•HRES 246 IH 
Whereas Dr. King addressed critics who lambasted him for 
addressing an issue outside of the strictly construed 
realm of civil rights for African-Americans, declaring that 
‘‘the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church—the 
church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pas-
torate—leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight. There is 
at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection 
between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and oth-
ers have been waging in America. A few years ago there 
was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if 
there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black 
and white, through the poverty program. There were ex-
periments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup 
in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and evis-
cerated as if it were some idle political plaything on a so-
ciety gone mad on war. And I knew that America would 
never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilita-
tion of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam con-
tinued to draw men and skills and money like some de-
monic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly 
compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and 
to attack it as such.’’; 
Whereas King was subsequently attacked for giving this ser-
mon by 168 major newspapers including the New York 
Times and Washington Post; 
Whereas Dr. King understood that his commitment to his re-
ligion required him to speak out on behalf of peace and 
understanding between peoples and nations, stating ‘‘To 
me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of 
peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who 
ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be 
that they do not know that the Good News was meant 
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•HRES 246 IH 
for all men—for communist and capitalist, for their chil-
dren and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary 
and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry 
is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully 
that he died for them? Finally, as I try to explain for you 
and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to 
this place, I would have offered all that was most valid 
if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that 
I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living 
God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this 
vocation of sonship and brotherhood. Because I believe 
that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His 
suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come to-
night to speak for them. This I believe to be the privilege 
and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by 
allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper 
than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self- 
defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for 
the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, 
for those it calls ‘enemy’ for no document from human 
hands can make these humans any less our brothers,’’; 
Whereas Dr. King noted the challenge of telling aggrieved 
Americans that violence would not solve their problems 
while their country was using violence to address its 
problems abroad, explaining that ‘‘As I have walked [in 
the ghettos of the North over the last three years] among 
the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told 
them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve 
their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest 
compassion while maintaining my conviction that social 
change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent ac-
tion. But they asked, and rightly so, ‘What about Viet-
nam?’ They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive 
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•HRES 246 IH 
doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the 
changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew 
that I could never again raise my voice against the vio-
lence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first 
spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the 
world today: my own government. For the sake of those 
boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the 
hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I 
cannot be silent.’’; 
Whereas such an observation remains particularly relevant 
today, as people in cities nationwide are rising up in pro-
test against injustices such as police brutality and are 
similarly urged to air their grievances peacefully; 
Whereas Dr. King made a powerful call for a ‘‘true revolution 
in values,’’ stating that such a revolution ‘‘will lay hand 
on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling 
differences is not just.’ This business of burning human 
beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with or-
phans 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 and psychologically deranged, cannot be rec-
onciled with wisdom, justice, and love. [...] America, the 
richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well 
lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing 
except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering 
our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take prece-
dence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep 
us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised 
hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.’’; 
Whereas Dr. King warned of prioritizing war spending of 
that for social welfare, declaring that ‘‘A nation that con-
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tinues year after year to spend more money on military 
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching 
spiritual death.’’; 
Whereas this warning is particularly applicable today, given 
recent proposals for dramatic increases in military spend-
ing, on top of a budget that is already far greater than 
that of any other nation on earth, combined with sharp 
reductions in social welfare programs; 
Whereas Dr. King clarified that his critique extended beyond 
the Vietnam War, stating that ‘‘The war in Vietnam is 
but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the Amer-
ican spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will 
find ourselves organizing ‘clergy and laymen concerned’ 
committees for the next generation. They will be con-
cerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be con-
cerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be con-
cerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be 
marching for these and a dozen other names and attend-
ing rallies without end unless there is a significant and 
profound change in American life and policy. So such 
thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our 
calling as sons of the living God.’’; 
Whereas these words have proven to be prophetic, as exempli-
fied by ongoing United States involvement in conflicts 
such as Afghanistan, Iraq, among many other simmering 
conflicts where our Nation has military involvement, 
many of which continue to incur a great cost, both in 
terms of our Nation’s financial resources as well as a 
human toll for both our service members and the civilian 
population; and 
Whereas Dr. King called for an enlightened future for our so-
ciety, stating that ‘‘Our only hope today lies in our ability 
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