Discussion Questions (answer one). Be sure to relate your answer to the text in Readings on Citizenship Download Readings on Citizenship(pp. 51-54).
1. Martin Luther King is rightly celebrated for his role in the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s. But we often praise him in contemporary terms: along with a national holiday every January, he is often associated with woke “diversity and inclusion,” etc. Based on his actual writings in the Letter from a Birmingham Jail, what would he think of all that? How often does today’s admiration for King distract us from his actual teaching?
2. In Romans 13, Saint Paul insisted that “everyone be subject to the governing authorities,” since all governments were put in place by God. Yet Martin Luther King, as a Christian minister, openly called for his followers to break the law — sitting at “whites only” lunch counters, holding public demonstrations without a permit, etc. Racial segregation laws were terribly unjust in their underhanded treatment of blacks, of course. But did the injustice justify breaking them? How did he square his own actions with the clear mandate of Romans 13?
3. To revisit an earlier question. Americans have lofty aspirations to human equality and individual rights. But what do we base those aspirations on? Do they come from evolutionary notions of “progress” and “social change”? Do they come from broad national agreement about our “values”? Or do we simply like equality as a cultural preference, the same way we like American baseball and apple pie? What guidance does Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail offer?
