What’s in a Name?

Posted in: News By House Divided on January 20, 2020

As Americans pause to remember Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., few know how the leader of the modern civil rights movement got his name.

King’s father, Rev. M.L. King, was senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. In 1934, the senior King was sent by his church on a trip to Europe. During this trip, King spent time touring the country where in 1517, a German Monk and theologian had nailed his 95 Thesis to the door of the Wittenberg chapel. The monks name? Martin Luther.

The Senior King was inspired by one humble man who spoke truth to the powerful Catholic Church and in doing so, sparked what church historians call the Protestant Reformation. When King returned home, friends said he was a different man. And not long after he returned, he had a different name.

On Dec. 19th, 1897 King Sr. was born Michael King on a plantation in Stockbridge, Ga. Taylor Branch wrote, “for Mike King, who had come to Atlanta smelling like a mule, the switch to Martin Luther King caught the feeling of his leap to the stars”.

The change in his father’s name, and the change in the trajectory of his ministry, was not lost on his son, Mike, who a few years later, would also change his name … to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like his father, Martin Luther King, Jr. served as the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist church where, moved by the scriptures, he spoke truth to the politically powerful on behalf of those who suffered from racial discrimination.

King believed “the church …is not the master or servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.” His opposition to racial discrimination was not animated by his politics, but by his theology – by the biblical truth that all mankind is made in the image of God. “…(E)very man”, said King, ”has a capacity to have fellowship with God. And this gives him uniqueness…There are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on Gods keyboard precisely because every man is made in the image of God…”

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King set forth the standard by which all laws should be judged: “…A just law”, wrote King, “is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or law of God. An unjust law is a law that is out of harmony with the moral law…” . These immutable norms stand against the principle of “majority rule” and even against Supreme Court decisions that run contrary to this standard. For example, King worked to over-turn the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which made state sponsored segregation in public schools – known as “separate but equal” – the law of the land. Described as “wrong when written”, this racist decision was finally reversed in 1954 by the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Yale law professor, Arthur Leff, understands the implications of setting aside Kings litmus test for determining just from unjust and right from wrong. Leff asks, “In the absence of God…each …ethical and legal system will be differentiated by the answer it chooses to give to one key question: who among us… ought to be able to declare “law” that ought to be obeyed? Stated that baldly, the question is so intellectually unsettling that one would expect to find a noticeable number of legal and ethical thinkers trying not to come to grips with it.”

Leff goes on, “…Either God exists or he does not, but if he does not exist nothing and no one can take His place…As things stand now, everything is up for grabs. Nevertheless, napalming babies is bad. Starving the poor is wicked. Buying and selling each other is depraved… There is such a thing as evil. All together now: Sez Who? God help us.“

Since King’s assassination much has changed. Obvious examples include the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions making abortion on demand and gay marriage the law of the land. What hasn’t changed is the moral law or law of God: the biblical truths guiding the man we remember as Martin Luther King. Jr.