Against us, but for us
Subtitle: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the state
By: Michael G. Long.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Mercer University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Macon, Ga
Language: eng
Number of pages: 254
Subjects: King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968 -- Political and social views.; Political science -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; State, The -- Philosophy.
Description: "In this book, Michael G. Long offers a three-fold thesis to understanding King's understanding of the state. First, King adopted a theologically-based dialectical attitude towards the state. Second, King's theological understanding of the state remained constant in most of its fundamental elements but developed in substantive content and expression throughout his life.

Third, his view of the state has its roots in the African-American tradition he experienced through his family, church, and Morehouse professors, as well as in European-American religious and republic traditions. King's political thought was the result of a hardworking bricoleur, i.e., in the words of Stanley Hauerwas, "a strong moralist engaging in a kind of selective retrieval and reconfiguration of available moral languages for his own use."".

"King initially learned about the state not by reading Thomas Jefferson, Walter Rauschenbusch, Jacques Maritain, Karl Marx, or even Reinhold Niebuhr, but through his personal encounters with his Christian family, especially Daddy King, and with his Morehouse professors, especially the clergy-scholar Benjamin E. Mays.

The ultimate root of King's understanding of the state, Long concludes, is not in civic republicanism, theological liberalism, Marxism, Niebuhrian realism, or in any other such school, but in the religious tradition he experienced at home and at college."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-242) and index.
Table of contents: title: Black church, white state (1929-1944); title: Morehouse and more democracy (1944-1948); title: An emerging theology of the state (1948-1951); title: Encountering realism, countering realism (1951-1955); title: Against us, but for us (1954-1963); title: Against a minimalist state, but for a social-democratic state (1964-1965); title: Against a separate Black state, but for a revolutionized state (1966-1968).