In a stinging passage from a “Letter from Birmingham City Jail,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. condemned white churches for rejecting his pleas for support.
“In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies,” King wrote from jail during the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, demonstrations.
The contemporary white church has largely accepted King as a religious hero. Yet some observers say there is one religious community that continues to shun King — the black church.
Forty years after his death, King remains a prophet without honor in the institution that nurtured him, black preachers and scholars say. King’s “prophetic” model of ministry — one that confronted political and economic institutions of power — has been sidelined by the prosperity gospel.
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I hate it when people write articles based on what they think they know and not the truth. The truth is that Dr. King in his book, Strength To Love, wrote about economic empowerment in the Black community. As a matter of fact he said that any religion or movement that does not address the economic needs if its intended audience is ineffective. The truth is that the author is looking for a story to write that most ignorant Americans will pay mindless attention to and not question. On the other hand, it is also quite shallow for him to categorize Creflo Dollar and T.D. Jakes as only “prosperity” preachers. As a student of Creflo Dollar, I can comment with more expertise than the author about Dr. Dollar’s teachings. He mainly addresses restoration of peace or “Shalom” in the lives of his members. Shalom encompasses many of the things God wants for us, not just money (health, fruitful family life, success in marriage, etc.). It is unfortunate that many Black preachers get this label just because they choose to educate their people on the value of proper financial management just as Dr. King did. But I’d say it is even more unfortunate that the editors allowed this story to be printed.
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