On April 4, 1967, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King came to Riverside Church in New York City and unleashed a scorching rebuke on those ministers who refused to speak out against the war in Vietnam.
“A time comes when silence is betrayal … that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam,” King said. One year to the date of this speech in New York, MLK was assassinated, with some speculation that his stance on the Vietnam War led to his demise.
Decades after King’s prophetic call for people to go against the war, many pastors say challenging current wars and conflicts today is exactly what King would be preaching about in 2024.
“We can never use this as just another year,” the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. told The Washington Informer. “He would preach about the battle in the Middle East.”
“He would be against Hamas using the Palestinians as shields, but we — in the U.S. government — have given them the green light to have a needle in the haystack diplomacy. They have killed 28,000 people.”
Jackson also said that King would preach about freedom for all men.
“He would say that we have gone from slavery to freedom. We have been free for 161 years, but we need everyone to be set free. The troops should escort the captors under U.N. command. Let all go free. I want Justice at home and peace abroad,” the celebrated civil rights leader explained. “He would be speaking to issues like the war in the Middle East and the Ukraine and how do we close the gap to ensure the protection of our Democracy. He also would be lifting the need to vote now more than ever.”
The Rev. Jamal Bryant, pastor of New Birth Baptist Church in Atlanta, also considered King’s stance on Vietnam when imagining how he’d approach speaking of issues today from the pulpit.
“When Dr. King was alive, the critical issue when he spoke was Vietnam. Today, he would be talking about the war on the Gaza Strip, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and what is taking place in Haiti. He also would say that in the first three weeks of January, there have been three mass shootings,” Bryant told The Informer.
Regarding politics, Bryant said “Dr. King would say Biden and Trump are not on the ballot in November. What is on the ballot is employment, health care, and our seniors.”
The Rev. George Gilbert Jr., assistant pastor of Holy Trinity Missionary Baptist Church in the District, said, “Dr. King would be speaking against poverty and when you have poverty you have crime, you have dysfunction.”
Gilbert’s new intergenerational musical based on King’s book, “Where Do We Go from Here? Community or Chaos,” played at THEARC in Southeast D.C. just days before the civil rights leader’s federal holiday.
“Dr. King would say that we have made great strides, but we still must continue the fight.”
The Rev. Gerald Durley, 81, retired pastor of Provident Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, said that King’s message would focus on unity.
“His message would be around reconciliation, healing and instituting the power of love. Now we must put into practice the power to love and to forgive. It is not about retribution but reconciliation,” Durley told The Informer.
The Rev. William Lamar IV, pastor of Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, D.C., noted that King’s popularity might have been low when he was alive, but today the leaders would turn to him for answers on how to make the world a better place. Lamar emphasized that the world is all interconnected and the importance of working together.
“King talked about how all of us all of us live in one global house. We talk about the dream but we don’t talk about how we live in one global house and if you live out a fire out in the U.S., it could flare up in Uganda,” Lamar said.
The Metropolitan AME pastor also encouraged people to remember the King holiday as a moment to continue his fight for freedom.
“We have turned King’s birthday into a day of service, but King was a revolutionary and the question is how do we revolutionize King’s Day. He dealt with the triple evils of militarism, capitalism, and racism and I don’t believe that is the King that we are remembering.”