the rix mix

"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice." Theodore Parker, 1853

I doubt the abolitionist preacher Parker would have cared that Dr. King distilled his unwieldy statement to the succinct "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  & did so without attribution. *  It's this quote from Dr. King that I most often use to defend him from appropriation by the Christian right. Dr. King moved Parker's idea from the pulpit into action.

Dr, King was only 39 years-old when he was murdered on April 4, 1968. He was only 26 when he was drawn into leading the Montgomery  Bus Boycott, riding the arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice,  Beginning in the Jim Crow, violent American South, he was on way to becoming a world citizen.  Great world citizens are not uncommon,  are a diverse group of individuals: Eleanor Roosevelt, the Dalai Lama, Danny Kaye,  Audrey Hepburn, Stephen Hawking, Bob Marley, Pope John Paul II & names we will never know.

We can't  be certain where Dr. King would have landed on the matter of abortion. If he became against, the issue never would never have been separated, as it is now, from  the well-being  of infants, children, & families.   But I am quite certain he would have continued to follow the arc that bends toward justice, & that it would have eventually brought him to an endorsement of marriage equality.  In 1968 we were still a decade from the suggestion even surfacing in mainstream media (as a novelty)  & another decade away the beginnings of public acceptance. Even now it would not have been Dr. King's paramount concern, within  the broad context of justice & human rights.

*It came out in the 1980s that Dr, King;s doctorate dissertation for Boston College also included unattributed portions, but the reviewing panel concluded acting upon the incidents of plagiarism  would  "serve no purpose." Had those passages been caught at the time, it's likely the dissertations  would not have been rejected outright but returned for correction,  But by then, Dr, King was on to more important matters in Alabama. He was applying his theological ideas to real world situations.

Labels: birthday, holidays, justice, Mahalo