“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will,” the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in 1963 from a jail cell in Birmingham, Ala. “Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” It was a direct challenge to the white church as civil rights violence engulfed the South. White churches told Dr. King he was moving too fast, demanding too much. In the nearly 60 years since, has anything really changed?
The Washington National Cathedral and Advancement Project DC celebrates Dr. King’s legacy and examine his challenge to the church, particularly the lack of progress on behalf of our incarcerated black and brown neighbors.
A portion of the excerpts from Dr. King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” is read be our very own, Cheryl Jackson, along with musical performances from Washington Performing Arts Children of the Gospel Choir, Roderick Giles and Grace, Min. Nolan Williams and the Cathedral Band.
