Strength to Love

This collection of sermonic essays by Martin Luther King Jr., the Baptist minister and leader of the American civil rights movement, brings together 14 sermons and one revised essay that address questions of Christian faith, social justice, and nonviolent resistance. In a foreword, King's wife, Coretta Scott King, identifies the book's central element: King's belief in a divine, loving presence that binds all life, which she describes as the foundation of his philosophy of nonviolence. She explains that this belief drove King's methods for social change, which sought to dignify both the advocate and the adversary. She recounts how King first combined theology with social action as minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where the 381-day nonviolent bus boycott began in 1955, and she characterizes him as equally an apostle of love and an apostle of action. In his preface, King notes that all the sermons were preached during or after the Montgomery bus boycott and that three were composed while he was confined in Georgia jails.

The opening sermon, "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart," argues that Christians must combine incisive thinking with genuine compassion, following Jesus' instruction to be "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" (2). King warns that soft-mindedness, manifested in gullibility and uncritical acceptance of propaganda, is a root cause of race prejudice, while hardheartedness reduces people to objects. He presents nonviolent resistance as the synthesis that avoids both passive acquiescence to injustice and reliance on violence.

In "Transformed Nonconformist," King calls Christians to resist conformity, contrasting thermometers, which register majority opinion, with thermostats, which transform it. He criticizes the church for historically conforming to immoral patterns, including sanctioning slavery and racial segregation, and calls for "creative maladjustment" to evils such as segregation, religious bigotry, and militarism.

"On Being a Good Neighbor" uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to define three dimensions of authentic neighborliness: universal altruism, dangerous altruism (risking one's safety), and excessive altruism (going beyond duty). King introduces the distinction between enforceable obligations, regulated by law, and unenforceable obligations, governed by love, arguing that while legislation is necessary to end segregation, genuine integration requires the higher law of love.

"Love in Action" draws two lessons from Jesus' prayer on the cross. The first concerns consistency of word and deed: King argues that forgiveness is not an occasional act but a permanent attitude. The second concerns human blindness: Jesus was crucified not simply by sin but by ignorance, a pattern King traces through the execution of the philosopher Socrates, the church's resistance to scientific advances, and the rationalizations that sustained American slavery and segregation. He concludes that the church must insist on intelligence as a moral responsibility.

"Loving Your Enemies" distinguishes among three Greek words for love: eros (romantic love), philia (reciprocal friendship), and agape (understanding, redemptive goodwill for all). King argues that Jesus commands agape, illustrating transformative love with Abraham Lincoln's appointment of his bitter rival Edwin Stanton as Secretary of War. King applies the command to the civil rights struggle, urging Black Americans to pursue a victory that wins both freedom and the hearts of oppressors.

"A Knock at Midnight" diagnoses a threefold crisis: midnight in the social order (the nuclear arms race), the psychological order (widespread anxiety), and the moral order (the collapse of absolute standards). King observes that millions knock on the church's door seeking faith, hope, and love, but the church has too often remained silent on injustice. He insists that midnight does not last, illustrating this with the Montgomery boycott: At the darkest moment, when the car pool was about to be legally stopped and pessimism swept the crowd, news arrived that the U.S. Supreme Court had unanimously ruled bus segregation unconstitutional.

"The Man Who Was a Fool" examines the parable of the rich fool to expose three forms of foolishness: confusing means with ends, failing to recognize dependence on others, and failing to recognize dependence on God. King applies the parable to Western civilization, arguing that science without spiritual power leads to destruction.

"The Death of Evil upon the Seashore" affirms that evil, though recalcitrant, is ultimately doomed. King applies this to African decolonization, where 32 nations achieved independence despite fierce resistance, and to the American struggle from slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation to the Supreme Court's landmark desegregation ruling. He addresses why God is slow to defeat evil: Because God endowed humans with freedom, imposing his will by force would defeat his purpose.

"Shattered Dreams" addresses how to respond when life's highest hopes go unfulfilled. King rejects bitterness, withdrawal, and fatalism, advocating instead willing acceptance of unwanted circumstances while clinging to radiant hope. He applies this to the Black freedom struggle, urging nonviolent determination rather than resignation, and draws on the survival of enslaved ancestors who fashioned a creative optimism despite inexpressible cruelties.

"How Should a Christian View Communism?" argues that Communism and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible because of Communism's atheistic materialism, ethical relativism, and elevation of the state over the individual. Yet King contends that Communism's concern for social justice should challenge Christians to examine their own failures. He criticizes the church as "the most segregated major institution in American society" (105), critiques capitalism for creating extreme wealth inequality, and insists that the best defense against Communism is offensive action for justice and the removal of poverty and racial discrimination.

"Our God Is Able" affirms God's power to sustain the universe, conquer evil, and provide interior resources for life's trials. King shares a personal experience from the Montgomery boycott: After weeks of escalating death threats, he reached exhaustion one midnight. Sitting at his kitchen table, he prayed aloud, confessing he had nothing left. He then experienced God's presence and heard an inner voice telling him to stand up for righteousness. Three nights later, his home was bombed, but he accepted the news with a calm born of that encounter.

"Antidotes for Fear" identifies four methods for mastering fear: honest confrontation, courage, love, and faith. King illustrates faith's power with Mother Pollard, an elderly participant in the Montgomery boycott who, when asked if she was tired, replied that her feet were tired but her soul was rested. She later discerned King's hidden fear at a mass meeting and assured him that God would take care of him, words that sustained King through years of subsequent trials.

"The Answer to a Perplexing Question" asks why humanity cannot cast out evil. King critiques two inadequate approaches: the humanist conviction that reason and science alone can save humanity, which ignores the capacity for sin, and the view that only God can redeem the world, which leads to fatalistic passivity. He proposes a synthesis: Both human effort and divine power, united through faith, can transform evil.

"Paul's Letter to American Christians" presents an imaginary epistle through which King warns that America's moral progress has not kept pace with its scientific achievements, condemns racially segregated churches, calls on those subjected to segregation to continue their protest without bitterness or violence, and declares love the highest good.

The final piece, "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence," traces King's intellectual and spiritual journey. He describes how theological liberalism, a movement stressing reason and historical-critical biblical scholarship, initially satisfied him but proved too optimistic about human nature. Neo-orthodoxy, a theology emphasizing sin, divine transcendence, and the limits of human reason, offered a useful corrective but proved too pessimistic. King sought a synthesis reconciling liberalism's emphasis on humanity's capacity for good with neo-orthodoxy's emphasis on humanity's capacity for evil. His engagement with existentialism, a philosophy focused on human freedom, anxiety, and finitude, deepened his understanding of the human condition, while social gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis gave him a vital sense of social responsibility. Studying Mahatma Gandhi's concept of satyagraha, meaning truth-force or love-force, convinced King that the Christian doctrine of love, operating through nonviolent method, is a potent weapon for oppressed people. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott transformed nonviolence from intellectual concept to lived commitment. He reflects on his personal sufferings, including 12 imprisonments, 2 home bombings, and a near-fatal stabbing, and describes choosing to transform suffering into a creative force. He concludes by affirming that his trials have drawn him closer to a personal God who is no longer a philosophical category but a living reality, and he expresses guarded hope that the Kingdom of God may yet reign in the hearts of humanity.