The Society of Biblical Literature annual conference is beginning in Atlanta, which means it is just a MARTA ride away for me this year. I look forward to the sessions, book hall, other meetings, and seeing friends and colleagues. I start off tonight with a dinner meeting.
So a short post today and perhaps a few other short ones over the next few days about Dr. King and the parables. Much of the content of the posts will not make it into the book, because of word count issues. Here goes:
Dr. King is most often memorialized by images and videos of
his famous “I have a Dream” speech, which contributes to the process of
“collective amnesia” that sanitizes essential elements of his message about
social justice (Yanco 2014: xi). King, who during his life was by many as a
dangerous radical is now remembered in popular culture as the head of the Civil
Rights movement and a forceful spokesperson for nonviolence. King, however, not
only helped lead a nonviolent movement against racism and for equality, but he
also actively fought against materialism, militarism, and economic exploitation
and for social and economic justice. Few
remember that King called for such things as a guaranteed annual income, which
meant that the United States would guarantee a minimum amount of money be paid
to every citizen of the United States so that all people could afford decent
housing, food, health care, and education (a form of this idea was later
proposed by President Richard Nixon in 1969 in his “Family Assistance Plan”;
cf. Yanco 2014: 37).
As his sermons about the parables illustrate, King believed
that racial and economic injustices would never be solved without a radical
redistribution of political and economic power, and he prophetically denounced
the evils of capitalism and militarism just as he denounced the evils of
racism.
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