RafaelFajardo

Martin Luther King reminds us of the danger of settling for cheap peace. King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” can be interpreted as a theological manifesto attacking calls for cheap peace. In this letter, King responds to his critics, who called his leadership against segregation laws in Birmingham “unwise and untimely.” His critics denounced his leadership of the demonstrations he led in Birmingham, arguing that such activities promoted unrest and violence instead of peace and healing. King responds to his critics by expressing his regret that they did not “express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about demonstrations.” He further states that a social analysis that focuses on effects without grappling with underlying causes is a superficial analysis. For King, the underlying cause for protests against racial injustice in America is always and already tied to inequitable and uncaring systems that subjugate Blacks to second-class citizenship. A responsible theology involves critical social analysis of the dehumanizing root causes of perceived an/or real social effects (any anger or rage that manifests among oppressed groups) in order to inaugurate justice in response to degrading causes and conditions.