Martin’s Choice
January 27, 2019
Adam Webber

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The full text of Dr. King’s speech, along with an audio recording, can be found at:

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/beyond-vietnam
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This week I read a speech given by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and it changed all my plans for a sermon today.  It’s not the “I Have a Dream” speech for which he is, today, best remembered; it’s a tremendously brave and important speech, which far fewer people now recall.  It was not a popular speech, at the time; the day after he gave it, 168 newspapers around the country came out against his position.  The New York Times titled their editorial simply, “Dr. King’s Error.”

The speech in question was given by Dr. King in 1967 at the Riverside Church in New York City, to a group called “Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam.”  In this speech, he came out forcefully against the war.  I found this speech very moving, and surprisingly timely—surprisingly, I say, because, of course, Dr. King’s main subject, the war in Vietnam, has now passed into history.  But let’s listen to some excerpts of this speech together, and I’ll see if I can explain why it is speaking so forcefully to me today.

And I ask for your patience as we listen.  This is a very different style of oratory from mine, slower and longer, and it demands more attention; but I think you’ll find it’s worth the effort.

After a little introduction, Dr. King begins his speech this way:

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization that brought us together, Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: “A time comes when silence is betrayal.” That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

Dr. King then goes on to tell about how difficult it has been for him to speak out on this subject, and how much pushback he has received, particularly from people who saw such talk as detracting from his civil rights work. Then he says:

Since I am a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything on a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

That was his first reason for speaking out against the war.  He goes on to lay out five more reasons, and then he comes to his seventh, the capstone, and it goes like this:

Finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place, I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. Because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them. This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

That’s where this speech really began to grab me: Dr. King’s conviction that we share with all people the calling to be children of the living God—a calling which is beyond race or nation or creed.

Next, Dr. King goes on to review at length the history of conflict in Vietnam.  He explores with careful empathy the outlook of each side, and the damage done both to the Vietnamese and to our own troops.  He calls for America to end the war, and he gives five concrete steps he thinks the nation should take in that direction.  I’m going to skip over all that, because it took over an hour.  It’s a fine, bold, well-informed speech.  And when he finished that part, he might have stopped there.  It must have been tempting to stop there: to keep it simple and concrete.  But if he had stopped there, I wouldn’t be sharing it with you this morning.

Because now, Dr. King goes on to say something more, as he returns to his capstone idea: we are all children of God, and therefore all people matter.  People matter more than things.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality [applause], and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen concerned” committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.  So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

There it is again: our calling as children of the living God.  (He says “sons,” but remember, this was written more than fifty years ago; I say “children” now.)  Dr. King saw the war in Vietnam not just as a problem to be addressed, but as a symptom of a deeper problem.  As he saw it, our nation cared more about profit than about people.  And that false priority, profit over people, was the root of many national problems.  That false priority, profit over people, made us insensitive to racial injustice.  That same false priority, profit over people, made us insensitive to the problems of poverty.  That same false priority made us militaristic, and tempted us to use our military might not to preserve peace and justice, but to preserve wealth and economic advantage.  And so Dr. King calls for a new American revolution — a world revolution.

I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin  the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. 

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God.  And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. . . . If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

When I read those words this week, I knew I had to share them with you.  That’s not the end of the speech; Dr. King builds from there to a rousing oratorical finish.  But I want to keep sight of the point he made right there: that our nation faces a choice.  Let’s call it Martin’s Choice.  We are standing where two roads diverge.  The war in Vietnam is over, but Martin’s Choice remains before us.  I want to give you three present-day examples.

First, there is a continuing choice behind our vast military spending. Now, let me say something that may surprise you: for my part, I hope that the military will always be a part of our society, even if, even when, we have peace around the world.  Military service can cultivate a unique set of virtues, virtues like self-sacrifice, courage, competence and fitness.  Such virtues, we will always need.  But the question is, how much military presence should we maintain, and what kind, and where in the world.  That’s a complicated question, and it doesn’t have a simple answer.

But there’s one simple thing I would assert about our military spending, and that is, that it’s way too big.  Way too big.  I know, this seems a hopeless cause right now; I couldn’t get elected to public office in this country on that platform.  Generals would line up to say that cuts would threaten our national security; social-media trolls would call me unpatriotic, and a traitor.

But look at this: here’s a historical look at how much the United States has spent on the military:

[chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#/media/File:Defense_spending.png]

This is adjusted for inflation.  You can see the bump here that was WWI, and the bump here that was WWII.  This one is Korea; then there’s a steady buildup in Vietnam.  And then — but it never really goes back down!  

Here’s another way to look at our spending, comparing it with the other biggest-spending nations:

[chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Top_ten_military_expenditures_in_$_in_2013.jpg.jpeg]

More than fifty years ago, as we heard, Dr. King foresaw that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube; and though Vietnam is over, we’re still right there today.

When, around the world, a child starves to death once every few seconds, and when at the same time we spend more on our military than the next nine largest nations put together, then you know we have gone down the wrong road.

This is the road where the suffering of people doesn’t matter, particularly if they’re not our people.  This is the road where, if a foreign ruler has a troublesome journalist chopped up into little pieces, we look the other way, as long as he buys arms from us.  This is the road where, if all those starving children are going to die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.  We don’t say anything that harsh with our mouths, of course — but we say it with our actions, all the time. This is what Dr. King was talking about when he said, A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

That was the first of my three examples, of how what Dr. King said is still critically important for us today.

And here’s my second example: our current national debate about health care.  Again, a complicated problem without a simple solution.  But, again, there is a simple question, right at the outset, where two roads diverge.  Does the suffering of people matter, or not?  Do we care for the sick, as Jesus taught us, or do we only care for the sick who can pay?  Do we care that getting sick can throw working people into bankruptcy, or do we just call that their hard luck?  

Down one road, we try to extend compassionate care to all people.  Maybe it’s the Affordable Care Act (which, incidentally, provides my family’s insurance, so that this church doesn’t have to pay for it), or maybe it’s Medicare for All, or some other scheme.  

Down the other road, we kill the Affordable Care Act and replace it with nothing.  We shrug our shoulders and say, if you’re poor and you get sick, we’ll keep you in our prayers; but good health care is just one of the advantages of wealth.  So quit whining and work a little harder.

A third example: our current national debate about how to respond to the people seeking refuge at our southern border.  This too is a complicated problem, and it doesn’t have a simple solution.  But it does have a simple question, right at the outset: the same place where two roads diverge.  Do people matter, or not?  Are those refugees our brothers and sisters, fellow children of God, whom as followers of Jesus we are bound to treat with kindness and compassion—or are they not?  

Down one road, we treat their humanity as our highest concern, and so we use our resources to relieve their suffering and help them find better lives.  

Down the other road, we see them not as suffering brothers and sisters, but as politically useful scapegoats.  We characterize them as an invading horde of potential thieves, rapists, murderers, terrorists, and drug dealers.  We use our wealth to build a wall, and to build prisons for them when they get over the wall.  They are not U.S. citizens and voters, they are not campaign donors, so their suffering is of no concern to us.

No one who has read Dr. King can doubt which road he wanted us to choose.  So I my jaw dropped, last week, when I saw this:

[video clip: Mike Pence on Face the Nation]

That was Mike Pence, our Vice President, invoking Martin Luther King in support of the plan to spend billions building a wall on our souther border.  Did Pence read, but completely misunderstand, Dr. King?  Or did he blithely quote him without actually reading him?  Or did he understand Dr. King perfectly well, but cynically misappropriate his legacy?

This week, a friend sent me an article about the growth of what the author called the “religious left.”  I’m not a fan of that term; it reflects our predilection for dividing all the world into two camps, left and right. But if it is indeed a trend that more people are standing on their religious principles to demand compassionate behavior from their government, I welcome it.  I welcome that trend, or, let me say, I welcome it back — because it is not a new thing.

We in this church have a faith commitment, a commitment to live lovingly.  We are to live lovingly, not only toward those few people we meet face to face, but toward the many people we never meet.  This commitment to live lovingly requires us to make a choice where the roads diverge: to choose that our government act with compassion on our behalf.  This is an old truth.  Martin Luther King knew it, and gave his life for it; and so did Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and so did Owen Lovejoy; and so, over all, did Jesus.

Whenever and wherever we face Martin’s choice, let us choose to live lovingly.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Amen.