Seminary Journal 2008 (August) - Virginia Theological Seminary

een going to it without a rabbi. Are
you all with me now? The reality is you
got to have a rabbi. Christian discipleship
is Gospel-centered. That is its access
into the whole wonderful tapestry
of God’s great and glorious revelation.
I need Jesus.
I said all that because when you look
at King you will fi nd moments in his
life, once again, when pressed against
the wall, the real roots of his power
start coming out. One of those moments
happened in 1967 when he was
being pressured to speak out against
the war in Vietnam. He had resisted.
He did not do it for a while. It wasn’t
a matter of cowardice; it was really a
tactical decision. He was concerned
that as a civil rights leader, he might
very well undermine the support that
the civil rights movement had gotten
and he might very well alienate the
very president that
they were trying to
cultivate, if you will,
by speaking out in
opposition to the war.
So, there were some
tactical issues at stake,
reasons for his hesitancy,
and the reality was
this was 1967. Condoleezza
Rice was in
elementary school. She
wasn’t the Secretary
of State, ok? And the
very few black (were
we black then?... help
me, I forgot [laughter].
We changed…we
might have been
Negro at that time
[laughter]. I can’t keep
up.) Anyway, there
were very few African
American, black,
Negro, colored, whatever we were
at that time, who were
involved in foreign policy.
The U.S. State Department
was kind of an Ivy League
department, the graduate
school of the Ivy League. It
was the arena where only
certain folk got in. Ok? And
none of these were colored
folk, with the few exceptions
of Ralph Bunch and
James Johnson and Bud
Holland. I can think of a
few names of a few African
Americans who did things
in foreign service but, by
and large, foreign service
was like being a quarterback
in the NFL—only
white folk did that. Some of
y’all are too young to know
that 15 years ago there was
Bishop Curry is
widely known
for his lively
preaching style.
no such thing as a black quarterback.
Back then there was no such thing as
a black bishop of North Carolina but
that is another issue [laughter]. In
1967 King’s hesitancy to enter into the
arena of foreign policy was grounded
in the reality within which he found
himself. You see what I am getting at?
It wasn’t just cowardice and it wasn’t
just tactical, although there was some
fear there, no doubt about that, but he
fi nally stepped out, realized he had to
10 VIRGINIA SEMINARY JOURNAL AUGUST 2007