On this day our nation recognizes the man and his mission, I’d like to recognize his ultimate concern. I’d like to share his exhorting faith and spiritual wisdom. I found this sermon to be poignant and timely even though it was given more than 65 years ago. Just goes to show that there remains nothing new under the sun. I found the message to be very powerful. The message did focus upon how the pursuit of wealth and power, the whims of a corrupted culture and the nations worldly political views can poison a community of faith. This was a conservative Christian man. This was a truth-teller. This was a good and faithful servant.
A excerpt from a sermon delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Paul’sLetter to American Christians,” Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
4 November 1956 Montgomery, Ala.
“I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unchristian world. That is what I had to do. That is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially. They live by some such principle as this: “everybody is doing it, so it must be alright.” For so many of you Morality is merely group consensus. In your modern ,sociological lingo, the mores are accepted as the right ways. You have uncon- sciously come to believe that right is discovered by taking a sort of Gallop poll of the majority opinion. How many are giving their ultimate allegiance to this way. But American Christians, I must say to you as I said to the Roman Christians years ago, “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renew- ing of your mind.” Or, as I said to the Phillipian Christians, “Ye are a colony of heaven.” This means that although you live in the colony of time, your ultimate allegiance is to the empire of eternity. You have a dual citizenry. You live both in time and eternity; both in heaven and earth. Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflictswith God’swill it is your Christian duty to take a stand against
it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of man-made institu- tions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.”
See the entire sermon here:
http://okra.stanford.edu/transcription/document_images/Vol03Scans/414_4-Nov-1956_Pauls%20Letter%20to%20Amer%20Christians.pdf