Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, and across the country, millions of children are studying his life and his work. But while plenty of kids can quote from King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, many don’t realize that King also penned a powerful defense of “natural law” — the body of moral truths that must undergird our nation’s laws.
In the spring of 1963, King was arrested for leading massive non-violent protests against the segregated lunch counters and discriminatory hiring practices rampant in Birmingham, Alabama. While in jail, King received a letter from eight Alabama ministers. They agreed with King’s goals, but they thought he should call off the demonstrations and obey the law.
King disagreed, and his famous LETTER FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL explains why. “One may well ask,” he wrote, “how can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer, he wrote, “is found in the fact that there are two kinds of laws: just laws … and unjust laws.”
“One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws,” King said, “but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law, King wrote, sounding like Augustine, “squares with the moral law of the law of God. An unjust law … is out of harmony with the moral law.”
King stood squarely within a long tradition dating back to Aristotle and then Augustine and Aquinas. But today, the whole concept of natural law has fallen out of favor. As Princeton legal philosopher Robert George writes in his new book, THE CLASH OF ORTHODOXIES, many secular ideologues teach that “moral rights cannot come as a divine gift because there is no divine giver.” According to this faction, moral rights “exist only in the sense that certain people … happen to believe … subjectively — that rights exist and are willing to honor them. Where people … do not happen to believe in their existence, rights simply do not exist.”
Confronted with such thinking, Dr. King would have been appalled, George writes; he knew that without enduring, objective standards of justice, then, as Nietzsche put it, “all things are permitted” — including segregation and even slavery. As a Christian, King knew that even in our fallen state, humans have access to a law “written on the heart” — the natural law — as Romans puts it. Before this law, all unjust human law stands condemned.
“When Christians insist that human laws line up with moral truth,” George writes, “we are not ‘imposing religion.’ Instead, we are making the entirely reasonable demand that reason be given its due in human affairs. Unjust law fails to bind the conscience and must be opposed by people of faith.”
This was Dr. King’s point to his fellow clergy. In King’s time, the great sin against natural law was the systematic violation of human rights and dignity based on race; today, it’s the assault on human life itself.
A wonderful way to honor King’s memory is to teach our kids about his eloquent defense of natural law. Professor George’s new book, THE CLASH OF ORTHODOXIES — or my book, HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?, in which we tell King’s story — is a great place to start. You’ll see why, for two thousand years, Christians have maintained exactly what King maintained.
For further reading:
Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE? (Tyndale House, 1999).
Robert George, THE CLASH OF ORTHODOXIES: LAW, RELIGION, AND MORALITY IN CRISIS (ISI Books, 2001).
The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University
Martin Luther King Jr., LETTER FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL, 16 April 1963.
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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. ‘BreakPoint with Chuck Colson’ is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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Version from January 16, 2005:
King’s Dream: The Good Society and the Moral Law, by Charles Colson
More than forty years ago, on August 28, 1963, a quarter million people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. They marched here for the cause of civil rights. And that day they heard Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, a speech in which he challenged America to fulfill her promise.
“I have a dream,” he said, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”
While we know of the speech, most people are unaware that King also penned one of the most eloquent defenses of the moral law: the law that formed the basis for his speech, for the civil rights movement, and for all of law, for that matter.
In the spring of 1963, King was arrested for leading a series of massive non-violent protests against the segregated lunch counters and discriminatory hiring practices rampant in Birmingham, Alabama. While in jail, King received a letter from eight Alabama ministers. They agreed with his goals, but they thought that he should call off the demonstrations and obey the law.
King explained why he disagreed in his famous LETTER FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL. “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 kinds of laws: just laws … and unjust laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws,” King said, “but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
How does one determine whether the law is just or unjust? A just law, King wrote, “squares with the moral law of the law of God. An unjust law … is out of harmony with the moral law.”
Then King quoted Saint Augustine: “An unjust law is no law at all.” He quoted Thomas Aquinas: “An unjust law is a human law not rooted in eternal or natural law.”
This is the great issue today in the public square: Is the law rooted in truth? Is it transcendent, immutable, and morally binding? Or is it, as liberal interpreters argue, simply whatever courts say it is? Do we discover the law, or do we create it?
Many think of King as a liberal firebrand, waging war on traditional values. Nothing could be further from the truth. King was a great conservative on this central issue, and he stood on the shoulders of Augustine and Aquinas, striving to restore our heritage of justice rooted in the law of God.
Were he alive today, I believe he would be in the vanguard of the pro-life movement and would be supporting Judge Alito. I also believe that he would be horrified at the way in which out-of-control courts have trampled on the moral truths he advocated.
From the time of Emperor Nero, who declared Christianity illegal, to the days of the American slave trade, from the civil rights struggle of the sixties to our current battles against abortion, euthanasia, cloning, and same-sex “marriage,” Christians have always maintained exactly what King maintained.
King’s dream was to live in harmony with the moral law as God established it. So this Martin Luther King Day, reflect on that dream — for it is worthy of our aspirations, our hard work, and the same commitment Dr. King showed.
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The original commentary first aired on August 28, 2003.
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Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint with Chuck Colson” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.