Kabir's Reviews > Strength to Love

I was led to this while taking down Ryan’s wall and I read a quote by MLK out of All About Love by bell hooks, it read, “man is caught in an inescapable network mutuality”. I was like YES and so i knew it was time to revisit the King. We know the american education system is poopoo yes but man i was done a huge disservice by MLK largely being omitted outside of he gave a speech, led a boycott, and was assassinated. I’m not religious by any traditional means however what I learned about this man in these short 160 pages of sermons was so inspiring, insightful, and added so much to what I thought I knew about him.

First and foremost this man was a serious intellectual, i love how this underpins his faith as a whole. And his faith underpins entirely his fight for social justice. I love how he used preaching as a means to an end, his impact must have been so much more far reaching because he was rooted in the church whose own community is so huge. I also really appreciated his constant critique of the church and his emphasis on the social responsibility of the church. All faiths could take a page out of his book tbh.

Kinda made me look at christianity all misty eyed, i don’t believe i will ever be a christian, but he painted it beautifully as this religion of hope and resistance.

What was interesting to me was his inseparability of the effort for social change and man’s journey to good, from God and faith. Again I am not religious, so at first I thought he’s taking this too far, but the way I took it, as a non religious person, is that you need faith period in order to create change and combat societal evils. Whether your immovable mast of faith is in God or not, you need it to make anything shake. I think I have strong faith, it’s just not rooted in God. I wonder what he would make of that.

I disagree with him that man cannot save himself alone. I think he takes away the agency and the power of man to do for himself, yes you need action and yes you need faith with that action, but belief in God is just a form that faith can take. His argument against communism was also unconvincing.

I hate he was murdered, especially so soon. He had really only just begun to practically use and reveal the power of nonviolent resistance. I wonder what things might have looked like had he lived a full life.

In conclusion, this was such a great introduction to MLK. What an inspiring, intelligent, resilient, and powerful man.