MLK Day

Did you know why MLK was in Memphis for the garbage workers' strike when he was shot on his motel balcony? Two black garbage men sought shelter from a storm during a break. The city wouldn't let them inside with white workers, so they sat in the tailgate of their truck. They were crushed to death by the compactor. During the protests and labor strike that followed, workers wore placards that read "I am a man." As in, a human being- not a piece of garbage.

Today fundamentalist white Southern Baptist "conservative-Christians" dominate American politics, and unfortunately, American theology. Their issues are anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-Darwin, pro-war and pro-rich. Their end-times theology of "millennialism" is perhaps their greatest false doctrine which has a dangerous influence on all the rest of their teaching, but worst, on American foreign policy. I will stipulate that abortion is wrong and that the Bible clearly does not condone homosexuality- but should Christians only protect a human being before it is born? Don't we also have a responsibility to be our brothers' keepers their whole lives?

Dr. King is most remembered for his leadership in the non-violent civil rights movement, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner was also an opponent of war and a champion of social and economic justice. Today, on his birthday, please pray that God will lead our nation and it's leaders away from coruption and complacency and toward His will for us to have a heart for the poor, the weak, and the infirm. Pray that "compassionate conservatism" would become reality, and not mere campaign rhetoric.

"...any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the economic conditions that damn the soul, the social conditions that corrupt men, and the city governments that cripple them, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood."

~Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

James 2 (New International Version)

Faith and Deeds

¹⁴What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? ¹⁵Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. ¹⁶If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? ¹⁷In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

¹⁸But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds."
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

¹⁹You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

²⁰You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?

Please visit http://www.sojo.net/- Soujourners: Christians for Justice and Peace