I won’t be celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day…because most of our gatherings won’t tackle the issues Mr. King would be protesting about today, primarily the issue of our WARS.

All of the past MLK Day activities I have participated in promote a subtle sanitization process of sainthood. These activities end up declawing the very movement that birthed the leaders we are remembering. This happens when the radical way, truth and life of the catalyst leader get romanticized into feel good platitudes and high sounding ideals instead of translating into life altering actions that produce and demand true change.

Mr. King had a dream, that is for sure…but he backed it up with a ‘vision’ that provided a way to live that would bring about that 'dream’. Unfortunately we offer a deflated dream that is gasping on tepid ‘feel good’ air while the menace of injustice, best exemplified in war, is a raging cultural beast that few find the time to speak or act against.

“Dr King said in his speech on 4 April 1967 (a speech that turned three quarters of American public opinion against him), “To me the relationship of the ministry [of Jesus Christ] to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I’m speaking against the war.” -MLK Jr.

I am not interested in celebrating, when innocent civilians and our Soldiers on both sides, are dying in international conflicts that the American public supports through the voting process, increasing taxation and perpetual, unrestrained military spending. Today, there is no serious public debate going on in the faith community regarding the gospel of peace that Jesus Christ proclaimed and exemplified. If you dare speak about the subject or call into question the very activities that the fiery Southern preacher has been iconified in speaking against, you can guarantee you will lose parishioners, strain close relationships and be blacklisted among the conservative, republican dominated, evangelical American Church.

Like Jesus said: “We build monuments to the prophets we kill” (Matt. 23:29).

We say we are for peace…but our hearts are for war (Psalms 55:21) and just watch how fast the nest will get stirred if you touch the golden calves that have been erected in Civil Religion USA! We have been bred to ‘hold to a form of goodliness but deny its power” (2 Timothy 3:5)…which is just another way of saying how someone can follow the Prince of Peace with a sword of violence. In an era where radical, religious extremism is covering the front page of our public discourse with mounting examples of religiously sanctioned violence…how can the followers of Jesus and His gospel of peace support their own ‘christianized’ version of the same hate masking as religious devotion or patriotic triumphalism?

War blood continues to be spilled in the name of the God whose Son’s own blood was spilled in testimony to the futility of violence and highest example of nonviolent triumph over evil. The irony of our religiously confused ethic today astounds me, the timidity of preachers to call this out dismays me and the audacity of the Military and the President attempting to align Martin Luther King Jr. to their own justifications for making war to stop war…enrages me.

Instead of “marching” once a year, we should be ‘marshaling’ the gathered saints into a force against the injustices of our time. We should be moving forward in the fight for a better tomorrow, remembering the civil right’s victories of the past but not forgetting the challenges right in front of us. We need churches and religious leaders that can cut through all the cultural fog and once again sound the clarion call of the gospel in response to the evil being done to us and by us, because of unchallenged institutions and immoral policies being legislated by our own state and national representatives.

Jesus warned that if the church loses its saltiness…it’s not even good enough for the dung pile. (Luke 14:34-35).

A observation Martin Luther King echoed:

“The contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.” -MLK Jr.

So instead of feigning fraternity through events for dignitaries and celebrations that will be forgotten in a few days, lets rally for something that reflects the spirit and power of the leader we honor. Lets give the emerging generation more than speeches and music., lets face the truth of our segregated and homogenized Sundays and pastoral leadership gatherings and repent of our culpability in perpetuating the evils that Mr. King died fighting to end.

When is the last time someone preached against War?

When is the last time our leaders exemplified prophetic accountability to elected officials?

Where is the fire that used to burn not only on the altar of worship but in the public square?

Where are the leaders that will embrace the suffering needed to demonstrate the radical, nonviolent love of God in the shadow of the American empire?

When is the last time we have broken bread with someone who is of a different ethnicity, color or political party than ourselves?

Where are those who are willing to pay the price to see the dream realized more and more in our generation?

“Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher of consensus but a moulder of consensus. On some positions cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

I pray the “Dream” of Martin Luther King Jr. will be embraced by a new generation of peace loving radicals and that they will produce the ‘Vision’ needed to make the dream a reality…on Earth as it is in Heaven.

MLK Jr. quotes are from a recent article by Jarrod McKenna