Our family tradition on Sunday nights (at least in the winter) is to watch a movie with the kids while we eat a light dinner of cheese, crackers, fruit and popcorn. Last night, on the weekend of the celebration of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. we watched a documentary about his life produced in 2008 by the BBC titled Martin Luther King: American Prophett. I have to say it was pretty well done, but the whole premise of the show was so shocking to me that I had to share it. The viewpoint of the show, narrated by Oona King, a young British Labour politician who lost reelection to parliament in 2005 and has been working in media since. Her whole take, and I think it was produced because the view is widely held, is that King is celebrated as a primarily political hero, a campaigner for social justice and human rights. So what do secular British like her do with the radical religious rhetoric so prevalent just under the surface of that public image of the relentless human rights campaigner? Did King really believe this radical faith or did he use it for political expediency? She sets off on a journey to the American South (especially Georgia and Alabama) to talk with friends and colleagues of Dr. King, along the way both exposing the biases of secular culture about religious faith. She finds it inconceivable that one could be, as he put it once, 'an extremist for love' and says in a post 9/11 world we hear that as quite unsettling. Yet, in a lovely conversation with Andrew Young, she finds that the traditional King represents is a deep and powerfully authentic understanding of Christian faith that says one ought to love not just friends and neighbors but strangers and enemies. One of the delights in the film is to watch her surprise as she grows in respect and even enthusiasm for the kind of faith that animated this great American pastor and civil rights leader. It is worth a watch, and the first part is here:
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