Continuing my series of posts on the language of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” I’ll comment on some of the expressions he uses.
Greco Roman world
… Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world…
In First Century CE, the period during which Christianity originated and spread, the world was dominated by the Roman Empire. The Romans had been much influenced by the philosophy and literature of ancient Greece. The civilization into which Paul of Tarsus was born was a combination of Greek and Roman ideas; hence, “Greco Roman.”
Judaeo Christian heritage
…they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage…
The adjective Judeao (also spelled Judeo) means “of the religion of Judaism.” The “Judaeo Christian heritage” refers to social concepts about human behavior that were described in the Hebrew scriptures and added to by the Christian scriptures.
Zeitgeist
Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice.
Zeitgeist is a German word meaning “spirit of the times.” Certain ideas seem to occur to people all over the world at the same time. King is thinking of riots that occurred in Japan, Germany, Russia, Cuba, and Peru between 1960 and 1963, the year in which he is writing the letter.
rest content (verb phrase)
I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes.
The expression “to rest content” means “to remain satisfied with things as they are.”
rabble rousers
And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who employ nonviolent direct action…
The word “rabble” is an emotionally charged synonym for “crowds of people.” It suggests that the people referred to are ignorant and easily led. A “rabble rouser” is a trouble maker who appeals to emotion rather than to intelligence. By calling King and his followers “rabble rousers” and “outside agitators,” the local leaders are suggesting that no real problem exists in their community.
freedom rides/pilgrimages
So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides -and try to understand why he must do so.
In the Middle Ages a common practice was to make a journey to a shrine or other holy place. The purpose was to earn forgiveness for one’s sins. In the 1960s people seeking the end of racial segregaton made journeys to earn attention for their cause. Freedom rides were bus journeys made to centers of segregation in an effort to gain media attention that might lead to a change in laws.
clarion call
Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred?
A clarion was a medieval trumpet used to summon troops. Figuratively a clarion call is “a summons to action.”
mores of society
In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.
The mores [môr'āz'] of a society are a combination of custom, tradition, and law. A society’s mores often impose inequality upon segments of society. Racial laws and the unequal treatment of women are two examples of behavior supported by social mores in different historical periods and currently in different parts of the world.
gadflies
Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
A gadfly is a fly that torments livestock by biting them. Figuratively a gadfly is someone who annoys society by questioning established ideas about how people should behave. Socrates called himself “the gadfly of the state.” Social gadflies often meet violent ends.
gainsaying
There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community.
To gainsay is to speak against something. It’s a synonym for contradict.
secular
And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
The word secular is the opposite of sacred. Anything that has to do with everyday life, such as work, is secular. Anything to do with God and spiritual matters is sacred. In King’s mind the church should be concerned with every aspect of life.
status quo
So often it [the church] is an archdefender of the status quo.
Status quo is a Latin expression meaning “the situation that exists.” In 1963, racial segregation and inequality before the law were part of the status quo.
ekklesia
Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world.
Not in the everyday vocabulary of most people, ekklesia is the Greek word translated as “church” in the New Testament. Since King has already used the word “church” twice in this passage, he probably didn’t want to use it a third time. The use of the word ekklesia also emphasizes that there is more than one kind of “church.” There’s the church that everyone sees, the organized church with its leaders and policies that may condone racial segregation. And then there’s the church that embodies the principles of Christianity that teach the equal worthiness ue of each individual human being.