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“The Beloved Community” was first used in the early 20th century by the philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce, founder of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., popularized the term in the 1950s and 1960s in his work as a pastor, author, and leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

King’s understanding of Beloved Community was theologically rooted:   “beloved community as the realization of divine love in lived social relation” (Marsh: 2) - agape – the unconditional love of others – regardless of risk or cost.

But Beloved Community is not self-generating.  Behind it is the Event – the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ.  For Dr. King, this meant accepting the “spiritual discipline of bearing peace witness to the cross of Jesus Christ in a violent nation.”  (Marsh: 2)

John Lewis, a young seminarian at the time he began working with Dr. King, described the movement as “nothing less than the Christian concept of the Kingdom of God on earth” and as a “redemptive society” that heals social wounds and divisions.

For Lewis, the Beloved Community gave expression to all he longed for – making the teachings of Jesus alive in the present day.

Although not all who seek to build the Beloved Community are Christians, King clearly understood what he did as flowing directly from his faithfulness to the Christian gospel.

“I am many things to many people, but in the quiet recesses of my heart, I am fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher.  This is my being and my heritage, for I am also the son of a Baptist preacher, the grandson of a Baptist preacher and the great grandson of a Baptist preacher.”  (Marsh: 6)

Barriers to Beloved Community: The Triple Evils

For Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal but a realistic, achievable one. But to experience it required overcoming the barriers to Beloved Community: three forms of violence – or The Triple Evils of Poverty, Racism, and Militarism.

King understood these to be interrelated. Redemptively addressing one evil, affects all evils. Specific expressions of these evils change based on the political and social climate of a nation and world. Here are just a few manifestations of these evils.

 Poverty - materialism, unemployment, homelessness, hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, infant mortality, slums.

 "There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty ... The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for 'the least of these."

 Racism - prejudice, apartheid, anti-Semitism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, ageism, discrimination against differently-abled groups, stereotypes.

 "Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual and physical homicide upon the out-group."

 Militarism - war, imperialism, domestic violence, rape, terrorism, media violence, drugs, child abuse, violent crime.

 "A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war- 'This way of settling differences is not just.' This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Overcoming these barriers to the Beloved Community involves redemptive, suffering love as described in "Six Principles of Nonviolence" and utilizing a model for social action outlined in the "Six Steps for Nonviolent Social Change."

Sources:

Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today by Charles Marsh

The King Center

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Tags: Beloved Community, Martin Luther King Jr, militarism, MLK Day, poverty, racism, Triple Evils