Abstract
This essay was written in observance of the 50th anniversary of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s untimely assassination in April 1968. It highlights some of King’ s most important work during the American Civil Rights Movement in terms of its contemporary influence. As a focal thesis, this essay argues that King’ s famed Letter From Birmingham Jail—written during his April 1963 incarceration in Birmingham, Alabama, for deliberately refusing to follow what he morally deemed to be an “unjust law”—was predicated on the biblical foundation of civil disobedience exemplified in the famed story of Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego, the three Hebrew boys who refused to obey King Nebuchadnezzar’ s order to bow down to a deity made of gold. This essay argues that the Hebrew boys’ faith-based willingness to suffer the potentially fatal consequence for their civil disobedience instead of complying with immoral governmental dictates exemplifies the Judeo-Christian suffering servant theology that influenced King and permeated the Civil Rights Movement. King's work was fueled by a suffering servant theology that regards suffering as redemptive provided it is for a moral cause. In arguing the Hebrews’ civil disobedience set a foundation for King’ s leadership in the Movement, this essay pays tribute to King’ s legacy by also connecting his example of selfless sacrifice in the form of civil disobedience in Birmingham to recent contemporary social movements, like Black Lives Matter, a successor to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, that also seeks egalitarianism and inclusion.
Recommended Citation
Jonathan C. Augustine,
The Fiery Furnace, Civil Disobedience, and the Civil Rights Movement: A Biblical Exegesis on Daniel 3 and Letter From Birmingham Jail,
21
Rich. Pub. Int. L. Rev.
243
(2018).
Available at:
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/pilr/vol21/iss3/3