Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel PDF
Preview Breaking White Supremacy: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel
Breaking White Supremacy BOOkS By gary DOrrien Logic and Consciousness The Democratic Socialist Vision Reconstructing the Common Good The Neoconservative Mind: Politics, Culture, and the War of Ideology Soul in Society: The Making and Renewal of Social Christianity The Word as True Myth: Interpreting Modern Theology The Remaking of Evangelical Theology The Barthian Revolt in Modern Theology The Making of American Liberal Theology: Imagining Progressive Religion, 1805–1900 The Making of American Liberal Theology: Idealism, Realism, and Modernity, 1900–1950 Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950–2005 Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition Economy, Difference, Empire: Social Ethics for Social Justice The Obama Question: A Progressive Perspective Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel B reaking W hite S upremacy Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Social Gospel Gary Dorrien New Haven & London Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2018 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in PostScript Electra type by IDS Infotech, Ltd. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2016963360 ISBN 978-0-300-20561-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Sara and Will, With joy and thanksgiving This page intentionally left blank cOntentS Preface ix Illustrations xiii one Achieving the Black Social Gospel 1 two Prophetic Suffering and Black Internationalism 24 three Moral Politics and the Soul of the World 96 four Protest Politics and Power Politics 172 five Redeeming the Soul of America 255 six Nightmare Fury and Public Sacrifice 355 seven Theologies of Liberation 442 Notes 505 Index 575 This page intentionally left blank preface This book stands on its own, resumes the story told in my previous book, and fulfills my longtime desire to see someone—eventually, me—give the black social gospel tradition its due recognition. The founding of the black social gospel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a prolonged affair of forerunners and founders comprising four different ideological perspec- tives. This book is about something later and more specific—the mid-twentieth- century black church leaders who embraced the full-orbed, modern, progressive, justice-oriented, internationalist social gospel from the beginning of their careers and fulfilled it. They did not break their nation of white supremacy or other forms of oppression connected to it. But they inspired and led America’s greatest liberation movement. This book is distinctly personal for me because it converges on the figure that propelled me into social justice activism and Christian ministry and then into an academic career. I came of age during the climactic years of the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. seized my attention before I understood much of anything about politics or religion, and his contributions to the black freedom and anti–Vietnam War movements anchored my worldview when I entered college. In my twenties and early thirties I worked as a solidarity activist and Episcopal pastor; in my mid-thirties I became an academic; today I have the same touchstone with which I began: the peacemaking and justice-making way of Jesus, as exemplified by King. In my early career I wrote books on post-Kantian idealism, Social Democratic politics, and Christian Socialism, and I puzzled over why early black Christian Socialists such as Reverdy C. Ransom and George W. Woodbey were completely forgotten. Why were there no books on the convictions that linked Ransom, iixx
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