Today we celebrate the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. It should be pretty hard to avoid a religion angle when discussing this holiday.
The Washington Post covered President Obama’s visit to a local church for services yesterday. I noticed the earlier blog write-up a bit better than the article that eventually developed, although there was strong overlap between the two. Here’s a snippet from the earlier blog item:
President Obama and his family are worshipping at the 147-year-old Zion Baptist Church in Northwest D.C. on Sunday morning, keeping up a tradition of going to church the day before the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday.
While the Obamas have gone to church a few times a year since they moved into the White House, the King holiday has been an occasion for them to participate in the African American church tradition, complete with spirited choirs and gospel preaching.
Zion quickly filled up with members and visitors Sunday morning, and when asked about the Presidential visit, the church’s pastor, the Rev. Keith W. Byrd, said: “It’s a wonderful day. We came to worship and the first family did too.”
I actually wondered if gospel should be capitalized or not. I believe the Associated Press style is that Gospel should be capitalized if it’s referring to the Gospels of the Bible and lower-case if it’s just referring to a style, such as gospel music. And for a moment I wondered if the author was referring to preaching from the Gospels or a particular style of preaching. I guess we can assume he’s referring to the style.
On that note, I was left wanting more from the article when I got to this passage:
Joshua Dubois, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said the White House staff selected Zion, a church that dates to the 1860s, because it is “a pillar” in the District. On Sept 25, 1977, President Jimmy Carter visited the church to introduce the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., who preached that Sunday.
When the first family arrived Sunday, people rose to their feet, ushers snapped into place and the choir launched into a storm of music that was unabated until Byrd got up to preach. Byrd mixed Shakespeare with Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.
“I am so glad that Dr. King answered the question, ‘To be, or not to be?’?” Byrd said. “Be a source of hope. You can live without a lot of things, but no human can exist without hope.”
I know I’ve argued before that I’d rather not even have reporters try to summarize sermons, since they might be liable to struggle with it or cherry pick particular lines, but don’t you kind of want to know how Byrd “mixed” Shakespeare with the Sermon on the Mount? We get Hamlet’s line but where is Jesus? Certainly the Washington Post write-up was much more thorough than this Reuters depiction of the same event.
Whenever it comes to annual events, I like to see the ways that reporters can offer fresh coverage. (I’d love it if someone could tell me if Izola Ware Curry, a mentally disturbed woman who stabbed Dr. King in 1958 is still alive and, if so, where.)
Here’s a new take from a Forbes travel blog, of all things, about how Martin Luther King, Jr. was named:
Both Dr. King and his father are celebrated figures in the United States, but most people do not know the connection between the two Baptist ministers from the American South and the medieval German monk whose name they bear.
As an adult, Martin Luther King Sr., whose given name was Michael King, chose the name Martin Luther for himself and for his young son after visiting the region of eastern Germany where Martin Luther, the Father of the Reformation, was born, lived and worked, according to LutherCountry, an umbrella title for two neighboring German states, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.
The region is celebrating the LutherDecade, the 10-year count-down to 2017 and the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
Back in the 1934, Martin Luther King Sr. was one of 10 Baptist ministers who traveled first to the Holy Land and then to Germany. It was on this trip that the senior King “discovered” Martin Luther, and upon returning, gradually changed both his name and his then five-year old son’s, the group said.
A few years ago I reviewed a couple of books for the Wall Street Journal and one of them included a discussion of this and I was shocked. I’d never known that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been born with a different name, much less why it had been changed. I will note that this PBS write-up is all wrong about the issue.
In any case, as we celebrate this federal holiday honoring the great Baptist pastor, let us know if you see any particularly good or bad stories.
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Comments (15) |
January 16, 2012, at 11:15 am
“I know I’ve argued before that I’d rather not even have reporters try to summarize sermons, since they might be liable to struggle with it or cherry pick particular lines, but don’t you kind of want to know how Byrd “mixed” Shakespeare with the Sermon on the Mount? We get Hamlet’s line but where is Jesus?”
Perhaps the solution would be for reporters to provide a link to the full, unedited sermon or speech. Space considerations preclude all but the shortest or the most important speeches from publication in a daily newspaper. One would expect the President’s State of the Union to be printed in its entirety, but not a church sermon, even with the President in attendance.
Re: name changes. Does documentation exist to substantiate “LutherCountry’s” claim to MLK’s name, something like his father’s diaries or interviews with his father’s close contemporaries?
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January 16, 2012, at 11:22 am
sari,
I wish I could remember which book I read about the name change in (although I remember it was one of these two). But I’m not sure as to the answer on substantiation. It’s well documented that the name change occurred when MLK, Sr. was an adult and when Jr. was a boy and that it happened after a tour MLK, Sr. and other pastors took to Germany to visit Luther sites. But I’ll see if I can find something on it online.
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January 16, 2012, at 11:31 am
Mollie, the link provided goes to an article you wrote on Sabbath observance . As to the name change, tourist towns look for ways to maximize revenue. That was as true in Germany when my husband lived there and when we visited as it was in my home and very tourist-oriented state of Florida. I would be hesitant to present any such claim as fact without more scholarly documentation.
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January 16, 2012, at 12:53 pm
I found your comment about PBS being “all wrong” to be very dismissive and apparently biased about that PBS web page. Yes, there is one fact which you believe is wrong, but that hardly makes the page “all wrong” which is the implication of that phrase.
Another critical reason why I found your comment off base was the interview I found referenced to online which also includes the point that the his name and any changes are still considered “murky” questions but that a report which included quotes from father and son appear to contradict that Forbes story.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/mlking.asp
So it’s time for Forbes to offer up their basis for making their particular claim because it appears to be fact that was not checked.
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January 16, 2012, at 1:00 pm
Sari,
Yes, it was in one of those books. I don’t remember what the context was, but I remember it was definitely in one of those two.
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January 16, 2012, at 1:10 pm
Mollie,
The link you posted goes here:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118188016993336540.html, a 2007 article you wrote on the Sabbath.
I saw no reference to books, on MLK or otherwise.
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January 16, 2012, at 1:31 pm
I have read a book in German called “Daddy King,” which discusses how Daddy Rev. James King, later Rev. M.L. King Sr. selected his name and that of his son, but I have never run across the book in English translation, and, although I have searched for the book in English, because I would like to read it, I don’t know whether it is available, nor why more Americans don’t better know the story of the King family. I speculate that it’s because their story doesn’t fit either the reactionary nor the progressive templates of prospective readers.
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January 16, 2012, at 1:40 pm
Martin Luther was a modern thinker many say bridging the gap between medieval times and the Renaissance. His writings are timeless and still resonate today.
I read this sentence in the PBS article, and I wondered if the author had ever heard of let alone read “Bondage of the Will.” That is not the kind of timeless writing that would resonate with the modern secular world, and certainly not with the demographic that produces journalists. It resonates with people like me, but we don’t count.
The comparison between King and Luther came across as something of a high school paper where the writer had to fill a certain amount of space from a knowledge base that consisted of “The Luther guy started the Reformation and almost brought down the RCC. He was like a civil rights leader and stuff. Full stop.”
Disheartening, but it fits my stereotype of journalists exactly.
carl
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January 16, 2012, at 3:14 pm
Quick journalism question (inspired by the headline and lede here)
Do any of the style books offer guidence on how to prioritize titles, when more than one might fit. Here the headline refers to Dr. King, but the lede to Rev. King. Does one of those titles “outrank” the other? Is “Rev. Dr.” or “Dr. Rev.” ever appropriate?
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January 16, 2012, at 3:28 pm
MICHAEL:
For most newspapers, DR. is only used with medical doctors.
Thus, it would simply be “the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.”
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January 16, 2012, at 4:17 pm
This is a pet peeve of mine but I know if GetReligion mentions it there is hope (for me at least) that eventually journalists will get it right: the Rev. Father Martin Luther, O.S.A.,was an Augustinian. That means he was NOT a “monk.” He was a “friar.” The Augustinians are one four religious orders in the Church that are mendicant orders (go look up the others). Technically. only men religious (lay and ordained) who live and work in a monastary are monks. Many men religious live in common in a residence but work outside; they are called “brothers”— even the ordained. The female equivalent of a monk is a nun; of a brother, a sister. There are no women friars. (“religious” here is noun not adj.)This is a pet peeve of mine but I know if GetReligion mentions it there is hope (for me at least) that eventually journalists will get it right: the Rev. Father Martin Luther, O.S.A.,was an Augustinian. That means he was NOT a “monk.” He was a “friar.” The Augustinians are one four religious orders in the Church that are mendicant orders (go look up the others). Technically. only men religious (lay and ordained) who live and work in a monastary are monks. Many men religious live in common in a residence but work outside; they are called “brothers”— even the ordained. The female equivalent of a monk is a nun; of a brother, a sister. There are no women friars. (“religious” here is noun not adj.)This is a pet peeve of mine but I know if GetReligion mentions it there is hope (for me at least) that eventually journalists will get it right: the Rev. Father Martin Luther, O.S.A.,was an Augustinian. That means he was NOT a “monk.” He was a “friar.” The Augustinians are one four religious orders in the Church that are mendicant orders (go look up the others). Technically. only men religious (lay and ordained) who live and work in a monastary are monks. Many men religious live in common in a residence but work outside; they are called “brothers”— even the ordained. The female equivalent of a monk is a nun; of a brother, a sister. There are no women friars. (“religious” here is noun not adj.)
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January 16, 2012, at 10:41 pm
The PBS article is wrong about a lot of things. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not born during the great depression. He was born in January 1929, the depression does not start until the stock market crashes in October of that year.
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January 16, 2012, at 10:46 pm
I would also say that the PBS is on either responding to a single issue. Luther responded to a lot more than “buying in dulgences”. There is a reason that he nailed a list of multiple thesis to the door of the Cathedral.
In the case of Martin Luther King Jr., and everyone else in the movement as well, the role of Rosa Parks can be overstated. Rosa Parks may seem the one overarching figure and focus in the popular retelling and in the way some tell the story, but the movement and King’s role in it is much more complexed and can not be claimed to stem from just one event.
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January 16, 2012, at 11:07 pm
Another glaring mistake in the PBS peace is the claim “Martin Luther King became a pastor at his father’s Church in Alabama”. Martin Luther King Sr. was a pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Some actually say that King Jr. was chosen to lead the movement in Montgomery because he was from out of town and could leave quickly.
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January 17, 2012, at 11:32 pm
Carl,
Although the polemic style of _Bondage of the Will_ could be somewhat jarring to the modern reader—though possibly less so with the rising popularity of blogs, many of which are in a polemic style—I’d argue that the writing is pretty accessible. Free will and predestination are still topics that people are interested in today. Timeless topics and accessible writing are the main ingredients for a classic. Being representative of a time period is worth bonus points, and _Bondage_ qualifies on that point also.
That’s just my humble opinion. And it’s been 9 or so years since I read _Bondage_.
-John
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