Pastor Lindell Ballenger

A Legacy Fit for a King

If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive to see his new monument in Washington, D.C., it would probably give him great pride to see his likeness standing at the foot of the Tidal Basin, facing the Jefferson Memorial. No two men could be more perfectly situated than a father of our religious freedom and the man who championed that freedom to a revolution of human dignity. Today, their monuments are a visual testimony to a very practical and inspiring truth. Long before his memorial looked toward Jefferson, Dr. King lived his life in line with the democratic ideals of the man himself. They were two great leaders, living in two very different times — but their dreams were both firmly rooted in the freedom of faith.

So it is a somewhat fitting irony that this year we celebrate Religious Freedom Day on the same date we remember one of the most influential ministers in American history. For the past 19 years, Presidents have set aside January 16 to honor the passage of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson in Fredericksburg some 233 years ago. It was such an important document that the men who crafted the U.S. Constitution relied on it for the framework of the First Amendment. “…Almighty God,” Jefferson wrote, “hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion…”

Without religious liberty, Rev. King wouldn’t have had the freedom or the platform to overcome racial oppression. Maybe that’s why, despite all of his accomplishments, Jefferson considered the statute one of his greatest legislative feats. ” No nation,” the third President said years later, “has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.” Two hundred years later, Rev. King understood faith’s place in fueling a movement of Christian people. “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state,” he said in Strength to Love, “but rather the conscience of the state.”

What motivated Rev. King and powered his movement was Scripture — an understanding that “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” Civil rights could not have been achieved if that light, that religious liberty, had been extinguished. It’s what enables the church to speak out today on behalf of marriage, the unborn, the downtrodden, and the persecuted. Rev. King understood then, as we do now, that religious freedom is fundamental to every other freedom on earth. And without that rich tradition Rev. King’s mighty vision would have been just another dream.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
-Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)