It has been two days since Martin Luther King Jr Day. As usual, my comments filled my feeds and news about activities, comments, quotes and thoughts about the impact of Reverend King. And as predictably, criticism of people's support and quotes was present too.
As an immigrant to the US, my history is of a different black man who fought for justice and civil rights: Nelson Mandela. To my knowledge they never met, but they fought for the same things: dignity, equality, justice. They find commonality in the phrase "free at last" where I believe President Mandela quoted Reverend King when he was released. Their fight was similar, but their outcomes completely different. Reverend King was assassinated, while President Mandela was imprisoned, released and then elected president of the very country that imprisoned him.
Just like the responses to Reverend King this past Monday, so too, President Mandela was quoted and referenced too. In a similar vein, people also brought to attention all the unpopular views and statements of President Mandela.
Here's an example: people like to quote Reverend King's dream speech. Others critique by quoting Reverend King's views on capitalism. President Mandela is often quoted for his statements about dying for a cause while others critique him for being a terrorist.
This has bugged me: not because they are inaccurate, but because I'm not sure of the point. Let me pose my...irritation seems the right word...as questions:
- What is the end goal of criticizing someone's support of of who you support?
- Is it possible that you can support one part of a person's philosophy without agreeing with all of it?
- Do we allow people to grow and change, even if that change is frustratingly slow?
- Why criticize their change and growth in support?
- Is it possible to celebrate these two men without that celebration becoming a weapon of division, which, I think, neither would have endorsed?
These are just my thoughts this week on this. Happy to hear your thoughts, even if they are criticisms.
As for President Mandela and Reverend King, I think they would have been great friends. In fact, I would love to have been in a room over dinner listening to them talk. Based on the fact that they both professed faith in Christ, I believe they might just be sitting chatting together, not as Reverend and President, but as Nelson and Martin.
If we listen closely, we might just hear their echoes and find some wisdom for our day.
Speak on, Nelson and Martin.
Wow, Dorian, you got me thinking. I don’t think we like that our heroes have feet of clay, but they all do, so if we see a friend apparently idolizing someone we feel a need to make sure they recognize their weaknesses, too. I also think we don’t know how to hold the dichotomy of honoring the heroic things someone has done and deploring the evil they may also have done. This is why we are renaming buildings and tearing down statues that honor former slave-holders. As a Christian woman I grapple with this as I see the misogyny of Christian theologians and leaders. What do I do with the theology of Augustine, for example? Or the books of Bill Hybels? I think we have to examine their legacies in light of their known flaws and call out the evil as we see it. Thanks for this post.
ReplyDeleteThanks Susan for your thoughts. I like how you think and comment. I agree that it is very hard to navigate. I fail to do it regularly. We do have a tendency to both “throw the baby out with the bath water” and be selective with what we like. Sometimes things need to be renamed and at other times repurposed. In South Africa the new government after the fall of Apartheid could not bring themselves to meet in the parliamentary room of the previous oppressors. So they built a new one and repurposed the old one as a parliamentary room for the youth government officials. Since they didn’t carry the memory of apartheid as fresh scars but rather as a residual memory it was less potent for them but still a good reminder. This is helpful to me in navigating forward with these tough thoughts.
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