This post was originally published in April 2022, and is being reprinted here in observation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2023.

In early April 1963, the civil rights movement, led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and it’s co-founder, Martin Luther King, Jr, seemed to be stalled. Despite non-violent protests across the nation, the Kennedy Administration, which had come to power promising civil rights legislation, had seemingly turned a blind eye. They were still supportive, or so it seemed, but they weren’t doing much to fulfill their promise.

The SCLC, along with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, had planned to stage demonstrations in Birmingham, known as one of the nation’s most racist cities. But on April 10, Circuit Judge W.A. Jenkins issued an order prohibiting “parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing.” Leaders of the movement quickly decided they would disobey the judge’s order, and King decided that he would put himself in position to be arrested, a move he hoped would garner the attention of President John F. Kennedy, and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

King was arrested and spent eight days in a dark and dank Birmingham jail cell. Early in his stay, King was given a local newspaper that contained a letter written by eight white local clergymen taking King to task for his methods. In the letter, the men agreed that things needed to change. They indicated that the nation needed to treat blacks more fairly and with more respect, but they felt King and his followers needed to be more patient. They said that blacks should wait and allow the nation to come around in its own time. They blamed King and his protests for creating tension and backlash among whites, and they complained that the protests and sit-ins that King was leading were illegal.

As King read the letter in the newspaper, he began writing a response in the margins of the story. When he ran out of space in the margins, he wrote on small note pads his attorney had left behind. Finally, he was able to get his hands on a legal pad. What he wrote became known as “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Although King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington D.C. is more well known, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” may be King’s most important, most powerful work.

“Letter from Birmingham Jail” was first published on May 19, 1963 in the New York Post (after the New York Times Magazine decided against publishing it), and was subsequently published in the June issue of Liberation Magazine, the June 12, 1963 edition of The Christian Century, and the June 24, 1963 edition of The New Leader. It later was reprinted in The Progressive and The Atlantic Monthly, and was part of King’s 1964 book, Why We Can’t Wait.

Although it is long, I encourage you to read “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” It is one of the most important documents in our country’s history, and it is a classic publication on civil disobedience by a man who was being held, in essence, as a political prisoner.

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Letter from Birmingham Jail

 

Martin Luther King Jr.

Birmingham City Jail

April 16, 1963

 

Bishop C.C. J. Carpenter
Bishop Joseph A. Durick
Rabbi Milton L. Grafman
Bishop Paul Harmon
The Rev. George M. Murray
The Rev. Edward V. Ramage
The Rev. Earl Stalings

 

My Dear Fellow Clergymen,

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling our present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom, if ever, do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should give the reason for my being in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the argument of “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every Southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliate organizations all across the South, one being the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Whenever necessary and possible, we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago our local affiliate here in Birmingham invited us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promises. So I am here, along with several members of my staff, because we were invited here. I am here because I have basic organizational ties here.

Beyond this, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the eighth-century prophets left their little villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their hometowns; and just as the Apostle Paul left his little village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to practically every hamlet and city of the Greco-Roman world, I too am compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my particular hometown. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider.

You deplore the demonstrations that are presently taking place in Birmingham. But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being. I am sure that each of you would want to go beyond the superficial social analyst who looks merely at effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. I would not hesitate to say that it is unfortunate that so-called demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham at this time, but I would say in more emphatic terms that it is even more unfortunate that the white power structure of this city left the Negro community with no other alternative.

In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action. We have gone through all of these steps in Birmingham. There can be no gainsaying of the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of police brutality is known in every section of this country. Its unjust treatment of Negroes in the courts is a notorious reality. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in this nation. These are the hard, brutal, and unbelievable facts. On the basis of them, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the political leaders consistently refused to engage in good-faith negotiation.

Then came the opportunity last September to talk with some of the leaders of the economic community. In these negotiating sessions certain promises were made by the merchants, such as the promise to remove the humiliating racial signs from the stores. On the basis of these promises, Reverend Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to call a moratorium on any type of demonstration. As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. The signs remained. As in so many experiences of the past, we were confronted with blasted hopes, and the dark shadow of a deep disappointment settled upon us. So we had no alternative except that of preparing for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and national community. We were not unmindful of the difficulties involved. So we decided to go through a process of self-purification. We started having workshops on nonviolence and repeatedly asked ourselves the questions, “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” and “Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?” We decided to set our direct-action program around the Easter season, realizing that, with exception of Christmas, this was the largest shopping period of the year. Knowing that a strong economic withdrawal program would be the by-product of direct action, we felt that this was the best time to bring pressure on the merchants for the needed changes. Then it occurred to us that the March election was ahead, and so we speedily decided to postpone action until after election day. When we discovered that Mr. Conner was in the runoff, we decided again to postpone action so that the demonstration could not be used to cloud the issues. At this time we agreed to begin our nonviolent witness the day after the runoff.

This reveals that we did not move irresponsibly into direct action. We, too, wanted to see Mr. Conner defeated, so we went through postponement after postponement to aid in this community need. After this we felt that direct action could be delayed no longer.

You may well ask, “Why direct action, why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. So, the purpose of direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. We therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

One of the basic points in your statement is that our acts are untimely. Some have asked, “Why didn’t you give the new administration time to act?” The only answer that I can give to this inquiry is that the new administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one before it acts. We will be sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Mr. Boutwell will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is much more articulate and gentle than Mr. Conner, they are both segregationists, dedicated to the task of maintaining the status quo. The hope I see in Mr. Boutwell is that he will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from the devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well timed” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait.” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our God-given and constitutional rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say “wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos, “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger” and your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodyness” — then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, it is rather strange and paradoxical to find us consciously breaking laws. One may well ask, “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: there are just laws, and there are unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, segregation substitutes an “I – it” relationship for the “I – thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. So segregation is not only politically, economically, and sociologically unsound, but it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Isn’t segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, an expression of his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? So I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court because it is morally right, and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances because they are morally wrong.

Let us turn to a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow, and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. An unjust law is a code inflicted upon a minority which that minority had no part in enacting or creating because it did not have the unhampered right to vote. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout the state of Alabama all types of conniving methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties without a single Negro registered to vote, despite the fact that the Negroes constitute a majority of the population. Can any law set up in such a state be considered democratically structured?

These are just a few examples of unjust and just laws. There are some instances when a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I was arrested Friday on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong with an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade, but when the ordinance is used to preserve segregation and to deny citizens the First Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest, then it becomes unjust.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks before submitting to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience.

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate  is obeying these anti-religious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

In your statement you asserted that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But can this assertion be logically made? Isn’t this like condemning the robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical delvings precipitated the misguided popular mind to make him drink the hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because His unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to His will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see, as federal courts have consistently affirmed, that it is immoral to urge an individual to withdraw his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest precipitates violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber.

I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth of time. I received a letter this morning from a white brother in Texas which said, “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great of a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” All that is said here grows out of a tragic misconception of time. It is the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time is neutral. It can be used either destructively or constructively. I am coming to feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.

You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist. I started thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency made up of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, have been so completely drained of self-respect and a sense of “somebodyness” that they have adjusted to segregation, and, on the other hand, of a few Negroes in the middle class who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because at points they profit by segregation, have unconsciously become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred and comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up over the nation, the largest and best known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. This movement is nourished by the contemporary frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination. It is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incurable devil. I have tried to stand between these two forces, saying that we need not follow the do-nothingism of the complacent or the hatred and despair of the black nationalist. There is a more excellent way, of love and nonviolent protest. I’m grateful to God that, through the Negro church, the dimension of nonviolence entered our struggle. If this philosophy had not emerged, I am convinced that by now many streets of the South would be flowing with floods of blood. And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as “rabble-rousers” and “outside agitators” those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what has happened to the American Negro. Something within has reminded him of his birthright of freedom; something without has reminded him that he can gain it. Consciously and unconsciously, he has been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, he is moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. Recognizing this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand public demonstrations. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations. He has to get them out. So let him march sometime; let him have his prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; understand why he must have sitins and freedom rides. If his repressed emotions do not come out in these nonviolent ways, they will come out in ominous expressions of violence. This is not a threat; it is a fact of history. So I have not said to my people, “Get rid of your discontent.” But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. Now this approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized.

But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? — “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice? — “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? — “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist? — “Here I stand; I can do no other so help me God.” Was not John Bunyan an extremist? — “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a mockery of my conscience.” Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist? — “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist? — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” So the  question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

I had hoped that the white moderate would see this. Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe I expected too much. I guess I should have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans and passionate yearnings of those that have been oppressed, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality. Some, like Ralph McGill, Lillian Smith, Harry Golden, and James Dabbs, have written about our struggle in eloquent, prophetic, and understanding terms. Others have marched with us down nameless streets of the South. They sat in with us at lunch counters and rode in with us on the freedom rides. They have languished in filthy roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of angry policemen who see them as “dirty nigger lovers.” They, unlike many of their moderate brothers, have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful “action” antidotes to combat the disease of segregation.

Let me rush on to mention my other disappointment. I have been disappointed with the white church and its leadership. Of course, there are some notable exceptions. I am not unmindful of the fact that each of you has taken some significant stands on this issue. I commend you, Reverend Stallings, for your Christian stand this past Sunday in welcoming Negroes to your Baptist Church worship service on a nonsegregated basis. I commend the Catholic leaders of this state for integrating Springhill College several years ago.

But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say that as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say it as a minister of the gospel who loves the church, who was nurtured in its bosom, who has been sustained by its Spiritual blessings, and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.

I had the strange feeling when I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery several years ago that we would have the support of the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests, and rabbis of the South would be some of our strongest allies. Instead, some few have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams of the past, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and with deep moral concern serve as the channel through which our just grievances could get to the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

I have heard numerous religious leaders of the South call upon their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers say, follow this decree because integration is morally right and the Negro is your brother. In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sidelines and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues which the gospel has nothing to do with,” and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which made a strange distinction between bodies and souls, the sacred and the secular.

There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But they went on with the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven” and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.

Things are different now. The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. I meet young people every day whose disappointment with the church has risen to outright disgust. I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour. But even if the church does not come to the aid of justice, I have no despair about the future. I have no fear about the outcome of our struggle in Birmingham, even if our motives are presently misunderstood. We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom. Abused and scorned though we may be, our destiny is tied up with the destiny of America. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson scratched across the pages of history the majestic word of the Declaration of Independence, we were here. For more than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages; they made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation — and yet out of a bottomless vitality our people continue to thrive and develop. If the inexpressible cruelties of slavery could not stop us, the opposition we now face will surely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.

I must close now. But before closing I am impelled to mention one other point in your statement that troubled me profoundly. You warmly commended the Birmingham police force for keeping “order” and “preventing violence.” I don’t believe you would have so warmly commended the police force if you had seen its angry violent dogs literally biting six unarmed, nonviolent Negroes. I don’t believe you would so quickly commend the policemen if you would observe their ugly and inhuman treatment of Negroes here in the city jail; if you would watch them push and curse old Negro women and young Negro girls; if you would see them slap and kick old Negro men and young boys, if you would observe them, as they did on two occasions, refusing to give us food because we wanted to sing our grace together. I’m sorry that I can’t join you in your praise for the police department. It is true that they have been rather disciplined in their public handling of the demonstrators. In this sense they have been publicly “nonviolent.” But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of segregation. Over the last few years I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

I wish you had commended the Negro demonstrators of Birmingham for their sublime courage, their willingness to suffer, and their amazing discipline in the midst of the most inhuman provocation. One day the South will recognize its real heroes. They will be the James Merediths, courageously and with a majestic sense of purpose facing jeering and hostile mobs and the agonizing loneliness that characterizes the life of the pioneer. They will be old, oppressed, battered Negro women, symbolized in a seventy-two-year-old woman of Montgomery, Alabama, who rose up with a sense of dignity and with her people decided not to ride the segregated buses, and responded to one who inquired about her tiredness with ungrammatical profundity, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.” They will be young high school and college students, young ministers of the gospel and a host of their elders courageously and nonviolently sitting in at lunch counters and willingly going to jail for conscience’s sake. One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Never before have I written a letter this long — or should I say a book? I’m afraid that it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else is there to do when you are alone for days in the dull monotony of a narrow jail cell other than write long letters, think strange thoughts, and pray long prayers?

If I have said anything in this letter that is an understatement of the truth and is indicative of an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything in this letter that is an overstatement of the truth and is indicative of my having a patience that makes me patient with anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

I’m sure you’ve heard it said that for maximum health benefits and weight loss, you should walk 10,000 steps per day. But is that really true? Probably not. In the very least, it’s not based on science.

According to Harvard paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman, in his book, Exercised, the 10,000 step myth began as a marketing campaign decades ago in Japan. The originator of the myth, Yamasa Tokei, made pedometers known as “Manpo-kei” (translated as “10,000 step meter”) in the 1960s. The marketing campaign eventually ended, but the underlying message has carried on through the years and across the ocean.

When I bought my first Fitbit several years ago, I did so because I thought tracking my steps would help motivate me to hit 10,000 steps per day. I have no idea why I thought walking 10,000 steps should be my goal. It just seemed like common knowledge. In fact, science tells us that 10,000 steps should not be the goal.

According to Dr. I-Min Lee, an epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the goal should be significantly lower. In a study she conducted on 16,741 women and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), women who averaged 4,400 steps per day had significantly lower mortality rates compared to those who walked 2,700 steps per day. Increasing the number of steps increased longevity, but only up to 7500 steps per day. There was no noticeable benefit to study participants who walked more than 7500 steps per day.

A study conducted at University of Massachusetts-Amherst by epidemiologist Amanda Paluch, had similar, but slightly different findings. The mega-study, which used a compilation of other studies involving more than 50,000 people on four continents, found that adults 60 years and older maximized their mortality benefits at between 6,000 and 8,000 steps. For those less than 60-years of age, the maximum benefit occurred at between 8,000 and 10,000 steps. One important finding in Paluch’s research was that getting more steps over the maximum for each age group (8,000 for those 60 or older, and 10,000 for those younger than 60) did not provide added mortality benefit.

What about weight loss? Do more steps per day lead to increased weight loss? Not necessarily.

If you’re sedentary or don’t exercise much, adding steps to your daily routine will help you lose weight. A study conducted by researchers from the University of Denver, Wake Forest University, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the University of Pittsburgh, found that increasing steps from 3500 per day to 10,000 led to weight loss in study participants. That seems to make sense, since burning more calories naturally leads to weight loss.

However, Duke University evolutionary biologist Herman Pontzer has some bad news. His research, which is chronicled in the book Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Stay Healthy, and Lose Weight,  indicates that while more exercise initially leads to weight loss, the body has a way of adapting, so that when more exercise becomes the norm, weight loss decreases or stops altogether.

This isn’t necessarily bad news. Exercise is good for overall health. It’s just not great for weight loss. “Diet and exercise are two different tools for two different jobs. Diet is the tool for weight loss. Exercise is your tool for everything else,” according to Pontzer.

Part of Pontzer’s research involved monitoring the number of calories burned by traditional hunter-gathers in Tanzania. The findings surprised even the researcher. The data indicates that the hunter-gathers, who routinely walk several miles each day, didn’t burn significantly more calories than sedentary Americans. The reason? Our bodies tend to budget energy based on expected activity. So, the bodies of the hunter-gathers expected them to walk several miles every day, and budgeted energy accordingly, just as the body of a sedentary adult expects very little movement, so budgets calorie burn based on that expectation.

Pontzer makes the point that exercise is good for us. Progressively increasing exercise levels benefits most people. It’s just not great for weight loss. By contrast, a sedentary lifestyle is not good for our health, even if those who spend way too much time on the couch don’t necessarily gain weight.

The bottom line is that a reasonable number of steps each day—somewhere between 4,400 and 10,000—is good for our health, leading to increased longevity. Even if it doesn’t necessarily lead to weight loss, it’s still a good idea.

If your goal is to lose weight, focus on your diet, not exercise. Research indicates that exercise has limited impact on weight loss, but can significantly increase mortality. Diet, on the other hand, while having some impact on longevity, is the number one tool for weight loss. You might want to keep this in mind as you’re putting together your New Year’s resolutions.

Chevrolet, Audi, and Dodge have done a masterful job of selling their cars by telling emotionally engaging stories that feature their vehicles, but don’t focus on their vehicles. They often release the video around Christmas, helping to ramp up the emotion even further. I’ve written about this strategy of telling stories to sell cars twice before. You can find those posts here (#1) and here (#2).

Chevy in particular has made a tradition out of producing an extended (i.e. longer than a regular commercial) video for Christmas, often featuring a vehicle they no longer produce. This year, it’s a 1957 Chevy Bel Air Nomad, a cool looking two-door station wagon. A brand new Chevy Blazer EV (I think) makes a brief appearance, but the 1957 Bel Air Nomad is the star of the show.

This five-plus minute video spans 50 or so years in the life of Mrs. Hayes, a widow lady who befriends the neighbor kids, and becomes a second mother to one young boy in particular. Take a look.

Merry Christmas!

 

For the past twenty years, I have been associated with Heart of a Child (Inima de Copil), a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Romania. An NGO is what we in the United States would call a non-profit.

Heart of a Child is an organization that serves poor, homeless, and handicapped children, including children with HIV. For the past two years, I have been blessed to serve on the board of directors of Heart of a Child’s American informational and fundraising arm, Heart of a Child-US (HOCUS).

Heart of a Child runs on a small, very lean, annual budget. Each year, they do a tremendous amount with relatively little money. This past year was especially challenging. When Russia attacked Ukraine beginning in February 2022, kicking off a bloody, unprovoked war, refugees from Ukraine began flooding into Romania.

Heart of a Child is located in Galati, Romania, on the eastern side of the country, near the border with Ukraine and Moldova. In fact, Galati is only about 220 miles from the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, the fifth largest city in all of Ukraine. Galati and Romania welcomed the Ukrainian refugees with open arms, helping them find food and shelter upon their arrival.

However, life has not been easy for the Ukrainian refugees. Most arrived with just the clothes on their back. They had little money, nowhere to live, and they didn’t speak the Romanian language. The government helped shelter them, but most of their other needs were met by NGOs, including Heart of a Child.

This past summer, Heart of a Child took more than 80 Ukrainian children and their parents to a summer camp in the mountains near Galati. A week away at the camp allowed the Ukrainian refugees to put their troubles behind them, if only for a short time, to enjoy nature and each other.

When school started in August, Heart of a Child provided more than 200 Ukrainian children with backpacks filled with school supplies. Staff from Heart of a Child also worked with the refugee children on their school assignments and their language skills.

And keep in mind, the work they have been doing with Ukrainian children is in addition to all of the great, important work they are doing with poor, vulnerable Romanian children. I’ve seen first hand the conditions these kids live in. The work being done by Heart of a Child is invaluable.

Honestly, I don’t know how they do it. President of Heart of a Child, Dr. Anna Burtea, does an amazing job of stretching the organization’s meager budget to meet the needs of all the children they come in contact with. Their work is important. Even vital. But they need help.

With prices rising, budgets tightening, and the demand for their services ever increasing, Heart of a Child faces a challenging future. And by extension, the children that rely on Heart of a Child face a challenging future.

If you’d like to help, I’d encourage you to make a donation to Heart of a Child via Zelle (you can donate to heartofachildus@gmail.com) or via Paypal (click link). Either way, your money will go directly to help children badly in need this holiday season.

I donated. I hope you will too.

I’m not sure what happened. I didn’t see it coming. But somehow, when I wasn’t looking, I turned 63-years-old. Trust me, no one was more surprised about that fact than me.

This past year may have been one of the craziest of my life. So much went on. Some good, some not so good.

In February, I attended my first NASCAR race. I’ve been to dozens, maybe hundreds, of sports car races, but until February, I had never gone to a NASCAR stockcar race. My friend, Linda Luciani, invited me to go with her to the Daytona 500. Other than breaking one of my teeth, we really enjoyed ourselves. The racing was exciting, the crowd was crazy, and the company was great. Thanks, Luch!

In April, my brother and his husband moved from California and lived with me while they looked for jobs and a place to live. It was great having them with me. We had a lot of fun, laughed a lot, and I ate better than I had in a long time, with Tut doing the majority of the cooking.

In June, I had surgery on my right shoulder, which I injured in 1987 or 1988. It had gotten bad enough to where I couldn’t sleep. My labrum and rotator cuff both needed to be repaired, then for the next five months, I went through physical therapy. Sadly, my right shoulder hasn’t recovered as well as my left shoulder did when I had the same surgery in 2015. I still have some work to do.

In July, I defended my thesis and earned a master’s degree in political science that I started in 1984. (I wrote about it here.) I went back to Macomb, IL, to Western Illinois University, where I started the master’s degree program 38 years ago. The old town didn’t look quite as promising to my 62-year-old eyes as it did when I was 23 or 24. Even so, it was good to be back on campus.

In August, I bought an office building in Wisconsin. It has taken some time to get it ready to occupy, but we’re finally ready to move in. In fact, we’re moving in today (12/9/22). I’ve owned a business for nearly 23 years, but this will be the first time I’ve owned the building where my business is housed. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m excited to make the move.

In September, I started thinking seriously about moving back to Wisconsin. I was living in Florida, and I often missed Wisconsin, especially in the summer and fall. I missed the change of seasons. I missed the trees and the hiking. And I missed being close to my office. After giving it some thought, I decided I would move back to Wisconsin in the spring or summer of 2023.

In October, I brushed aside the decision to wait to move until 2023, and bought a new home in Wisconsin’s driftless region, about twenty minutes from my office. I couldn’t pass up the property, which included 26 acres and a log home. It was exactly what I was looking for.

I was excited about buying a new home, but my excitement was cut short when, just a few days later, one of my employees had a heart attack and died. She was only 49 years old with no known health issues. It was an absolute shock.

In November, I sold the house in Florida that I had just built in 2021, and which I loved. It was a wonderful home and there was part of me that hated to leave it. Yet, I felt a strong pull back to Wisconsin. On November 28, I closed on the property on Carter Mountain (it’s not a mountain) in tiny Readstown, WI. I’ve only been here a little over a week, but I already feel completely at home. Mojo and I love hiking through the woods and just tromping around the property. Living here is a dream come true.

If you’ve followed me on Facebook for any time at all, you know of my love for log cabins. Over the years, I have posted a lot of pictures of cabins. At one point a few years ago, my friend, Brett Morley, asked, “Why don’t you just buy one?” I finally have, Brett. I only wish you were here to see it.

As I mentioned earlier, today, we move into our new office. It’s the start of a new chapter for my business, just as moving back to Wisconsin is a new chapter in my life. Even at 63, I’m not ready to slow down. I have too much I want to do, too much I want to accomplish.

As I get started on the final third of my life (Does that sound too morbid?), I can’t claim to know what’s going to happen, but I’m excited just the same. I’m ending the year in much the same way I started it, with a great deal of gratitude for the people and things I’ve been blessed with. To paraphrase a line from my favorite movie, it really is a wonderful life.

Back in January 2021, in the days following the insurrection at the Capitol, I read an article by David French entitled “Only the Church Can Truly Defeat a Christian Insurrection.” I was a little shocked by the title. Did someone think the insurrection had anything to do with Christianity? If they did, I assumed they must be a militant atheist, quick to blame the church for every ill suffered by society. But when I read the article, my mind was opened to a world I previously didn’t know existed.

Let me start by telling you about the author, David French. French is a conservative Christian and a former attorney who argued several high-profile religious liberty cases. He wasn’t the atheist I assumed him to be. In fact, he was just the opposite, a Christian who had dedicated his life and his legal practice to defending the rights and liberties of his fellow Christians. So, why was he seemingly laying blame for the insurrection at the feet of Christians?

French answered that question by describing what he and others saw at the Capitol on January 6, 2021:

“Why do I say this was a Christian insurrection? Because so very many of the protesters told us they were Christian, as loudly and clearly as they could…I saw much of it with my own eyes. There was a giant wooden cross outside the Capitol. ‘Jesus saves’ signs and other Christian signs were sprinkled through the crowd. I watched a man carry a Christian flag into an evacuated legislative chamber…Christian music was blaring from the loudspeakers late in the afternoon of the takeover. And don’t forget, this attack occurred days after the so-called Jericho March, an event explicitly filled with Christian-nationalist rhetoric so unhinged that I warned on December 13 that it embodied “a form of fanaticism that can lead to deadly violence.”

Did you catch the term he used to describe the rhetoric being used by the insurrectionists? “Christian-nationalist.” French wasn’t blaming Christians writ large for the insurrection, but a small group of what he called “Christian Nationalists.” It was a term I was not familiar with.

So, what is Christian Nationalism? Unfortunately, French didn’t provide a neat and tidy definition in his article, but he did give a hint. He compared Christian Nationalists to Islamic terrorists. He writes:

“Are you still not convinced that it’s fair to call this a Christian insurrection? I would bet that most of my readers would instantly label the exact same event Islamic terrorism if Islamic symbols filled the crowd, if Islamic music played in the loudspeakers, and if members of the crowd shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ as they charged the Capitol.”

I understood French’s point, but I have to admit that blaming Christians—even a sub-group of Christians—for the insurrection made me a little uncomfortable. True, I have my own issues with the church, but until then, I had never thought of any group of Christians as violent, anti-American insurrectionists. It seemed to me that what the insurrectionists wanted—in a nutshell, the end of democracy and the rolling back of rights—was actually anti-Christian. Why would Christians fight for what I considered anti-Christian?

I had a lot of questions, the most basic of which was finding a good definition for the term Christian Nationalist. I did a lot of reading, and most writers danced around an actual definition, instead pointing to what people they viewed as Christian Nationalists said or did. The most helpful definition I found came from Wikipedia.

“Christian nationalists believe that the US is meant to be a Christian nation and want to ‘take back’ the US for God. Experts say that Christian-associated support for right-wing politicians and social policies, such as legislation related to immigration, gun control and poverty is best understood as Christian nationalism, rather than as evangelicalism per se. Some studies of white evangelicals show that, among people who self-identify as evangelical Christians, the more they attend church, the more they pray, and the more they read the Bible, the less support they have for nationalist (though not socially conservative) policies. Non-nationalistic evangelicals agree ideologically with Christian nationalists in areas such as patriarchal policies, gender roles, and sexuality.”

British author and economist Umair Haque, a keen observer of American politics, had a less clinical definition of Christian Nationalism:

“Maybe, it’s a hard one to even get your head around. What is “Christian Nationalism”? And how should Americans — and Westerners beyond America’s shores, because this movement is spreading — think about it? After all, you don’t have to think too hard to grasp that Jesus hardly proclaimed many of the things this movement believes in. He would have been repelled by many such things, like this pretty good summary:

‘As a political theology that co-opts Christian narratives and symbolism, Christian nationalism has its own version of the ‘elect,’ those chosen by God. They are ‘people like us,’ meaning conservative Christian, but also white, natural-born citizens. Moreover, in a prosperous nation, only ‘the elect’ should control the political process while others must be closely scrutinized, discouraged, or even denied access. This ideology is fundamentally a threat to a pluralistic, democratic society.”

This was a good base to draw from, but I still didn’t completely understand Christian Nationalists or what they wanted for the United States. What I needed was a backstory, a way to understand where the Christian Nationalists belief system came from. Put another way, I needed to understand why Christian Nationalists believe what they believe. As it turns out, their belief system begins with the founding of our nation.

Christian Nationalists believe that the United States was conceived as a Christian nation and that the Founding Fathers were guided by the hand of God in crafting the Constitution. Because of this, they want to bring an end to the separation of church and state, and as a God-inspired document, believe the Constitution should not be altered or amended.

There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s start with the notion that the United States was conceived as a Christian nation.

Diana Butler Bass, author and historian of Christianity, has written extensively on this idea that the United States was founded as a Christian country. “That the United States is not a Christian nation should be obvious because no nation has ever been a Christian nation — not even the political state of the Vatican! And there’s never been a truly Christian nation. Ever.”

Bass goes on to explain that, while the United States was shaped by Christianity, it certainly was never a Christian nation. This is an important distinction. The United States was founded by people who held strong Christian beliefs, who held beliefs from other religions, as well as no religion at all. Christian beliefs and values helped shape the Constitution as well as life in the early days of our nation. But the Constitution,–particularly the First Amendment– makes it abundantly clear that the founders did not conceive of our new nation as a Christian nation.

Next, let’s consider the claim that our Founding Fathers were guided by the hand of God when writing the Constitution. If you’ve been watching the January 6 hearings, you likely are familiar with Rusty Bowers, the Republican Speaker of the Arizona State Legislature. Bowers was called before the January 6 Committee because, after losing the 2022 election, Donald Trump contacted him asking for his help in overturning the results of the vote in Arizona.

Bowers testified that he refused Trump’s request because he felt what he was being asked to do flew in the face of the Constitution. He said that he could never defy the Constitution because he believed that, like the Bible, the United States Constitution was divinely inspired. Not only would defying it go against the oath he took to defend and uphold the Constitution, it would also be a betrayal of his most deeply held Christian beliefs.

This type of deification of the Founding Fathers has always chafed me. The Founding Fathers were a mixed group of men, all with certain strengths and weaknesses. They did not all hold to the same ideas about the type of nation the United States should be, and they certainly did not agree with one another when it came to religion. The Constitution is the product of a diverse and often divided committee that did the best they could. They were an imperfect group that crafted a very good, but imperfect document.

One example of how imperfect the men and the document are is the fact that it does not, in the first three words of the preamble—“We the people”—include African Americans, who at the time of the writing of the Constitution, were being held as slaves. In fact, several of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders.

Now, are you going to make the case that God, in his infinite wisdom, wanted Black people to be slaves? Does Rusty Bowers and others like him truly believe that the God they worship, the one they refer to when they claim “God is love,” divinely inspired the Founding Fathers to institutionalize slavery in the Constitution?

We do a disservice to the Founding Fathers when we make them out to be anything other than men of their time. They were farmers and diplomats and merchants and soldiers. They were not vessels of the almighty. They were just men, in many ways common and flawed, who did what they thought was right at the time. We should remember that when we endeavor to raise them up on a pedestal and elevate them above their fellow man.

Perhaps the most flawed doctrine of Christian Nationalism is the idea that, as a Christian nation, we should end the separation of church and state, and that the Constitution should not be amended. Let’s start with the first half of that claim.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution says in part:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Ironically, the earliest Americans believed there should be a separation between church and state for the sake of the church. They did not want the government meddling in the affairs of the church.

Roger Williams was a former Protestant chaplain who turned to Puritanism for his spiritual sustenance. However, he found himself clashing with the Puritan leaders and was eventually banished from Massachusetts. He later founded Rhode Island and is credited with being the first person to use the phrase “separation of church and state.”

Williams believed that an authentic Christian church could only survive if there was “a wall or hedge of separation” between the “wilderness of the world” and “the garden of the church.” Williams feared that any government involvement in the religious practices of individuals would ultimately poison and corrupt the church.

Thomas Jefferson supported Williams position, claiming in a speech to the Danbury Baptist Association that, in the first words of the First Amendment, often referred to as the Establishment Clause, the people had agreed to “a wall of separation between the church and state.”

Christian Nationalists calling for that “wall of separation” to be torn down seem to be at cross purposes with many of the Founding Fathers. Instead, they appear to be in lockstep with the Islamic terrorists who carried out the attack on 9/11. Those terrorists wanted a government controlled by the church. But instead of the Christian church, the terrorists wanted the Muslim church to be in charge. And, instead of Biblical principles being used to create laws, the terrorists wanted Sharia Law, based on the Quran. The religion and holy book may be different, but the end result is the same.

When it comes to separation of church and state, I always go to a quote from former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor from the case of McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, where she wrote:

“Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”

Finally, Christian Nationalists who advocate for no alterations or amendments to the Constitution on the grounds that it was divinely inspired and perfect as is seemingly don’t know that the Constitution has already been amended thirty-three times. This includes the first ten amendments, which were agreed to before the Constitution was signed, and which are contained in the Bill of Rights, one of our country’s founding documents.

The idea that the Constitution shouldn’t be amended is also betrayed by the fact that the Founding Fathers included in the Constitution rules for how to amend it. I would argue that those rules are too stringent, but regardless, the rules are still right there in the Constitution. Obviously, the Founding Fathers, who Christian Nationalists claimed were guided by God, felt that the Constitution should be subject to amendment.

In a recent speech, firebrand Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green bragged about being a Christian Nationalist and encouraged others to join her. She explained that, like others in the audience, she is a strong, unapologetic Christian who loves her country. According to Green, that’s all a Christian Nationalist is: someone who is Christian and loves their country.

Of course, that isn’t all there is to Christian Nationalism. There is a dark undertone to the movement, a desire to rule over the country, control fellow citizens, and a willingness to engage in violence to achieve those goals. There are fascist and authoritarian currents running through the Christian Nationalist movement. Despite their professed love for country and democracy, they work tirelessly to alter country and destroy democracy. They claim to be working toward salvation in the afterlife, but their aims and tactics are clearly rooted in earthly pursuits in the here and now.

I want to return to something Umair Haque said in the quote I mentioned earlier concerning the Christian Nationalist belief that only the “elect,” or “people like us” (white, natural-born, conservative, Christian, and predominately male) should be in charge, or even have a say in the way the government is run. In this sense, Christian Nationalists are not only talking about leadership roles in the government. They are talking about only people like them having the right to vote. This notion is not only undemocratic, but unconstitutional.

As a reminder, here’s what Haque said in part:

“[I]n a prosperous nation, only ‘the elect’ should control the political process while others must be closely scrutinized, discouraged, or even denied access. This ideology is fundamentally a threat to a pluralistic, democratic society.”

This idea that only certain people should qualify as the elect is not new. At the beginning of our country, only white, male, property-owners were given the vote. Except in extremely rare instances, this excluded all women, all blacks and other minorities, as well as non-property-owning white men from having a say in who represented them and ran the government.

It wasn’t until 1828 that non-property-owning white men could vote in federal elections. In 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment gave black men the right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment, which passed in 1920, gave all women the right to vote in federal elections. And in 1965, the Voting Rights act passed, protecting everyone’s right to vote.

For much of our country’s history, the most basic element of a democracy—voting—was denied to some citizens. Today, when you hear people like Rep. Lauren Boebert—herself, a Christian Nationalist—refer to “real Americans” or “true patriots,” she is referring to this idea that only certain people—people like her—deserve the right to vote as well as enjoy the other Constitutionally-guaranteed rights and privileges citizens of the United States are entitled to.

So, why is Christian Nationalism seemingly so powerful at the moment. There are a few reasons. First, it is important to recognize that only about twenty-to-twenty-five percent of the population holds views consistent with Christian Nationalism. And even among that group, there is a fall off the more radical the beliefs get.

For instance, as many as twenty-five percent of Americans may hold some beliefs consistent with Christian Nationalism. But if you ask them if they agree that all non-Christians or all non-Republicans (or RINOs) should be jailed, or even killed, much of that twenty-five percent support would erode. The point is, despite the outsized role they play in our politics at the moment, they are far from a majority.

Second, traditionally, Republicans have courted the votes of Christian Nationalists, but they haven’t been willing to invite them all the way into the tent or give them much of a voice in the Party’s platform or policies. That has changed. When Republicans embraced the Tea Party movement in the 1990s and early 2000s, they opened the door to many far-rightwing politicos who held Christian Nationalist beliefs.

That door was kicked in completely when Donald Trump became the nominee of the Republican Party in 2016. Trump brought with him a coalition of Christian nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, authoritarians, fascist wannabes, conspiracy theorists, and other fringe players that had previously been keep at arm’s length. Rather than staying on the fringe, these people were invited into the tent and given a prominent place in the campaign, and after his election victory, in the administration. No group benefitted from the Trump presidency more than Christian Nationalists.

But it wasn’t just being in the tent with Trump and the Republicans that supercharged Christian Nationalists. Until recently, they didn’t play particularly well with 1930’s style fascists, such as white supremacists and neo-Nazis, or authoritarians, such as plutocrats like Trump and others who seek political control as a way to power and wealth.

For instance, think about this triumvirate in Nazi Germany. Fascists and authoritarians came together under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Theocrats (the generic name for the group that includes Christian Nationalists) didn’t go along with Hitler’s plans. So, they were shunned, or worse. Even so, with just two of the three groups working together, Hitler was able to take over Germany and much of Europe, and came perilously close to defeating NATO nations in World War II.

Fast forward to today. Things have changed. Intentionally or not, Trump has brought these three groups together. That is extremely bad news for the United States and our democracy.

Here’s how Haque describes the peril we face.

“When theocrats, fascists, and authoritarians form an alliance, it’s really bad news. It points to the most severe form of social collapse on the cards. That is because usually these groups are at loggerheads. They usually don’t all want the same things, because naturally, their perspectives and ‘philosophies’…are opposed. Theocrats believe in divine law and salvation from above, whereas fascists believe in a kind of supremacist biological essentialism. Authoritarians and oligarchs generally don’t want to be bound by theocratic restrictions on business, because they get in the way of making money and keeping power.”

Christian Nationalists believe they are fighting a war between good and evil. I use the word “war” intentionally here. For many (but not all) Christian Nationalists, they believe the only way to save the nation is to execute a violent war against non-believers and anyone who stands in the way of creating a true Christian nation. They often speak of a new civil war, and they glory in the thought of donning the armor of God in preparation for the fight, perhaps shedding blood or even dying in what they view as a righteous holy war. (I previously wrote about the prospects for a new civil war in this post)

This is the part of Christian Nationalism that scares me most. They seem willing—even eager—to die for their cause. In many cases, they are heavily armed and believe that God has called them to fight for his kingdom here on earth. Many Christian Nationalists want blood and war. They want to fight for God against their fellow citizens, who they view as “the enemy.”  They are anxious for violence.

Diana Butler Bass recently wrote about this obsession with blood and war among Christian Nationalists, and her conclusion echoes that of David French. If Christian Nationalism is to be stopped, it is up to Christians to stop it.

“One of the possible futures for America is that the unholy trinity of theocrats, fascists, and authoritarians launches their desired Civil War to quench their thirst for blood.

“What can stop this?

“That’s a huge question. And, I suspect, it is also a question that many people and entities far beyond my purview are wrestling with right now. I admit to feeling a certain helplessness when listening to the news — or reading articles like the ones linked to today’s post.

“However, I do know one thing that might help — Christianity itself. Only Christians can finally and fully reject the bloody theology that has so often resulted in calamity and that threatens us now.

“Oddly and rarely, Christianity has risen above its bad blood to achieve its alternative vision of peace with amity. For every violent emperor, bad pope, twisted crusader, and abusive preacher, there have always been protesters, subversives, resisters, truth-tellers, healers, and saints.

“Whenever Christianity practices goodness and justice, it almost always emerged from the latter group — the quiet, the powerless, the prayerful, the questioners, the mystics, the heretics, the wise, and the wanderers. It is a Christianity that leans toward love, afloat in the waters of grace, and not a religion obsessed with blood. It knows that purity is not the point.

“That’s what will help unhinge this madness — risky goodness. Attentiveness to where theology can go awry. The only antidote to theocratic Christianity is the brave, kind, persistent, merciful, and insistent faith that stands with and for human solidarity and comity. We can’t afford blood-soaked religion any more.

“Christians must stand up, speak up, and do good right now. Civil war isn’t funny. We can’t let it happen. We don’t need purity. We need decency. And peaceable community.

“There can be no hedging of bets when other Christians are calling for blood to purify the nation. We must remove the curse of bad blood before it kills us all.”

Bass offers only a tiny glimmer of hope. There isn’t much good to grab onto when it comes to Christian Nationalism and the future they see for America. So, a little hope is a welcome thing. It may not be much, but I’ll take it.

THIS IS MY BODY

This is my body
Red southern clay
The river’s my blood
And my soul’s highway

I bow to the weather
Misfortune and time
And rejoice in the tangles
Of wild muscadine

The lakes are my eyes
Awake in the fields
My wrinkles are tracks
Of old wagon wheels

Watching the speed of
A peregrine sky
Clouds and eternity
Sailing on high

Pines and the oak trees
These are my hands
My feet are the roots
Where my heritage stands

And I call to the seasons
And sing for the storm
Praising the sunshine
Keeping me warm

My dreams are the echoes
Of grandfather’s days
Our voices resolve
Like sea island ways

Careless as summer
I welcome the rain
And flow to the oceans
Through satisfied veins

Tales of our children
The scuppernong sings
And the love of our mothers
And swallow-tailed wings

The pain of our fathers
Lies in the hills
Torn from the land
To never be still

This my body
Red southern clay
The river’s my blood
And my soul’s highway

–Jack Williams

I am saddened, but not surprised, at the number of people who are screaming “It’s not fair” in response to the recent announcement that the government is going to forgive up to $20,000 of student loan debt for select Americans who currently have a student loan. I suspect that most of the people opposed to student loan forgiveness don’t know the history of student loans, and therefore have based their opinions on emotion or misinformation rather than facts.

For instance, my guess is that most people don’t know that when the government introduced guarantees on student loans, banks went into overdrive, often using predatory lending tactics, to make these loans. They saw student loan lending as easy money–a government guaranteed profit center– so they pushed student loans hard.

I bet most people don’t know that the insane increase in the cost of a college education corresponded with student loans becoming widely available, meaning that student loans drove much of the increase in the cost of college, simultaneously making student loans even more necessary.

Most people probably don’t know that when student loans became widely available and the cost of a college education skyrocketed, state legislatures across the nation began cutting support to state schools, transferring the cost of public universities from the state’s taxpayers to 18–22-year-old students looking for a better life. State legislatures saw an easy way to balance their budgets by cutting support to state universities, forcing the universities to raise tuition rates even higher, again increasing the need for student loans and forcing students to borrow ever more money.

For instance, the number of people who hold student loans increased from 38.8 million people in 2012 to 43.4 million in 2022. The amount of student loan debt being held also increased from $948.2 billion in 2012 to $1.6 trillion in 2022. The average student loan debt per person went from $24,700 to $36,800 during that same time.

During the 1970s and 80s, when student loans became widely available, corporations began requiring a college degree for many jobs, including those where a college degree was arguably unnecessary. With a college degree becoming a prerequisite, anyone that was looking for a career outside the trades or other narrow category of jobs, knew that without a college degree, they were going to be shut out from the most desirable, lucrative employment positions. For those people, getting a college degree appeared to be the best (maybe only) way to get ahead. At least, that’s what we were led to believe by people we trusted, like teachers, school counselors, financial advisors, and others.

And finally, I would guess that most people are not aware that since 2005, it’s all but impossible for borrowers to discharge their student loan debt as part of bankruptcy. They can discharge their mortgage. They can discharge their car loans. They can even discharge their credit card debt, no matter how irresponsible they were racking up that debt. But not student loan debt. Along with back taxes, student loans are one of the very few debts that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.

Financial writer Zachary D. Carter writes in Slate:

“Capitalism would collapse without debt relief systems. Businesses get in trouble all the time—both good businesses that would work fine without a few onerous debt deals, and bad businesses that need to be liquidated or restructured. Sometimes bad things just happen. People get divorced. They get injured and are overwhelmed by medical bills. They get laid off. They have to pay for a parent’s funeral or care for children with special needs. And yeah, some people just don’t know how to manage their money and buy things they can’t afford. But we do not consign such people to never-ending financial servitude as a result of unforeseen circumstances, or even totally reckless spending habits. We have a formal process to eliminate debts and start over, with a reasonable chance of living a healthy financial life.

“But not for students who borrow money to attend college. In 2005, Congress passed a law that made it next to impossible to discharge almost any form of student debt. Even the most creative consumer lawyers estimate that only about $50 billion—less than 3 percent of the $1.75 trillion in outstanding student debt—had the potential to be wiped away, but only if students could persuade a court that they had been egregiously wronged, by say, non-accredited programs or institutions that didn’t actually offer degrees.”

While the charge of unfairness is the way opposition to student loan forgiveness is most often voiced, it totally misses the point. Is it fair that some people had PPP loans forgiven during the pandemic while others didn’t qualify for the loans? Is it fair that profitable corporations receive government subsidies every year? Is it fair that every year, farmers receive subsidies—often encouraging them NOT to plant crops—and most of the money goes to corporate farms?

The point is, every day, the government takes our money in the form of taxes and spends it on any number of programs—including grants, awards, and loan forgiveness—that most of us never qualify for or benefit from directly. That’s what governments do. These programs help run the country and provide benefits to citizens from all across the nation and from numerous walks of life.

To really understand student loan forgiveness, it’s necessary to look at the issue, not through the lens of fairness, but from the viewpoint of right and wrong, or if you’d like, good and bad.

I mentioned earlier the predatory tactics financial institutions used to indebt young borrowers. While it is true that people 18-years old and older can legally sign contracts, it can’t be denied that college age borrowers are inexperienced and unsophisticated when it comes to borrowing money. Financial institutions took (and continue to take) advantage of this situation, encouraging students to take out the maximum loan they qualified for, even if they didn’t need the entire amount to pay for college. I can tell you from first-hand experience that this happened often, including to me.

The right thing to do for borrowers in a predatory lending situation is to forgive their loans. Of course, forgiving loans isn’t enough. Forgiving loans doesn’t fix the system. It doesn’t prevent banks from continuing to take advantage of borrowers. The system needs to be totally revamped. That’s a conversation for another time. For now, it’s enough to recognize that, under the circumstances, forgiving student loan debt is the right thing to do for student loan borrowers.

In addition, it’s a good thing to do for the economy. Right now, many college graduates and those that attended college but did not graduate are failing to fuel the economy the way that was expected. Because of crippling student loan debt, many borrowers are delaying marriage, delaying buying a house, and they are often stuck in unfulfilling jobs they can’t afford to leave due in large part to having to pay student loans. Instead, the money these borrowers spend each month is funneled into one narrow industry (financial services), and not spread across the economy. Discretionary spending for these people is extremely limited, denying the use of this money in the rest of the economy.

In addition, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia points out the corrosive impact student loans can have on the creation of new businesses. In a study done by the Federal Reserve, researchers found that an increase in student loan debt was negatively correlated to the start of small businesses. In other words, more student loan debt meant fewer small businesses being started. The reason is that small businesses often rely on personal borrowing for business startup costs. With less borrowing power due to student loan indebtedness, many would-be business owners simply do not have the borrowing capacity to fund a potential start-up.

One argument that has been made by those opposed to student loan forgiveness is that it will make inflation worse, hurting the economy. This charge is seemingly made by people who don’t fully understand how the forgiveness will work or how many years it will take to forgive the loans.

Someone who does understand the program, is Mike Konczal, Director of Macroeconomic Analysis at the Roosevelt Institute. Konczal analyzed the opinion of the Center for Responsible Budget (CFRB), who claimed that student loan forgiveness will “consume nearly ten years of deficit reduction” that was supposed to come from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and “would wipe out the disinflationary benefits of the IRA.”

According to Konczal, “[E]ven their (CFRB) own numbers show that canceling some student debt and restarting payments in the near future would reduce inflation versus restarting payments (alone). They argue that restarting payments would reduce inflation 20-basis points a year each year, versus a 15-basis point increase to canceling $10,000 in student debt. Thus a deal that canceled student debt and restarted payments would reduce inflation versus the status quo.”

Joseph Stiglitz, professor at Columbia University, echo’s this sentiment. “Whatever your view of student-debt cancellation, the inflation argument is a red herring and should not influence policy…A closer look at the student-debt-cancellation program suggests that the new student-loan policy may even reduce inflation; at most, its inflationary impact will be minuscule, and the long-term benefits to the economy are likely to be significant.”

Stiglitz goes on to point out that resuming student loan payments without forgiveness will likely do more harm to the economy than good. “Some of the critics demand that payments should simply resume without any cancellation. That would plunge a large number of student debtors back into immediate financial distress and further loan delinquency…This level of distress is bad for the economy, both in the short run, as we strive for a robust recovery, and in the long run.”

The issue of student loan forgiveness is an emotional one, but for the sake of our citizens and our economy, we should not base government programs on emotion, particularly uninformed emotion. Government programs should be based on the good they can do, the harm they can alleviate, and in the positive impact they can have on citizens and our economy. Basing them purely on a sense of, “I survived this hardship in the past, so you should have to survive it now” is a sure recipe, not only for more hardship, but for potential economic disaster.

President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program may not be popular with a certain segment of the population, but it is good for millions of student loan borrowers, good for the economy, and ultimately, good for the country as a whole.