67 conflicto, reconciliación y hermandad Let’s consider one of the most famous lines from Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham jail, in which he proclaimed that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He did not just mean that injustice unchecked will eventually affect everyone; he was making the more radical claim that injustice anywhere harms the human community to which we all belong. As he put it in another context, “[w]e are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny,” and thus “[w]hatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”5 This view of the world, which emanates from a theological tradition called personalism, fundamentally shaped his witness, as he worked tirelessly to repair the breach in what he referred to as “the beloved community.” In a real sense, King was a healer. Did he solve the problem of racism? Of course not. But his life and ministry revealed racism as a lie because it conflicts with our true nature and the conditions necessary for human flourishing. In responding to racism, we are not simply crafting a plan by which to solve a logistical problem or to discover the particular technical insight that will set things right. We are instead called to bear witness to the truth of the human person and the relationships that are essential to our flourishing. Dr. King’s advocacy for the law’s expansion and enforcement of individual rights was not grounded in independence and autonomy; King looked to rights as tools to help repair the breach in the human community. His work to enhance the legal and political standing of the individual was inseparable —and in a real sense, indistinguishable— from his work to restore the human community. The call to justice is about more than lifting up the marginalized and oppressed; it is about restoring the relationships that are breached by marginalization and oppression, connecting us all with our true natures as created, mutually dependent beings. Did it make him popular? No, it didn’t. From August 1964 to August 1966, Gallup surveys showed that the percentage of Americans who viewed King unfavorably jumped from 38% to 63%. In the years leading up to 1964, King had led the Montgomery bus boycott, spoke at the funerals of the girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing, wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, brought worldwide attention to Bull Connor’s regime attacking peaceful protestors with police 5 King Jr. M.L., A Christmas Sermon on Peace (1957), in A Testament of Hope, at 253, 254
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