Josh Claybourn, to his shame, is once again copying-and-pasting his annual takedown of Martin Luther King, Jr, this time on his new joint blog, In the Agora. I generally respect Mr. Claybourn as one of the few conservative voices in the blog world who puts his politics into the broader context of his faith rather than the other way around. But in this instance, once again, he is wrong. There are 364 other days to talk about King’s humanness and failings, if that needs to be your focus. The day we celebrate his life and the things he and so many others worked for is not one of them.
Today is a day to honor Dr. King’s dream. It is a day to commit ourselves to the Biblical concepts of the “fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” and the establishment of the “beloved community.” It is a day to recognize within ourselves the ways we have contributed to the continuing racial divide in our country and the continued injustice, violence, and inequality in the world. And more importantly, it is a day to do what we can to stamp out those vices.
It is not a day to insult the memory of perhaps the greatest leader in American history.
I only hope that he reconsiders the way he pays tribute to Martin Luther King next year.
UPDATE: I have generally been willing to give Josh the benefit of the doubt on this subject, but this post makes me wonder if I’m giving him a bit too much credit. I’m not sure if he’s just decided to become the MLK killjoy or if there is an even darker motivation behind it, but his zeal to take MLK down a few notches is a bit disturbing to me, to say the least.
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