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[[File:MLK.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Martin Luther King Jr. at The March on Washington D.C.]] In popular American culture, religion, especially Christianity, is often looked at as a hindrance to progressivism. Many will recall that many Southern slave owners during the Civil War era defended their owning other human beings using quotes from the Bible. Others will point toward the conservatism of the South and it’s largely evangelical and fundamentalist populace. However, this is not true of all Christian faiths. It was especially not true of many leading forces of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s.
I would like to demonstrate this by focusing on the most well-known figure of the era: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What I hope to explain is that, for King, his Christian faith was a main impetus for his dedication to progressivism and establishing equality for all African American men and women before the law. I will cover three main ways that King’s Christian faith impacted his contributions to the Civil Rights Movement. First, I will discuss King’s defense of breaking the law in his Letter From Birmingham Jail. We will see that King uses an appeal to the Christian moral doctrine of natural law in explaining and justifying his refusal to obey unjust laws. Second, I will look at the brand of eschatology (theology pertaining to the Second Coming of Christ) that King preached and how it contrasts will less socially-interested brands of Protestant Christianity. Lastly, I will draw the connection between King’s commitment to non-violence and his Christian faith. Taking all of this into account, I claim that Christianity, though very certain kinds, can be said to have had a positive impact on the Civil Rights Movement.
