As is well known, many of the leaders of the civil rights movement were preachers, like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy. John Lewis ended up in politics, but was in college to become a pastor when he got swept up into the movement. The movement was connected, organized, energized, and hosted by Black churches. The philosophy of the movement was rooted in the Sermon on the Mount and Gandhian nonviolence. And the Christian vision of love was its guiding moral value. Contrast all that with post-Christian social justice activism.
Yesterday I described what I called the "revivalism" of the civil rights movement. I used that word to describe how much of the movement was aimed at conversion and evangelism. The movement explicitly attempted to change hearts and minds. And from those changed hearts and minds a social movement was born, energized, and sustained.
Here's a clear example of what I mean in contrasting the revivalism of the civil rights movement with post-Christian activism: the role of music. Singing was ubiquitous in the civil rights movement. And even if you weren't a Christian you got pulled into the music of the movement, much of it rooted in Christian hymnody and Black spirituals. A regular and iconic image of the civil rights movement was people holding hands and singing "We Shall Overcome." Just watch some of the footage from the March on Washington in 1963. Better yet, listen to the March on Washington. That march was a massive church service. That is what I mean by revivalism. And it was a revivalism that wrought powerful social and political change.
And the march continues! But the landscape of political resistance has become increasingly post-Christian. Where's the music? Where is the revivalism? Where's the holding hands and singing? This lack of singing in today's political activism is, I believe, diagnostic. As I mentioned in the last post, there is little concern for the moral and spiritual aspects of social transformation. No connection to faith. No appeal to love.
And yet, given that I wrote this three months ago, I expect one response to these reflections is that we don't need a faith-based revival as Christians themselves are the problem today. But guess what? Christians were the problem during the Civil Rights movement. Recall to whom MLK addressed his Letter from a Birmingham Jail: the white pastors of the city. If Christians are the problem, revival is the solution. That was precisely what MLK was doing, the evangelization and conversion of Christians.
Is a Civil Rights era revival possible today among Christians? Only the Lord knows. It may be that God is allowing false and lying prophets to lead American Christianity toward its doom in a cleansing, clarifying conflagration. Perhaps out of those ashes a more faithful church might arise.
