"Can a Christian be a Communist?" - Sermon by Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Papers Project ^ | September 30, 1962 | Martin Luther King Jr.

[GoldenState_Rose]

Now, let us begin by answering the question which our sermon topic raises: Can a Christian be a communist? I answer that question with an emphatic “no.”

These two philosophies are diametrically opposed. The basic philosophy of Christianity is unalterably opposed to the basic philosophy of communism, and all of the dialectics of the logician cannot make them lie down together. They are contrary philosophies.

Now, there are at least three reasons why I feel obligated as a Christian minister to talk to you about communism. The first reason grows out of the fact that communism is having widespread influence in the contemporary world. Like a mighty tidal wave, it has moved through China, Russia, eastern Europe, and now has rolled within ninety miles of the borders of our nation. More than a billion of the peoples of the world believe in communism. And many of these people have accepted it as a new religion, and they are willing to surrender their total being to this system. A force so potent cannot be ignored.

A second reason that I feel compelled to talk about communism this morning is that it is the only serious rival of Christianity. The other historic and great religions of the world such as Judaism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, and Hinduism may stand as alternatives to Christianity. But for the most formidable competitor that Christianity faces in the world today, we must look to communism..Communism is Christianity's most serious rival.

The third reason that I feel compelled to talk about communism this morning is that it is unfair and certainly unscientific to condemn a system of thought without knowing what that system of thought says and without knowing why it is wrong and why it is evil...

[Freelance Warrior]

Кто выиграл холодную войну? Бог. Бог всегда побеждает.

If your Russian allows try reading this and presenting a refutal.

[GoldenState_Rose]

Thanks for the link.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the essay I posted and he is the man America is celebrating this Monday holiday: Martin Luther King Day.

King was very critical of American economics and power structures. He had some socialist sounding-opinions.

His economic opinions and activism against racism made the FBI suspicious. They even accused King of being a communist.

King was obviously very controversial and was assassinated by a gun in 1968.

But it was in this speech from church: where Martin Luther King, even while acknowledging the failings and problems of capitalism and of American society — King explains why at its heart, communism is an evil and godless ideology. Communism is not Christianity. Communism is never the solution.

And the Soviet Union was an evil and godless system. It doesn’t matter that some people benefitted and some people had food. It was evil and it failed because God always wins.

And until modern Russians admit this and understand why the Soviet Union was truly evil instead of being nostalgic and making excuses for the period between 1917 and 1991 like Putin does...

Until the evil of communism is understood for what it was: how it destroyed the human soul, made war against God, and sought to poison the entire world with demonic ideas —> until this is acknowledged, Russia will continue to have a difficult time moving forward.

[GoldenState_Rose]

And the same tragic, bloody year (1968) - Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy (JFK’s brother) were shot and killed, and Vietnam War and protests were going on ...

Three NASA astronauts went to outer space to orbit (not walk yet) the moon. It was the end of the year. Christmas Eve. What did they do there and say on TV to all the people watching?

The men read out loud: the first pages of the BIBLE. The story of God creating the universe. This was the astronauts’ message to the world on Christmas.

And its moments like these, moments when we remembered GOD even in outer space...that remind us why the U.S.A. even with all its imperfections and problems - continues to lead the world.

https://youtu.be/ToHhQUhdyBY

[Migraine]

You might recall that King got booed by leftists when he addressed the notorious “New Politics” convention in 1967.

No, I had forgotten that. You make a great point. It is fairly consistent with my own imaginary speaker on a campus in 2018.

[Freelance Warrior]

I posted that link to show that people can derive quite different conclusions from the very same text of the Bible. While some people believe that the Christ message is to be a hard-working law-abiding and frugal person ready to share some excess riches with needy people other may believe something like this: The Christian society in this world should reflect the Heavenly Kingdom so it should be an absolute kingdom. Everyone who doesn’t agree with earthly King, who is the shadow of the Divine King is an utmost traitor and should be treated accordingly. Poverty is blessed while accumulating riches is sinning therefore renouncing private property is a godly thing. Therefore the perfect earthly Christian church is a kind of monastery in which everyone obeys the abbot in every thing material or spiritual. Though such society isn’t quite a monastery since people marry and have children but in every other areas like trade, labour or prayer they live in the very same way as they do in a monastery, especially in a medieval one. The 20th century brought out atheism, the Russian established Church was corrupt and disrespected so what we’re going to get once we take Christ out of the picture? Communism. Its ideals of equal distribution of wealth, available to everyone healthcare and education are favoured by many people, including America and Western Europe. While the idea is so noble that the very existence of its opponents is so strange so those people should be the lowest scum and treated accordingly. In the todays Russia most of the communist ‘believers’ have converted. For them Joseph Stalin, while an Christ’s enemy was quite right on other things and is like to pre-Christian prophets, a kind of John the Baptist. A popular Russian idea about the American ethics is it’s the ethics of Shark Dodson who is a character of the popular film ‘Delovyi lyudi’ (The businesspeople) based on the O’Henry’s novel ‘The roads we take’ (public domain already). So, America can’t be a moral beacon here. There’s too much left to write on the topic.

[kallisti]

I couldn’t find the speech on that site.

[GoldenState_Rose]

oh no! I must have posted a flawed link. My sincerest apologies. Try this one. (You may need to copy/paste)

http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/can_a_christian_be_a_communist_30_sept_1962/index.html

[kallisti]

Excellent! That worked, thanks.

[Freelance Warrior]

The Constitution of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union as of 1972 stated that:

A member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union should:
… be engaged in the uncompromising fight against any manifestations of the bourgeois ideology, against any remains of the private property psychology, religious prejudices and other remains of the past, adhere to the principles of the Communist ethics, and to put the society’s interests over the personal ones.

Chapter 1, Clause 1.d

So a Communist can’t be a Christian or Muslim or else. The only thing he can be is a militant atheist.

[GoldenState_Rose]

I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the AMERICAN dream...when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

[Freelance Warrior]

It will come true. In the Heavenly Jerusalem.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. (Isaiah 11:6-8)

[greeneyes]

Thanks for posting this. His speeches and sermons are very inspirational. Compare his approach to social justice change to the black panthers, weather underground, the current NAACP, and hope and change crowd.

Next to these the Man was a Giant. The people of the USA were fortunate to have his leadership during a very troubled time, when the Commies were trying to start a race war.

Big Government cannot bring about social justice. That is truly something that can only be achieved by God. I have no doubt that God answered the prayers of many people in the last election.

The people need to work hard for right, integrity, and freedom.

[GoldenState_Rose]

Yes and ML King taught us to strive towards this Heavenly Jerusalem, even as we struggle and stumble along the way on earth.

Not sell our souls to the counterfeit heaven of Marx, that actually creates Hell on earth instead. The bones of the Gulag cry out still.

[liberalism is suicide]

I recall that King spoke at a “peace” rally and called America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world”. I believe the year was 1967.

[Freelance Warrior]

Agreed. Any attempt to build the perfect society on Earth can’t be anything else than an act of antichrist.

[wardaddy]

You know this forum and its King Love

They can’t help it

It’s cheap virtue

[wardaddy]

You and me both but Martin sure has hisself some cheerleaders here

[wardaddy]

no question Aubrey Williams and Myles Horton were old school Alinsky style southern socialists/communists.....none whatsoever and here's Saint Martin at Monteagle TN getting trained by them for civil rights action same as an antifa radical gets his training today from some Soros or Tides Foundation front

you guys can drink from Kings rhetoric intended for guilty whites all you like....he was incorrigible personally akin to Jimmy Swaggert or worse and at best a socialist and viet cong sympathizer and his closest compadres have become very harmful to this nation yet whites think Saint Martin would have been better....really a man who complimented the Viet Cong and Fidel Castro and denounced the anti Castro counter revolutionaries And cozied up to the SDS and so on

Folks here can do one simple thing....research King.....Conservatives in Kings time were highly suspect of him as were even the fairly liberal Kennedys

Don't buy the hype

[Bonemaker]

I know..I witnessed it all as a young college kid then in the military. I was very suspicious from the git go and then suspicions confirmed when he turned his focus to the Viet Nam war. He was silver tongued and sucked in a lot of people. I always saw him as a trouble maker. Everywhere he went he stirred up problems where there were none. Integration and all their beefs were moving alongy very nicely before he came along.

[Pelham]

“You and me both but Martin sure has hisself some cheerleaders here”

I’m sure that some of them hear Sean Hannity gushing over King and the whole civil rights movement and assume that Sean knows what he is talking about.

Sean certainly doesn’t remember those days at all- but that doesn’t excuse him for not having learned anything about what conservatives thought about it- conservatives including Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.

Sean sounds just like a Lyndon Johnson acolyte when it comes to this subject. Except that even Lyndon Johnson wouldn’t have had the illusions about MLK that our buffoonish pal Sean harbors.

LBJ was well aware of what Hoover’s wiretaps of King had uncovered, and the warnings that the Kennedy brothers had given King about Stanley Levison and Hunter Pitts Odell- they were heavily involved with the CPUSA- warnings which King ignored.