I
come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my
conscience leaves me no other choice. I join with you in
this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims
and work of the organization which has brought us together:
Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent
statement of your executive committee are the sentiments of
my own heart and I found myself in full accord when I read
its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."
That time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
The
truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to
which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when
pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily
assume the task of opposing their government's policy,
especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move
without great difficulty against all the apathy of
conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the
surrounding world. Moreover when the issues at hand seem as
perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful
conflict we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by
uncertainty; but we must move on.
Some
of us who have already begun to break the silence of the
night have found that the calling to speak is often a
vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all
the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but
we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this
is the first time in our nation's history that a significant
number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond
the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of
a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the
reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us.
If it is, let us trace its movement well and pray that our
own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are
deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems
so close around us.
Over
the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of
my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own
heart, as I have called for radical departures from the
destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me
about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns
this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you
speaking about war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices
of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say.
Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask? And
when I hear them, though I often understand the source of
their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such
questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me,
my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest
that they do not know the world in which they live.
In
the light of such tragic misunderstandings, I deem it of
signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust
concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I
began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary
tonight.
I
come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to
my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or
to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to
China or to Russia.
Nor
is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total
situation and the need for a collective solution to the
tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North
Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue,
nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful
resolution of the problem. While they both may have
justifiable reason to be suspicious of the good faith of the
United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to
the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful
give and take on both sides.
Tonight,
however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but
rather to my fellow Americans, who, with me, bear the
greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has
exacted a heavy price on both continents.
The Importance
of Vietnam
Since
I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising
that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into
the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very
obvious and almost facile connection between the war in
Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in
America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that
struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope
for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty
program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then
came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken
and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything
of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would
never invest the necessary funds or energies in
rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like
Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some
demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly
compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to
attack it as such.
Perhaps
the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it
became clear to me that the war was doing far more than
devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending
their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight
and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to
the rest of the population. We were taking the black young
men who had been crippled by our society and sending them
eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in
Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia
and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the
cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens
as they kill and die together for a nation that has been
unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we
watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor
village, but we realize that they would never live on the
same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of
such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My
third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for
it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North
over the last three years -- especially the last three
summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and
angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and
rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer
them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction
that social change comes most meaningfully through
nonviolent action. But they asked -- and rightly so -- what
about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using
massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring
about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I
knew that I could never again raise my voice against the
violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having
first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in
the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those
boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of
hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot
be silent.
For
those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights
leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement
for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group
of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We
were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain
rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction
that America would never be free or saved from itself unless
the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from
the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with
Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written
earlier:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Now,
it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any
concern for the integrity and life of America today can
ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally
poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can
never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of
men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet
determined that America will be are led down the path of
protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.
As
if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of
America were not enough, another burden of responsibility
was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the
Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission
to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the
brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond
national allegiances, but even if it were not present I
would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to
the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this
ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I
sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking
against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the
good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and
capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for
white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they
forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who
loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then
can I say to the "Vietcong" or to Castro or to Mao as a
faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with
death or must I not share with them my life?
Finally,
as I try to delineate for you and for myself the road that
leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all
that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to
my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a
son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation
or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and
because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned
especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast
children, I come tonight to speak for them.
This
I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us
who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which
are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond
our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called
to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our
nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from
human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
Strange
Liberators
And
as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself
for ways to understand and respond to compassion my mind
goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now
not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in
Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under
the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I
think of them too because it is clear to me that there will
be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made
to know them and hear their broken cries.
They
must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese
people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a
combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the
Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh.
Even though they quoted the American Declaration of
Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to
recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its
reconquest of her former colony.
Our
government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not
"ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the
deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international
atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we
rejected a revolutionary government seeking
self-determination, and a government that had been
established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no
great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included
some Communists. For the peasants this new government meant
real land reform, one of the most important needs in their
lives.
For
nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam
the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously
supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize
Vietnam.
Before
the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the
French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at
Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of the reckless action,
but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial
and military supplies to continue the war even after they
had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full
costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.
After
the French were defeated it looked as if independence and
land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements.
But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho
should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the
peasants watched again as we supported one of the most
vicious modern dictators -- our chosen man, Premier Diem.
The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed
out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords
and refused even to discuss reunification with the north.
The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S.
influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who
came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had
aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy,
but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer
no real change -- especially in terms of their need for land
and peace.
The
only change came from America as we increased our troop
commitments in support of governments which were singularly
corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while
the people read our leaflets and received regular promises
of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish
under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow
Vietnamese --the real enemy. They move sadly and
apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers
into concentration camps where minimal social needs are
rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our
bombs. So they go -- primarily women and children and the
aged.
They
watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres
of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar
through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees.
They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty
casualties from American firepower for one
"Vietcong"-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a
million of them -- mostly children. They wander into the
towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without
clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They
see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for
food. They see the children selling their sisters to our
soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.
What
do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the
landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many
words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test
our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out
new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of
Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we
claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We
have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the
family and the village. We have destroyed their land and
their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the
nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force --
the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies
of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and
children and killed their men. What liberators?
Now
there is little left to build on -- save bitterness. Soon
the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found
at our military bases and in the concrete of the
concentration camps we call fortified hamlets. The peasants
may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such
grounds as these? Could we blame them for such thoughts? We
must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot
raise. These too are our brothers.
Perhaps
the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak
for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of
the National Liberation Front -- that strangely anonymous
group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us
in America when they realize that we permitted the
repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them
into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they
think of our condoning the violence which led to their own
taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity
when now we speak of "aggression from the north" as if there
were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust
us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous
reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour
every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must
understand their feelings even if we do not condone their
actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported
pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our
own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their
greatest acts.
How
do they judge us when our officials know that their
membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and
yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they
be thinking when they know that we are aware of their
control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready
to allow national elections in which this highly organized
political parallel government will have no part? They ask
how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is
censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are
surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan
to help form without them -- the only party in real touch
with the peasants. They question our political goals and
they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they
will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly
relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth
again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?
Here
is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence
when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear
his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from
his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own
condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and
profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the
opposition.
So,
too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel
the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met
by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is
to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and
especially their distrust of American intentions now. In
Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against
the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership
in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness
of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was
they who led a second struggle against French domination at
tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the
land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth
parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they
watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which
would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united
Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.
When
we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must
be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of
Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support
of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach
of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they
remind us that they did not begin to send in any large
number of supplies or men until American forces had moved
into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi
remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about
the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the
president claimed that none existed when they had clearly
been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of
peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard
of the increasing international rumors of American plans for
an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling
and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion
strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can
save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world
speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a
poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from
its shores.
At
this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in
these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on
Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are
called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops
there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are
submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing
process that goes on in any war where armies face each other
and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process
of death, for they must know after a short period there that
none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really
involved. Before long they must know that their government
has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more
sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the
wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor.
This Madness
Must Cease
Somehow
this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a
child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I
speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes
are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I
speak for the poor of America who are paying the double
price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in
Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as
it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an
American to the leaders of my own nation. The great
initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it
must be ours.
This
is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam.
Recently one of them wrote these words:
"Each
day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the
Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian
instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into
becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans,
who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military
victory, do not realize that in the process they are
incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image
of America will never again be the image of revolution,
freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and
militarism."
If
we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the
mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in
Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation
is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not
refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China
into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If
we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam
immediately the world will be left with no other alternative
than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we
have decided to play.
The
world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be
able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been
wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that
we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese
people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to
turn sharply from our present ways.
In
order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should
take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I
would like to suggest five concrete things that our
government should do immediately to begin the long and
difficult process of extricating ourselves from this
nightmarish conflict:
-
End all
bombing in North and South Vietnam.
-
Declare a
unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will
create the atmosphere for negotiation.
-
Take
immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in
Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in
Thailand and our interference in Laos.
-
Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation
Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must
thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in
any future Vietnam government.
-
Set a
date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam
in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.
Part
of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an
offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his
life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front.
Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we
have done. We most provide the medical aid that is badly
needed, making it available in this country if necessary.
Protesting The
War
Meanwhile
we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task
while we urge our government to disengage itself from a
disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices
if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We
must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out
every creative means of protest possible.
As
we counsel young men concerning military service we must
clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge
them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am
pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by
more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse
College, and I recommend it to all who find the American
course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I
would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their
ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious
objectors. These are the times for real choices and not
false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be
placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own
folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the
protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all
protest.
There
is something seductively tempting about stopping there and
sending us all off on what in some circles has become a
popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must
enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something
even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of
a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we
ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves
organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the
next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and
Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia.
They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We
will be marching for these and a dozen other names and
attending rallies without end unless there is a significant
and profound change in American life and policy. Such
thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling
as sons of the living God.
In
1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it
seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a
world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen
emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the
presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need
to maintain social stability for our investments accounts
for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in
Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used
against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and
green beret forces have already been active against rebels
in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of
the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years
ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly,
by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has
taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution
impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the
pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas
investment.
I am
convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the
world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical
revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a
"thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society.
When machines and computers, profit motives and property
rights are considered more important than people, the giant
triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are
incapable of being conquered.
A
true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the
fairness and justice of many of our past and present
policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good
Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an
initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole
Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will
not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their
journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than
flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and
superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces
beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values
will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty
and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across
the seas and see individual capitalists of the West
investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South
America, only to take the profits out with no concern for
the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is
not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed
gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The
Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach
others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true
revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and
say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just."
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of
filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of
injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people
normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody
battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically
deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and
love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more
money on military defense than on programs of social uplift
is approaching spiritual death.
America,
the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well
lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing,
except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering
our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take
precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep
us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands
until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This
kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense
against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will
never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear
weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through
their misguided passions urge the United States to
relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These
are days which demand wise restraint and calm
reasonableness. We must not call everyone a Communist or an
appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the
United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are
not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent
days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but
rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that
our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive
action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action
seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and
injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of
communism grows and develops.
The People Are
Important
These
are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are
revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression
and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice
and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot
people of the land are rising up as never before. "The
people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in
the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact
that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of
communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the
Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary
spirit of the modern world have now become the arch
anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only
Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism
is a judgement against our failure to make democracy real
and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only
hope today lies in our ability to recapture the
revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile
world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and
militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly
challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed
the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every
moutain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be
made straight and the rough places plain."
A
genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis
that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than
sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding
loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best
in their individual societies.
This
call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly
concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in
reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love
for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted
concept -- so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the
world as a weak and cowardly force -- has now become an
absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of
love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak
response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great
religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of
life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which
leads to ultimate reality. This
Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate
reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of
Saint John:
Let
us love one another; for love is God and everyone that
loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not
knoweth not God; for God is love. If we love one another God
dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
Let
us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.
We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow
before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are
made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is
cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that
pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee
says : "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving
choice of life and good against the damning choice of death
and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be
the hope that love is going to have the last word."
We
are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are
confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding
conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being
too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life
often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a
lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not
remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for
time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea
and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue
of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words:
"Too late." There is an invisible book of life that
faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving
finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a
choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent
co-annihilation.
We
must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways
to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the
developing world -- a world that borders on our doors. If we
do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and
shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess
power without compassion, might without morality, and
strength without sight.
Now
let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long
and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world.
This is the callling of the sons of God, and our brothers
wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too
great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our
message be that the forces of American life militate against
their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets?
Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of
solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their
cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we
might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial
moment of human history.
As
that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell,
eloquently stated:
Once to every man and
nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil
prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.
[Messages on BRC-NEWS may be forwarded and
cross-posted, as long as proper attribution is given to the
author and originating publication (including the email
address and any copyright notices), and the wording is not
altered in any way, other than for formatting.
As a courtesy, when you cross-post or forward, we'd
appreciate it if you mention that you received the info via
the BRC-NEWS list. Thank you.]
BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - International
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Web Source:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html
End of
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Beauty
Beauty is always
triumphant over ugliness in the hearts of all who are
illuminated by the love of truth.
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Genuine
Spiritual Faith
Genuine spiritual faith
produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God even in
the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat.
Read further in The Urantia Book
Fruits
of the Spirit
By the spirit fruits
of your lives impel souls to believe the truth that man
is a son of God, and that all men are brethren.
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Friendship
He who would have friends
must show himself friendly.
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Living
Faith
When, by living
faith, you become divinely God-conscious, you are then
born of the spirit as children of light and life, even
the eternal life wherewith you shall ascend the universe
of universes and attain the experience of finding God.
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Faith
When you have faith,
when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come
upon you, you will not hide your light behind closed
doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God
to all mankind.
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Truth
and Fact
Truth having to do
with spiritual realities and eternal values cannot
always be built up by combining facts. Although
individual facts may be materially true, it does not
follow that the association of a group of facts must
necessarily lead to truthful spiritual conclusions.
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A
Victorious Life
The consciousness of
a victorious human life on earth is born of that
creature faith which dares to challenge each recurring
episode of existence when confronted with the awful
spectacle of human limitations, by the unfailing
declaration: Even if I cannot do this, there lives in me
one who can and will do it...
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True
Prayer
True prayer always
stands for man's communion with a personal and superior
being.
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The
Evolving Soul
The evolving soul is
not made divine by what it does, but by what it strives
to do.
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Action
The weak indulge in
resolutions, but the strong act.
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Spiritual Exercise
The soul of man
requires spiritual exercise as well as spiritual
nourishment.
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Faith
Few persons live up
to the faith which they really have. Unreasoned fear is
a master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving
mortal soul.
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Service
Service to one's
fellows is the highest concept of the brotherhood of
spirit believers.
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Divine
Love
Divine love does not
merely forgive wrongs; it absorbs and actually destroys
them.
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Diversion
All efforts to
obtain wholesome diversion and to engage in uplifting
play are sound; refreshing sleep, rest, recreation, and
all pastimes which prevent the boredom of monotony are
worth while.
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TheoQuest.com
Human Rights
Every human right is
associated with a social duty; group privilege is an
insurance mechanism which unfailingly demands the full
payment of the exacting premiums of group service.
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Things Spiritual
Your only assurance
of a personal God consists in your own insight as to
your belief in, and experience with, things spiritual.
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Our Earthly Goal
At first life was a
struggle for existence; now, for a standard of living;
next it will be for quality of thinking, the coming
earthly goal of human existence.
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Effective Praying
You must make a
wholehearted choice of the divine will. You must
obliterate the dead center of indecision.
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Our Relationships
The relationships
between personalities are never scaffolding; mortal
memory of personality relationships has cosmic value and
will persist.
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Dangers of Pride
Of all the dangers
which beset man's mortal nature and jeopardize his
spiritual integrity, pride is the greatest. Courage is
valorous, but egotism is vainglorious and suicidal.
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Personality
If this were a
mechanistic universe . . . there would be no
disagreement; there would be no friction. But in our
evolving universe of relative perfection and
imperfection we rejoice that disagreement and
misunderstanding are possible, for thereby is evidenced
the fact and the act of personality in the universe.
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The Garden of Eden
And so was the
Garden of Eden made ready for the reception of the
promised Adam and his consort [Eve]. . . . Never before
this time nor after has Urantia harbored such a
beautiful and replete exhibition of horticulture and
agriculture.
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Afflictions
Man should not blame
God for those afflictions which are the natural result
of the life which he chooses to live; neither should man
complain of those experiences which are a part of life
as it is lived on this world.
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Perfection
We are a part of a
gigantic creation, and it is not strange that everything
does not work in perfection; our universe was not
created in perfection. Perfection is our eternal goal,
not our origin.
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Humor
Humor functions as
an automatic safety valve to prevent the building up of
excessive pressures due to the monotony of sustained and
serious self-contemplation...
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A
Victorious Human Life
The consciousness of
a victorious human life on earth is born of that
creature faith which dares to challenge each recurring
episode of existence when confronted with the awful
spectacle of human limitations, by the unfailing
declaration: Even if I cannot do this, there lives in me
one who can and will do it...
Read further in P. 59:5, 4:4.9
Brotherhood
Brotherhood
constitutes a fact of relationship between every
personality in universal existence. No person can escape
the benefits or the penalties that may come as a result
of relationship to other persons. The good effort of
each man benefits all men; the error or evil of each man
augments the tribulation of all men.
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Unexpected Situations
The mortal
personality, never sure as to which will next be
encountered, through humor swiftly grasps... the
unexpected nature of the situation be it fact or be it
truth.
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Our Future and Past
The future signifies
struggle and advancement; it bespeaks work, effort, and
achievement; but the past savors of things already
mastered and achieved.
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Peace on Earth
Without God, neither
freedom and liberty, nor property and wealth will lead
to peace.
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Unremitting Service
Jesus taught men to
place a high value upon themselves in time and in
eternity. Because of this high estimate which Jesus
placed upon men, he was willing to spend himself in the
unremitting service of humankind.
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Uncertainty
When the clouds
gather overhead, your faith should accept the fact of
the presence of the indwelling Adjuster, and thus you
should be able to look beyond the mists of mortal
uncertainty into the clear shining of the sun of eternal
righteousness ...
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Misguided Conscience
A misguided
conscience can become responsible for much conflict,
worry, sorrow, and no end of human unhappiness.
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Spiritual Loyalty and Wealth
Riches have nothing
directly to do with entrance into the kingdom of heaven,
but the love of wealth does. The spiritual loyalties of
the kingdom are incompatible with servility to
materialistic mammon. Man may not share his supreme
loyalty to a spiritual ideal with a material devotion.
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Freewill
Choice
The portal of
eternity opens only in response to the freewill choice
of the freewill sons of the God of free will.
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Courage
Is courage --
strength of character -- desirable? Then must man be
reared in an environment which necessitates grappling
with hardships and reacting to disappointments.
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▼Source▼
UB
Fulfilling
the Promise of a Creator Son
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