A. “I Saw the Dream Turn Into a Nightmare:” The Turn to Democratic Possibility B. “Each Represents a Partial Truth:” Perfectionist and Preservationist Accounts of Possibility 1. “The Regeneration of the World:” The Perfectionist Tradition 4 a. The City On a Hill: Millennialist Republicanism i. Puritan Millennialism ii. Revolutionary Republicanism iii. Jacksonian Destinarianism b. “With New Eyes:” Self-Reliant Progressivism i. Self-Reliance ii. Social Resilience c. “For the Good of the World:” Moralistic Internationalism i. American Internationalism ii. American Moralism d. Summary 2. “The Restraint of Evil:” The Preservationist Tradition a. “Preserved from the Corruptions of this Evil World:” Puritan Protections from Evil i. The Puritan God: Good, Free, and Just ii. The Puritan Self: Created, Corrupted, and Condemned iii. The Puritan Ethic: Conformity and Constraint iv. The Puritan Roots of Protectionism: Summary b. “Crucified Upon A Cross of Gold:” Post-War Protections from Loss i. The Loss of Agency ii. The Loss of Transcendence c. “Mutually Assured Destruction:” Cold War Protection from Annihilation i. The Presence of Enemies ii. The Possibility of Annihilation C. “The Truth Lies Somewhere in Between”: The Turn to Agapic Possibility 1. The Dilemmas of Possibility 2. The Democratic Possibilities of Love a. “We Will Not Let You Go:” Turning Away from Perfectionist Pride i. Domestic Imperfection ii. International Imperfection b. “We Will Reach the Promised Land:” Turning from Protectionist Fear i. Self-Harm ii. Global Harm c. “Always There is a Wilderness Before Us:” Taking Up The Pilgrimage of Love i. The God of Love ii. A People of Love iii. The Possibilities of Love D. “I Don’t Know What Will Happen Now”: Love and Democratic Possibility BIBLIOGRAPHY 5 Introduction “From the beginning a basic philosophy guided the movement. This guiding principle has since been referred to variously as nonviolent resistance, noncooperation, and passive resistance. But in the first days of the protest none of these expressions was mentioned: the phrase most often heard was ‘Christian love.’ It was the Sermon on the Mount, rather than a doctrine of passive resistance, that initially inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love.” Martin Luther King, 1958 The Burdens of Love The philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff once told me that one ought to wait until the age of fifty-five to write a book on love. Now, barely forty and looking back on what I have written, I fear that he may have been right. In the time between hearing Nick’s words and completing this manuscript, I have sought some consolation in the fact that my goal is to articulate Martin Luther King’s view of love rather than my own. But this consolation is thin. In truth, it is the varied burdens of my own questions, every bit as much as King’s, that have pressed this work into being. My basic question is this: How can people with deep differences live together in peace? By “peace” I mean not the mere cessation of war, nor the attainment of uneasy coexistence, but something along the lines of the Hebrew Bible’s concept of shalom, which I take to mean, “justice, wholeness, flourishing, and joy.”1 Understood in this way, my basic question takes on a more robust form: What sort of social imagination and what sort of 1 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice and Peace Embrace, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983, pg. 69. social ethic will be required of us if we, in the midst of deep differences of every conceivable kind, are to live together in a way that nurtures the experience of shalom? At one level, this question is deeply personal. Like billions of people around the world, I grew up in a community marked by intractable difference. My own version was a medium-sized city deep in the American South that, like so many other Southern cities in the last half of the twentieth century, struggled—often tragically—to negotiate the travails of difference. My awareness of these travails began as a young child with my first friendship with an African American. He and I shared a table in school and, as events would have it, we also shared a first name. Out of this shared space, shared name, (and, it should be confessed, shared disposition for mischief) a friendship grew. Indeed for much of that year we were simply known as “the two Greg’s.” In truth, however, we lived in different worlds. I realized this when, during class one morning, he and I were caught—not for the first time—collaborating in some sort of disruption. In response we both—not for the first time time—received our teacher’s legendary glare. And yet for some reason, on this occasion the glare struck my friend as funny. Struggling mightily, he let out an unwilled, but uncontrollable snort. Our teacher’s reaction was both instantaneous and devastating: within moments the other Greg had been jerked up by his shirt, thrown and held against the blackboard, where—in front of our entire class—our teacher told him to “wipe that nigger smile off” his face. I have never forgotten the shame on his face. Nor have I forgotten my shame, as I sat in horrified but unharmed—physically, at least—silence. At recess later that morning, I found my friend sitting alone on one of the dusty corners of the school ball field. I slid to the ground 7 beside him and watched as his tears spattered the dirt. Against our wills a rift had opened between us, and we sat in helpless silence as it filled with grief. Over the years I saw situations like this played out time and again—in schools, in locker rooms, in neighborhoods, and in churches. And on those occasions I found myself, not for the first time, confused and ashamed by my own failures to live with those different than I am in a way that even approximates shalom. It was in the context of experiences such as these, and the confusion and shame that followed them, that the first clouds of my question—of how people with deep differences might live together in peace—began to form. Seen from this perspective, this work is an attempt for me to explore—both for myself and for my friends—the possibility of our life together. At another level, this question is pastoral.