Beacon Broadside

MLK Was an Interfaith Visionary

Today is the 45th anniversary of the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel. One of the often overlooked aspects of King's life and activism is his commitment to interfaith cooperation. In this post first featured here a couple of years ago, Eboo Patel explores how King used his own faith as a bridge of cooperation. Patel is the founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC), a Chicago-based institution building the global interfaith youth movement. He is the author of the award-winning book Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation and Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America.

Today is also the Interfaith Youth Core's Better Together day, a time to wear blue to raise awareness of interfaith cooperation. Read more about it here.

One hundred years ago, the great African-American scholar W.E.B. DuBois famously wrote, "The problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line."

History proved DuBois correct. His century saw the struggles against, and ultimately the victory over, systems that separated and subjugated people based on race—from colonialism in India to Jim Crow in the U.S. to apartheid in South Africa.

No American did more than Martin Luther King, Jr., to address the problem of the color line. He spearheaded the marches that revealed the brutality of segregation, made speeches that reminded Americans that the promise of their nation applied to all citizens and expertly pressured the nation's leaders in Washington to pass landmark civil rights legislation.

But to confine King's role in history only to the color line—as giant as that challenge is, and as dramatic as King's contribution was—is to reduce his greatness. In one of his final books, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, King showed that race was one part of his broader concern with human relations at large: "This is the great new problem of mankind. We have inherited ... a great 'world house' in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Hindu ... Because we can never again live apart, we must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."

This ethos, as King's examples make clear, applies not only to the question of race, but to faith as well. In the same way as the headlines of the 20th century read of conflict between races, headlines in our times are full of violence between people of different religions. Indeed, what the color line was to the 20th century, the faith line might be to the 21st.

Faith as a bridge

King's life has as much to say to us on the question of interfaith cooperation as it did on the matter of interracial harmony. A prince of the black church, deeply rooted in his own Baptist tradition, King viewed his faith as a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division.

When, as a seminary student, King was introduced to the satyagraha ("love-force") philosophy of the Indian Hindu leader Mahatma Gandhi, King did not reject it because it came from a different religion. Instead, he sought to find resonances between Gandhi's Hinduism and his own interpretation of Christianity. Indeed, it was Gandhi's movement in India that provided King with a 20th century version of what Jesus would do. King patterned nearly all the strategy and tactics of the civil rights movement—from boycotts to marches to readily accepting jail time—after Gandhi's leadership in India. King called Gandhi "the first person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social force."

Following Gandhi was King's first step on a long journey of learning about the shared social justice values across the world's religions, and partnering with faith leaders of all backgrounds in the struggle for civil rights. In 1959, more than a decade after the Mahatma's death, King traveled to India to meet with people continuing the work Gandhi had started. He was surprised and inspired to meet Indians of all faith backgrounds working for equality and harmony, discovering in their own traditions the same inspiration for love and peace that King found in Christianity.

King's experience with religious diversity in India shaped the rest of his life. He readily formed a friendship with the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, finding a common bond in their love of the Hebrew prophets. The two walked arm-in-arm in the famous civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

Later, Heschel wrote, "Our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying."

King's friendship with the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh inspired one of his most controversial moves, the decision to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. In his letter nominating Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize, King wrote, "He is a holy man... His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to a world brotherhood, to humanity."

Better together

In his famous sermon "A Time to Break Silence," King was unequivocal about his Christian commitment and at the same time summarized his view of the powerful commonality across all faiths: "This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality" is that the force of love is "the supreme unifying principle of life."

We live at a time of religious conflict abroad and religious tension at home. This would no doubt have dismayed King, who viewed faith as an inspiration to serve and connect, not to destroy and divide. During King's time, groups ranging from white supremacists to black militants believed that the races were better apart. Today, the same is said of division along the lines of faith.

King insisted that we are always better together. Indeed, that pluralism is part of divine plan. To paraphrase one of his most enduring statements: The world is not divided between black and white or Christian and Muslim, but between those who would live together as brothers and those who would perish together as fools.

This post originally appeared in USA Today.

Interfaith Activism Reading List:

Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?

by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The last book written by King—his final reflections after a decade of civil rights struggles

Read the introduction by Vincent Harding.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind-for the first time-has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.

 

"In a Single Garment of Destiny": A Global Vision of Justice 

by Martin Luther King, Jr. Edited by Lewis V. Baldwin

An unprecedented and timely collection that captures the global vision of Dr. King—in his own words 

Too many people continue to think of Dr. King only as "a southern civil rights leader" or "an American Gandhi," thus ignoring his impact on poor and oppressed people around the world. "In a Single Garment of Destiny"is the first book to treat King's positions on global liberation struggles through the prism of his own words and activities. 

From the pages of this extraordinary collection, King emerges not only as an advocate for global human rights but also as a towering figure who collaborated with Eleanor Roosevelt, Albert J. Luthuli, Thich Nhat Hanh, and other national and international figures in addressing a multitude of issues we still struggle with today-from racism, poverty, and war to religious bigotry and intolerance. Introduced and edited by distinguished King scholar Lewis Baldwin, this volume breaks new ground in our understanding of King. 

Featuring the essay: "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence."

 

Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America

by Eboo Patel

An inspiring call for Americans to defend the values of inclusiveness and pluralism by one of our best-known American Muslim leaders 

There is no better time to stand up for your values than when they are under attack.

In the decade following the attacks of 9/11, suspicion and animosity toward American Muslims has increased rather than subsided. Alarmist, hateful rhetoric once relegated to the fringes of political discourse has now become frighteningly mainstream, with pundits and politicians routinely invoking the specter of Islam as a menacing, deeply anti-American force.

In Sacred Ground, author and renowned interfaith leader Eboo Patel says this prejudice is not just a problem for Muslims but a challenge to the very idea of America. Patel shows us that Americans from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr. have been "interfaith leaders," illustrating how the forces of pluralism in America have time and again defeated the forces of prejudice. And now a new generation needs to rise up and confront the anti-Muslim prejudice of our era. To this end, Patel offers a primer in the art and science of interfaith work, bringing to life the growing body of research on how faith can be a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division and sharing stories from the frontlines of interfaith activism.

Patel asks us to share in his vision of a better America—a robustly pluralistic country in which our commonalities are more important than our differences, and in which difference enriches, rather than threatens, our religious traditions. Pluralism, Patel boldly argues, is at the heart of the American project, and this visionary book will inspire Americans of all faiths to make this country a place where diverse traditions can thrive side by side.

 

Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation

by Eboo Patel

A renowned Muslim activist's personal story of building a global interfaith youth movement that might just change the world. Includes a new afterword by the author.

Acts of Faith is a remarkable account of growing up Muslim in America and coming to believe in religious pluralism, from one of the most prominent faith leaders in the United States. Eboo Patel's story is a hopeful and moving testament to the power and passion of young people-and of the world-changing potential of an interfaith youth movement. 

 

Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India and the Origins of African American Nonviolence

by Quinton Dixie and Peter Eisenstadt. Foreword by Walter Earl Fluker

The first biographical exploration of one of the most important African American religious thinkers of the twentieth century—Howard Thurman—and of the pivotal trip he took to India that ultimately shaped the course of the civil rights movement.

In 1935, at the height of his powers, Howard Thurman, one of the most influential African American religious thinkers of the twentieth century, took a pivotal trip to India that would forever change him-and that would ultimately shape the course of the civil rights movement in the United States.

After the journey to India, Thurman's distinctly American translation of satyagraha into a Black Christian context became one of the key inspirations for the civil rights movement, fulfilling Gandhi's prescient words that "it may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world." Thurman went on to found one of the first explicitly interracial congregations in the United States and to deeply influence an entire generation of black ministers-among them Martin Luther King Jr.

Related articles

Interfaith Youth Core Declares April 4th "Better Together Day"

Further Reading on Marriage Equality

Reclaiming MLK as a "Citizen of the World"

Faith as a Bomb, Faith as a Bridge: Building a 21st Century Interfaith Movement

Wear blue for interfaith Better Together Day

How the Peace Corps Promotes Democracy

The Peace Corps Mission Statement says that its goals are:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

In the process of meeting these goals, Peace Corps volunteers have helped to bring the spirit of democracy to many nations where the ideals we treasure were once very foreign. In this video, Stanley Meisler, author of When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years, talks about how Peace Corps volunteers in Ethiopia contributed to the overthrow of an emperor. 

A Year of Celebrations for the Peace Corps

Stanley Meisler is the author of When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years. Meisler was a foreign and diplomatic correspondent for the Los Angeles Times for three decades. He was also deputy director of the Peace Corps’s Office of Evaluation and Research in the mid-1960s. Meisler, who lives in Washington, D.C., has written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, the Nation, and Smithsonian, and periodically posts news commentaries on his Web site.

March 1st marked the 50th birthday of the Peace Corps, but the anniversary celebrations are continuing for another six months, culminating in September when thousands of former Volunteers descend on Washington to lobby Congress, exchange memories, discuss the future, and party.

In a sense, the half year of celebration parallels the gestation of the Peace Corps 50 years ago. President John F. Kennedy signed the executive order creating the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961. But the Peace Corps was no more than an idea and a hope then. The President gave his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, the enormous and complex assignment of molding a new agency out of an exciting but cloudy idea.

A madcap six months followed. Shriver hired a staff (preferring those who broke the bureaucratic mold like mountain climbers and sea captains), and the team sifted thousands of applications, selected potential Volunteers, rushed them to universities for high-speed training, and dispatched them overseas. The crucial job of persuading foreign presidents and prime ministers and royalty to invite the Volunteers, of cajoling Congress to approve and fund the new agency, and of sustaining the American public’s enthusiasm fell on the charming, irrepressible, idealistic Shriver.

On August 30, the first contingent of Volunteers landed in Ghana in West Africa.  On September 21, Congress passed the Peace Corps Act by overwhelming votes. President Kennedy signed it into law the next day.

There are now more than 200,000 former Peace Corps Volunteers (who prefer to call themselves “returned Volunteers”), and many belong to associations based on where they now live like Boston Area Returned Peace Corps Volunteers or where they once served like Friends of Cameroon. These associations are sponsoring celebrations throughout the 50th anniversary year. Some like the early Ghana and Philippines Volunteers have published books about their experiences during the first year of the Peace Corps.

Universities, especially those with large numbers of Peace Corps alumni, have already staged symposiums, exhibitions and ceremonies in honor of the 50th anniversary. These include the University of Michigan, UCLA and the University of Wisconsin. Others joining them in the months ahead include Portland State University, Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, Bowdoin and Boston College.

In mid-summer, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which celebrates different ethnic cultures for a couple of weeks every year, will honor the Peace Corps this year by featuring crafts, foods, music and drama from groups helped by the Volunteers overseas.

The National Peace Corps Association, the main organization of former Volunteers, usually sponsors a national celebration in September every five years. There was one exception: The 40th anniversary events had to be postponed for a year because of the shock over the terrorism of 9/11 in 2001.

The association has scheduled a varied program in Washington September 21-25 including a day of lobbying on Capitol Hill, a symposium on the future of the Peace Corps, the laying of a wreath at the grave of President Kennedy in Arlington Cemetery, and a formal Gala with television news commentator Chris Matthews (a former Volunteer in Swaziland) as emcee.

Aside from the official activities sponsored by the National Peace Corps Association, there are a host of other events including separate reunions of Volunteers from many of the Peace Corps countries, a luncheon at the Library of Congress honoring Peace Corps authors, and pre-game ceremonies at the baseball park of the Washington Nationals.

It is a full anniversary year.    

View all of the videos included in this post and more in our When the World Calls YouTube Playlist.

The First Fifty Years of the Peace Corps

Stanley Meisler, author of When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years, discusses the Peace Corps, its history, and its diminished presence today. Watch here or on YouTube.

50 Years of the Peace Corps

On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing the Peace Corps. The idea for the Peace Corps came from an impromptu speech made a few months earlier by then-Senator Kennedy at the University of Michigan, in the final few weeks of his presidential campaign. At about two in the morning on the steps of the Michigan Union, he presented an idea to a crowd of restless students for an organization that would rally American youth in service. Though the speech lasted barely three minutes, his germ of an idea morphed dramatically into Kennedy's most enduring legacy. From this offhand campaign remark, shaped speedily by President Kennedy's brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, in 1961, the organization ascended with remarkable excitement and publicity, attracting the attention of thousands of hopeful young Americans.

Watch President Kennedy's announcement made fifty years ago today.

President John F. Kennedy Announces The Executive Order to Form Peace Corps (YouTube)

Of course, what transpired in those months between an inspiring speech and the establishment of a transformative institution-- not to mention what has happened in the fifty years since-- is a fascinating story, one you can now read in When the World Calls, the first complete and balanced look at the Peace Corps's first fifty years. Revelatory and candid, Stanley Meisler's engaging narrative exposes Washington infighting, presidential influence, and the Volunteers' unique struggles abroad. Meisler deftly unpacks the complicated history with sharp analysis and memorable anecdotes, taking readers on a global trek starting with the historic first contingent of Volunteers to Ghana on August 30, 1961.

The Peace Corps has served as an American emblem for world peace and friendship, yet few realize that it has sometimes tilted its agenda to meet the demands of the White House. Tracing its history through the past nine presidential administrations, Meisler discloses, for instance, how Lyndon Johnson became furious when Volunteers opposed his invasion of the Dominican Republic; he reveals how Richard Nixon literally tried to destroy the Peace Corps, and how Ronald Reagan endeavored to make it an instrument of foreign policy in Central America. But somehow the ethos of the Peace Corps endured, largely due to the perseverance of the 200,000 Volunteers themselves, whose shared commitment to effect positive global change has been a constant in one of our most complex-and valued-institutions.

This past weekend, the LA Times published an essay by Meisler about the legacy of the Peace Corps:

Fifty years on, what has the Peace Corps accomplished? It's possible to cite the pounds of fish sold or the pounds of honey produced under volunteer projects. But how do you measure the influence of an inspiring teacher? Or the effect on an impoverished teenage boy such as Alejandro Toledo, who, with volunteers' help, goes on to college and becomes the president of Peru?

But there is no difficulty measuring the impact of the Peace Corps on the United States. Half a century after Kennedy's call, the Peace Corps' greatest achievement may be the volunteers themselves.

Peace Corps alumni include two U.S. senators — Chris Dodd of Connecticut and the late Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts — and nine members of the House of Representatives, as well as governors of Wisconsin and Ohio and the mayor of Pittsburgh. One Cabinet member was a volunteer: Donna Shalala, Health and Human Services secretary in the Clinton administration and now the president of the University of Miami. Ten other volunteers are presidents of universities and colleges.

More than 20 have served as ambassadors or assistant secretaries of State; others went on to become teachers, doctors, economic development specialists. The novelist Paul Theroux heads a long list of Peace Corps writers, and the roster of journalists includes Chris Matthews of MSNBC and George Packer and Peter Hessler of the New Yorker. The founders of Netflix and the Nature Co., and the board chairs of Levi Strauss and the Chicago Bears, were also volunteers.

In all, some 200,000 Americans have lived, often in the remotest of villages, in countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific and Eastern Europe — places most other Americans can't find on a map. We would not have this enormous asset today without the Peace Corps. That is surely worth a birthday celebration.

This Thursday, Meisler will appear at the John F. Kennedy Library at a forum celebrating the anniversary. Register to attend here or watch the live webcast on the JFK Library website.

Read an excerpt from When the World Calls here or at Scribd. Did you or someone close to you serve in the Peace Corps? Please share your memories in our comments.

When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years, excerpt

Sargent Shriver and the Birth of the Peace Corps

Stanley Meisler is the author of When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years. Meisler was a foreign and diplomatic correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, the Nation, and Smithsonian, and lives in Washington, D.C.

The family joke was that President John F. Kennedy handed his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, a lemon and Shriver turned it into lemonade. The lemon was the new Peace Corps, and Shriver, who died on Tuesday just six weeks short of the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps, transformed that lemon in 1961 into the most dynamic, popular and exciting agency of the new administration. The success of the Peace Corps made Shriver a national celebrity.

President Kennedy had not intended the new agency to be so dynamic nor his brother-in-law to be so celebrated. In the hierarchy of the large Kennedy family, brothers-in-law were second class, expected to stifle their own political ambitions until those of the real brothers — Jack, Bobby and Ted — were satisfied. Shriver had mused about running for governor of Illinois in 1960, but the Kennedys quickly squelched this distraction from the main family job of electing Jack president.

The pragmatic Kennedys never quite knew what to make of the idealist Shriver. He struck them not as a tough politico but a dilettante. In Chicago, where he managed the massive Merchandise Mart office building for the family, he had become involved in civil rights causes and served as president of the school board. Some Kennedys joked he was a communist. Bobby Kennedy liked to call him a Boy Scout. In a family where the patriarch, Joe Kennedy, and several of his sons were notorious womanizers, Shriver, according to biographer Scott Stossel, was still a virgin at age 37 when he married Eunice Kennedy.

President Kennedy’s call for a Peace Corps during the campaign had excited college students throughout the country. Many thousands had rushed letters to Washington offering to join the still unformed corps. But Kennedy was wary of thousands of youngsters rushing around the world interfering with his foreign policies. He envisioned a small Peace Corps — a total of several hundred at most, all strictly supervised by veteran officials of the US Agency for International Development (AID). He handed Shriver and his Peace Corps task force a professor’s proposal along these lines and urged his brother-in-law to follow it.

All Shriver’s public relations and sales instincts rebelled against this cautious approach.  As Harris Wofford, a member of the task force and a future US Senator, put it, President Kennedy’s model was “contrary to every bone in Shriver’s body and every cell in his brain.”  Shriver looked elsewhere for ideas.

He found them in a report, “The Towering Task,” written by two young officials of the foreign aid agency that became AID, Warren Wiggins and William Josephson. In many ways, their paper was ridiculous. They proposed sending 50,000 Volunteers to India, 17,000 to the Philippines, 5,000 to 10,000 to Nigeria, and “a few thousand” to Mexico. This kind of massive folly would have choked the Peace Corps senseless at birth.

But Shriver found two vital conclusions in the report: (1) the Peace Corps had to be large enough to make an impact on the developing world, to impress Americans and to accommodate the thousands of young American applicants, and (2) President Kennedy had to move quickly, creating the agency by executive order instead of waiting for congressional legislation. After the task force adopted these recommendations, President Kennedy signed the executive order creating the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961.

But the President still refused to make the Peace Corps independent. Shriver enlisted the help of Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson had once warned Shriver against letting the Peace Corps become part of the foreign policy establishment. “You put the Peace Corps into the Foreign Service and they’ll put striped pants on your people when all you’ll want them to have is a knapsack and a tool kit and a lot of imagination,” Johnson said. He pushed the same argument on Kennedy. Faced with pressure from both his vice president and his brother-in-law, the president gave up and made the Peace Corps independent.

Shriver now had independence and the executive order but nothing else. He had no staff, no programs, no Volunteers, no real Peace Corps. He put everything together in six months in a whirlwind of verve, stamina, risk and enthusiasm. The atmosphere was frenetic, sometimes frantic, and enervating. A staff had to be organized. Governments had to be persuaded to accept Volunteers. Staffers had to devise programs and then travel overseas to make sure there would be jobs for the Volunteers. Applicants had to be selected. Universities had to train Volunteers in language, cultural studies and job skills.

Shriver or "Sarge," as everyone he hired now called him, hunted for imaginative and unusual people for his staff. He hired two mountain climbers who had conquered K-2 in Pakistan, one to run the program in Nepal, the other in India. When Sarge tried to hire Franklin Williams from the staff of California Attorney General Stanley Mosk, Williams said he could not leave his job that soon. “Yes, you can,” said Shriver. He phoned Mosk right then. “Stanley, we got to have your assistant, Williams,” he said. Mosk gave him up.

Sarge hired Jack Hood Vaughn from AID and then reneged. He had too many people from AID on his staff. But an associate rushed in to Sarge’s office. Did he realize that Vaughn had won the amateur featherweight championship of Michigan, fought professionally in Mexico under the name of Johnny Hood, coached the University of Michigan team, and spared with Sugar Ray Robinson in Detroit? “My God, how did I miss that?” said Shriver. Vaughn was rehired.

Everyone worked long hours. The Washington Post ran a photo showing lights glowing in the Peace Corps building at night while all other government buildings were dark. Staffers leaving the building at midnight sometimes found Shriver in the same elevator.

Sarge was an inspiring, untiring leader. He was always articulate and in command of facts at news conferences and congressional committee hearings. He ran lively staff meetings where new ideas were continually explored and no one feared to contradict anyone else, not even Sarge.

Finally, on August 31, 1961, six months after President Kennedy had signed the executive order, a Pan Am charter flight landed in Accra, Ghana with 50 Peace Corps Volunteers, all teachers. The Volunteers alighted and managed to sing an anthem in Twi, one of the three main indigenous languages of Ghana. Their grasp of Twi was actually woeful, but they did a credible job, after rehearsal on the plane, of impressing their Ghanian welcomers. The teachers were the first Volunteers to reach their assigned country. Sarge’s Peace Corps had been launched.