They ended the service with a duo singing a union song I'd never heard called "Which Side Are You On?" The lyrics can be found here. We also sang "This Land Is Your Land," which was suprisingly moving in this setting.
The reading in the sermon was an excerpt from the letter he wrote from the Birmingham Jail, which can be found here As I become more in tune with the idea of social justice, this letter becomes just as important as his "I have a dream" speech. Here's one of my favorite parts of the letter:
"You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with Saint Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all."
Now what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn't segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to obey the1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong."
The minister's sermon expounded on this quote:
"I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere in this country."
As I drove home, I was just so caught up. It was such a different experience to me. I've never heard Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned in a church setting. When I got home, I posted on Facebook and Twitter asking other people about their church experience and if he was mentioned. The closing prayer in a LDS service in Oakland gave thanks for the equality in our country and the people who made it possible, specifically citing the holiday. He was mentioned in someone's testimony in a ward that had their F&T meeting yesterday. He was mentioned multiple times in a meeting in Atlanta. A friend here in SL said he was mentioed during her Catholic mass, and someone attending a Protestant service said he was a big part of their service. A few people let me know that yesterday's Music and the Spoken Word was about him in large part. As soon as I could figure out how to watch it online, I did. It was wonderful. The choir sang some African American hymns. I especially enjoyed "Rock-a My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham."
The Music and the Spoken Word program can be watched here after you sign up for a free account. I urge you to watch it with your children. Brayden and I watched it last night. Today, we'll be watching videos of his sppeches on Youtube and I'll be reading Brayden some picture books we have about him.
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
1 comments:
This is lovely, Megan, thanks. I'm definitely going to go look up that program today. I think that last quote you shared needs to be my life motto. :)
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