What Nonviolence Asked of a Church, in Its Own Words

Martin Luther King Jr. gave the clearest theological statement of this conviction from a jail cell in Birmingham in April 1963, writing to fellow clergy who had called his campaign untimely and extreme. His answer, later published as the Letter from Birmingham Jail, distinguished an unjust law that a Christian may break from mere lawlessness by naming the discipline that has to accompany the breaking: openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty, in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice. That formulation is what separates a Christian witness from a political tactic borrowed for effect. A tactic is judged by whether it works; a witness is judged by whether it is done in the manner the gospel requires, regardless of outcome. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute's own account of King's career traces how this conviction moved from argument to institution in 1961, two years before the Birmingham letter, when ministers who held it, unable to carry their parent convention's leadership with them, organized a body that would treat direct action as a duty of the church rather than a choice left to individual conscience: the Progressive National Baptist Convention.