Secular values: Martin Luther King Jr. defended humanists, supported the separation of church and state, and approved of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down government-sponsored prayer in public schools.

While conservative Christians often try to claim King as one of their own, the fact is the heroic civil rights leader was a progressive liberal who defended secular values.

For example, King supported the landmark Supreme Court decision striking down government-sponsored prayer in public schools. Speaking about the ruling in a January 1965 interview with Playboy magazine, King said:

I endorse it. I think it was correct. Contrary to what many have said, it sought to outlaw neither prayer nor belief in God. In a pluralistic society such as ours, who is to determine what prayer shall be spoken, and by whom? Legally, constitutionally or otherwise, the state certainly has no such right. I am strongly opposed to the efforts that have been made to nullify the decision…

More to the point, King was suspicious of many conservative Christian churches, who he believed to be perpetuating institutional racism instead of fighting it. Indeed, King was more worried about working towards social justice than checking the religious credentials of his fellow civil rights activists.

In fact, King was a staunch supporter of atheists, agnostics and other freethinkers active in the social justice movement. In his book, Strength to Love, King writes:

I would be the last to condemn the thousands of sincere and dedicated people outside the churches who have labored unselfishly through various humanitarian movements to cure the world of social evils, for I would rather a man be a committed humanist than an uncommited Christian.

Make no mistake, King was a Baptist minister and considered himself to be a man of God. Yet more important, King was America’s greatest social justice activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968.

Bottom line: King transcended religious superstition in his noble fight for social justice.

(H/T Rob Boston)