The Arc of Truth by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-05-19T23:00:00+00:00

The Beloved Community Ideal:

In Pursuit of Truthful Ends

When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of “an unfolding truth” or

“the new advancing truth,” he thought of the larger issue of the pursuit of “truthful ends” through “truthful means.” Here the ideal of the beloved community always surfaced and became his main

focus.130 Beloved community for King meant a “truly integrated

society” characterized by “true inter-group, interpersonal living,”

“mutual acceptance,” and “shared power.” “I think too often people

have thought of integration in kind of romantic or aesthetic terms,”

he remarked, “where you add a little color to a still predominantly

white power structure. I think of integration in political terms, or in

the sense that it is shared power.”131 At other points, King defined

integration in terms of “the welcomed participation” of persons “into

the total range of human activities.”132 Segregation and oppression

are forms of social evil and theological heresy because they are inconsistent with four basic principles that formed the essential core of King’s vision of the beloved community: (1) the impartiality of God

in creating and dealing with human beings; (2) a sacramental idea

of the cosmos as echoed by the Psalmist—“the earth is the Lord’s,

and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein”

(Ps 24:1); (3) a belief in the dignity and worth of all human personality; and (4) a solidaristic conception of society and the world, which holds that each individual is a distinct ontological entity who

finds growth, purpose, and fulfillment through personal and social

relationships based on the agape love ethic.133 In the discussion that

follows, the beloved community is treated as a sort of overarching

telos that embraces the essential elements of King’s vision of “a new

South,”134 “a new America,”135 and “a new world.”136 It also reveals

the significant interplay among the South, the nation, and the world

in King’s consciousness, which was evident from the period of the

Montgomery protest but became more informed and explicit over

time, especially during the last three years of his life.137

The vision of a new South and the persistent efforts to bring

this ideal into practical reality did not begin with King and the civil

rights movement. New South rhetoric first surfaced almost a century

earlier, after the defeat of the Confederacy, when white newspaper

editors, businessmen, politicians, and religious leaders advocated a

rejection of the attitudes, values, and mores of the Old South and

its plantation-based economic system in favor of a more modernized South defined by increased industrialization and urbanization, enlightened agricultural practices, improved educational opportunities, harmonious race relations, and national reconciliation.138 Henry W. Grady of the Atlanta Constitution is credited with coining the phrase New South in 1874 and popularizing it through his writings and speeches. Grady, Francis W. Dawson of the Charleston

News and Courier, Richard H. Edmonds of Baltimore’s Manufacturer’s Record, Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and Daniel A. Tompkins of the Charleston Observer are usually

considered the “prime movers” and the “chief advocates” of the new

South cause. Important contributions were also made by businessmen such as James Duke, politicians like Virginia governor William Mahone, and church leaders such as the Southern Methodist Bishop Atticus G. Haygood.139 During

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.