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.

World Figures
Apostle Paul

Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.”

Paul of Tarsus was an early Christian evangelist often credited as the founder of Christianity. He travelled the Greco-Roman world between the years of and is thought to have died during the Neroian persecutions in 64 CE. He endured many hardships, including imprisonment, as he pursued his mission. Christians often cite Paul as a model of Christian endurance in the face of great odds.

Socrates

To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.

Socrates [pronounced "sock-rah-teez"] (c. 469-399 BCE) was a Greek philosopher whose criticisms inflamed the authorities. He was tried and found guilty of “corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens.” He was sentenced to death by poison. Socrates refused his friends’ efforts to save him, preferring to set an example by dying for his beliefs. He drank a poison called hemlock. A famous painting by the French artist David Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) in the Metropolitan Museum of New York depicts the death of Socrates.

David's Death of Socrates

St. Augustine

I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) was born into a mixed marriage; his father was a pagan and his mother was a Christian. Augustine received a pagan education and lived a wild life as a student. He’s famous for the prayer “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” His spiritual quest took him through various philosophies. He was a student of Manichaeism before becoming a Christian in 386 at the age of 32. At that time Christianity lacked a body of systematic doctrine. Among the concepts formulated by Augustine are the doctrines of original sin, and the concept of a just war. His most famous book is The City of God.

Thomas Aquinas

To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was a Dominican monk and is known as “the Angelic Doctor” for his philosophical and theological writings. His Summa Theologica remains a fundamental document for divinity students.

Martin Luther

Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.”

Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a Catholic priest who became disenchanted with the Church over teachings and customs that lacked scriptural authority. In 1517 he wrote a treatise called Ninety-Five Theses which challenged the selling of indulgences. Ordered by Pope Leo X to retract his opinions, Luther refused and nailed a copy of the Ninety-five Theses to the door of the castle church at Wittenburg. He is often quoted as accompaning this act with the words, “Here I stand. I can do no other.” His act of defiance introduced the Protestant Reformation. He remains a model of personal integrity maintained at the cost of social disapproval.

Jefferson

Before the pen of Jefferson etched the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence across the pages of history, we were here.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was the third President of the United States (1801-1809). He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He is remembered as a champion of representative government and independence from the British monarchy. Although he and his colleagues accepted a social hierarchy, slavery, and the subjugation of women, his ideas provided a platform on which later, more inclusive U. S. liberties could be erected. In the context of King’s letter, Jefferson’s act of rebellion from England is seen as the secular equivalent of Luther’s defiance of the Church.

Adolf Hitler

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal”

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was the dictator of Germany from 1934 until the defeat of Germany by the Allied Powers at the end of World War II in 1945. He was the leader of the Nazi political party. His name will always be closely associated with the persecution and government-sanctioned murder of social and racial groups that he did not feel deserved the same rights as other groups.

James Meredith

One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, with the noble sense of purpose that enables them to face jeering and hostile mobs…

In April of 1963, when King wrote his letter from jail, James Meredith (b. 1933) was attending the University of Mississipi as its first black student. Meredith had gained admission with difficulty and was determined to graduate despite daily harrassments and humiliations. He graduated in August 1963 with a degree in political science. In 1966 he organized a march to bring attention to the difficulties many blacks experienced when trying to vote. During the course of the march, Meredith was shot and wounded in an assassination attempt. He remained a civil rights activist until about 1968. As King predicts in the letter, Meredith’s name remains associated with the courage and sacrifice endured by the freedom fighters of the 1960s.

T.S. Eliot

As T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but later become a British citizen. He exercised a great influence on 20th century literature, both as a poet and as a critic. He is perhaps best known in academic circles for his scholarly poem The Wasteland, but thanks to a playful set of poems called Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, his work has found its way into the mainstream as the basis of the musical Cats. King’s quotation is from Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot’s play about the English martyr Thomas à Becket:

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain: 
Temptation shall not come in this kind again. 
The last temptation is the greatest treason: 
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Historical Events
Pilgrims at Plymouth

Before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here.

The religious dissenters who landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts in the fall of 1621 suffered great hardships. By the following spring, half the company had died of disease and exposure. King regards their sufferings as a sacrifice for the sake of religious freedom. The first black slaves put ashore in the English colonies arrived in Virginia in 1619.

1954 Supreme Court Decision

Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws.

Until 1954, operating under the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, states were allowed to maintain separate schools for black and white students. On May 17, 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka) decision overturned Plessy, stating that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” This decision led not only to school integration, but to the civil rights movement for integration in every area of American society.

Boston Tea Party

In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

In 1773 Boston officials refused to return three shiploads of tea to England. The feeling among American colonists was that their tea should not be taxed without their consent. A small mob, some of its members disguised as Indians, boarded the ships and dumped 90,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. Americans often cite this incident as an example of aggressive democratic action. A recent allusion to this act of civil disobedience is a political movement called the “Tea Party.”

Christians and lions

[Civil disobedience] was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire.

Under some of the Roman emperors, Christians who refused to perform the civic duty of offering incense to the imperial cult could be sentenced to death in the arena. Lions and other wild animals were sometimes the means of execution.

With his carefully chosen allusions, King argues that the refusal to accept state-sanctioned discrimination is an act of civil disobedience in a long heroic tradition.

Yes, it is the BP operation that produced the accident, but pause for a moment and consider who is responsible for the oil rig being in the Gulf of Mexico to begin with.

The members of Congress who are demanding a pound of flesh from BP are the ones who have authorized offshore drilling.

Pumping oil out of the seabed is an invitation to disaster. It shouldn’t ever be done. How can anyone be surprised that this monstrous calamity has come to pass?  It was only a matter of time.

Everyone who drives a petroleum-powered vehicle bears some responsibility for this hideous assault on the environment.

Users create demand.  Drugs or gasoline, the guilt does not lie with the dealers alone. When drug dealers murder, drug users are as guilty as the criminals who pull the trigger. As the oil snuffs out the lives of birds and aquatic animals, American drivers share the blame.

It’s past time for a change of life style. Oil should not be allowed anywhere near the ocean, not in tankers and not in drilling operations.  We must find an alternate means of powering vehicles.

I’ve often wondered why the decent people who are so troubled by the practice of abortion don’t turn their deeply felt love of the unborn to helping the children who were not aborted, but who may have been better off if they had been.

My morning paper today features a story about a couple who adopted a special needs child, knowing that his expected life-expectancy was 12 years or less. The child, born in Hawaii, had been shaken as an infant. The experience left him blinded, permanently brain-damaged, and suffering from seizures and cerebral palsy. He was six when he died.

According to the story, from 1,200 to 1,400 infants are killed or injured every year by being shaken. Twenty-five per cent of shaken babies die from the abuse. Those that survive suffer side-effects of varying degrees.

In addition to shaken babies are the huge numbers of chldren who suffer other types of abuse.

According to the Darkness to Light site,

1 in 4 girls is sexually abused before the age of 18. (96)

1 in 6 boys is sexually abused before the age of 18. (96)

1 in 5 children are solicited sexually while on the internet. (30, 87)

Nearly 70% of all reported sexual assaults (including assaults on adults) occur to children ages 17 and under. (76)

An estimated 39 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse exist in America today.

More than 500,000 children are in the overburdened foster care system.

Thousands of children live in the homes of meth manufacturers, contracting physical disabilities that will plague them all of their lives.  For example,

a husband and father of five children manufactured and stored chemicals associated with the manufacture of methamphetamine in and under his home for years.  As a result, the five children all suffered severe liver damage.

Children exposed to the chemicals used to make meth develop learning disabilities and long-term health problems. Many die as a result of fires and explosions in home meth labs. Many others, whose parents are wholly innocent of criminal activity, end up living in houses or apartments that have been contaminated by meth manufacturing and can still cause harm.

Millions of American children go hungry much of the year.

According to the FRAC (Food Research and Action Center) site,

Of the 49.1 million people living in food insecure households (up from 36.2 million in 2007), 32.4 million are adults (14.4 percent of all adults) and 16.7 million are children (22.5 percent of all children).

17.3 million people lived in households that were considered to have “very low food security,” . . . that means one or more people in the household were hungry over the course of the year because of the inability to afford enough food. This was up from 11.9 million in 2007 and 8.5 million in 2000.

Millions of children lack adequate health care because their parents cannot pay for insurance. According to a story on the ScienceDaily site,

[l]ack of health insurance might have led or contributed to nearly 17,000 deaths among hospitalized children in the United States in the span of less than two decades, according to research led by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Of the thousands of children in the criminal justice system, “as many as 65 to 75 percent of juvenile offenders have one or more psychiatric disorders.”

I understand that people feel strongly that abortion for any reason is unacceptable. Women who feel this way should not have abortions.

All others who claim to oppose abortion because of a love of children, would do well to direct their efforts to the rescue of the suffering children already living in their midst.

Abortion is not the worst thing that can happen to a child.

Darkness to Light (child abuse)

Institute for Intergovernmental Research (The Methamphetamine Problem)

Food Research and Action Center (FRAC)

ScienceDaily (lack of insurance)

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Last night I watched the President’s State of the Union address.  I’ll admit to having hesitated to watch. I voted for Obama, but I haven’t been particularly happy with the way things have been going in Washington. But when I heard on the radio that it was time, I dutifully turned off the radio and turned on the TV.

I kept the sound down until the President was actually ready to begin. I hate being told what he’s going to say and then, afterwards, what he said.  What kind of morons do the commentators think we are?  Or are they afraid that we’ll listen to the speech and hear the words that are said and how they are said?

It was a while before the President smiled, but when he did, it lit up the room. It recalled the enthusiasm I’d had for his candidacy. It was genuine. It was humanizing. It was a dramatic contrast to what the camera showed in the audience, panning the faces of his opposition.

Republican lawmakers

Those stony faces exuded resentment, dislike, perhaps even hatred. Those were the faces of not just political opposition, but belligerent refusal to cooperate.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a President speak directly to the lawmakers who are screwing up the government in specific and certain terms. This one did it.

The Supreme Court was sitting together down front, robes of office showing their special and exalted status. The President told them what he thought of the outrageous decision they made the other day concerning turning American elections over to the richest corporate entities in the world.

He told the uncooperative members of congress and the senate that it was time to forget their personal agendas and work for the people who sent them to Washington.

He reminded them that the national deficit was already in the trillions when he walked in the door a year ago.

He reminded them that the previous administration had taken office with a large surplus, the legacy of the administration before them.

He stood there, David smiling at Goliath, reiterating the goals he had for the government. His enemies stared back, chewing the insides of their lips, biting back the insults they were longing to shout, closing their minds to reason, common sense, and the needs of their constituents.

I turned off the TV before the commentators could make me forget my impressions. I was reassured in only one thing: we have a capable President.  I remained discouraged, however, because I saw, on those grim faces in the crowd, the petty, powerful determination to obstruct his efforts to govern this country as a democracy.

Graham and Sessions

Play poster from 1916

The new, politically-correct image is that of  the American Mosaic in which the separate ethnic and cultural ingredients remain separate, attached to one another by some sort of undefined cement that connects them, but prevents them from fusing.

I believe that the Melting Pot is the preferable concept.

In a mosaic, the only binder is the cement; weaken that and the whole crumbles, leaving separate bits with nothing in common except physical location; consider Bosnia, Rwanda, Pakistan.

In the melting pot, the disparate elements become an alloy.  The African contribution joins with the Irish, the Chinese, the Jewish, the Mexican, the American Indian, etc., to become something new, something distinctly “American” as opposed to European or Indian, African, or Asian.

In the Melting Pot the original elements are not lost. They are transformed so that the alloy is the stuff of which all Americans are formed.

Like a member of the Starship Enterprise, the Melting Pot-American may choose to wear a dashiki or a sari or a serape during leisure hours.  He can identify with his family’s origins and personal values without setting up an adversarial relationship to Americans who choose to identify with some other element in the national alloy.

The Melting Pot-American values ethnic difference without losing sight of the importance of the national interest and public good. Because all Americans share in the mix, all Americans, if they are sane and even nominally educated in the nation’s history, are able to understand multiple viewpoints and find ways to work with one another.

The Mosaic-American says

I’m different, you don’t understand me.

You can’t understand me.

I don’t want you to understand me.

I don’t want to talk like you.

Stay on your side of the grout and I’ll stay on mine.

I’ll teach my children what I want them to believe about history and I don’t want the public schools to contradict what I have taught them.

and don’t try to make them say the Pledge because they’re not “American,” they’re * * * (insert the ethnic, racial, or religious designation of your choice.)

History is lies.

You can’t trust books.

You can’t trust teachers.

You can’t trust anybody who doesn’t look, think, and talk like us.

The Melting Pot image says

We are all Americans with the same stake in the country.

Our ancestors shared certain experiences in the past and we share certain experiences in the present.

We are a mixture of all the races, religions, and cultures  of the world which are themselves a mixture of all that is best and worst in human belief and practice.

We can choose to include the best of this world heritage in our national identity and refuse to preserve the evil.”

The image of the Mosaic seeks to deny the historical fact that as cultures collide they merge and fuse.

The image of the Melting Pot recognizes the historical truth that children are different from their parents because they occupy a different niche in historical time, and because their minds are exposed to different thoughts, ideas, and world conditions.

The Mosaic image promotes intolerance and is shored up by keeping children ignorant. The Melting Pot image promotes the idea of a national identity and stakes everything on educating children to think for themselves.

It is no accident that the popularity of the Mosaic image coincides with a decline in the quality of public education.

From the Mosaic point of view, the ungrammatical memoir of an uneducated criminal is equal in value to the works of George Orwell.  Books for “literature” classes are not selected for a content of the best writing of the best writers, but for the uncritical inclusion of a politically-correct mix of writers according to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and economic status.

The concept of educating children in the genius of their native language so that they can not only appreciate it but use it to clarify and strengthen their own thinking, has been lost.  A new generation of Americans is growing up ignorant of shades of meaning, standard pronunciation, grammatical construction, and the pleasures of reading.

Adamantly “mosaic” Americans who refuse to speak a standard form of English will find little advantage in their chosen dialect if the English they speak is incomprehensible to non-native speakers who have learned standard English.

The question of which image to adopt as a metaphor for the American experience is not trivial. The act of naturalization should be seen as a ritual that confers a new ethnicity and not just a new mailing address.

Becoming “an American” does not have to mean relinquishing one’s childhood customs, clothing, or religion.  It should, however, entail a shift of national loyalties and the acceptance of specific civic responsibilties.

The American ethnicity should recognize national values not shared by some other countries.   For example,

tolerance of diverse religious beliefs–as long as the citizens who hold them don’t try to impose them on the citizens who don’t.

equal protection under the law--not special rules according to wealth, celebrity, or gender

responsible capitalism–freedom to pursue wealth without license to grind the poor

Values and ideals are not the same as realities.

The realities of life in the United States are often in contradiction to the ideals stated in the Declaration of Independence and the the Pledge of Allegiance.

The disconnects that exist, however, should not be used as excuses to abandon the vision of a nation unlike any that has existed before: a nation in which people are truly free and equal, socially,

economically, and intellectually.

To achieve such ideals a people and its government must work together. Special interest groups with conflicting goals tend to lose sight of a national vision.

Melting Pot or Mosaic? It’s nothing less than the choice between a unified national purpose and an internecine battleground.

Inequities found in area Advanced Placement course choices

The gist of the story is that high school students in high income school districts are offered a greater selection of Advanced Placement college courses than students in less advantaged neighborhoods.

Surprise, surprise!

How is that different from any other aspect of life in the United States? Parents with large incomes are able to provide their children with more advantages than parents who earn barely enough to cover basic necessities.

Schools reflect the communities they are in.

According to the article, only 19% of the students in the schools with the most AP courses are low-income, compared to 62% low-income students in the schools with the fewest AP courses.

The article also quotes these facts:

Fifty-four per cent of the Texas students who took AP exams in 2009 failed them.

At a predominantly low-income school, 89% of the students who took AP exams failed them.

Getting worked up about the lack of advanced placement courses in low-income schools is ridiculous. It’s like complaining that a school for paraplegics doesn’t offer courses in ballroom dancing.

Instead of attempting to turn every U.S. high school into a college prep tank, reformers would do well to look at the actual needs of the school population.

AP courses are not a high priority in most U. S. schools.  Basic literacy is.

Although all the political hype is about sending students to college, how many U.S. high school graduates actually go to college?

Statistics vary, according to the agenda of whoever is providing them, but from what I can determine, only about 33% of high school graduates go to college.

It would be nice to assume that those who go to college represent the most able of the graduates.  However, according to various reports, 60-70% of college freshmen require remediation in basic subjects.

If the “cream of the crop” is so lacking in basic educational attainments, what must that say about the nearly 70% who don’t go to college?

I say stop worrying about providing a huge menu of AP courses until more students are brought to a level of literacy that will enable them to benefit from them.

And stop pretending that college should be the ultimate goal of every high school graduate.

Make high school graduation in itself mean something.  Stop wasting time in the early grades.

In eight years of formal instruction, a young person is capable of mastering such basic skills as standard English and basic arithmetic.  By the end of the tenth grade a student of average or better intelligence can be ready to benefit from what are called AP courses.

The last two years of high school should be a period of intense academic study for the students who are suited to it, and a period of practical training for those who want to pursue a non-academic course of learning.

A college-bound high school graduate should know how to speak, think, and write at a college level of literacy.  Non-college-bound high school graduates should be able to enter a chosen occupation having mastered its basic skills. They should also be able to read well enough to continue their education on their own.

Inequities found in area Advanced Placement course choices

Schools Can’t Do It All