4-09-08, 10:03 am

In a recent essay on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s advocacy for peace, titled 'Vocation of Agony: A Personal Meditation on Dr. King's Legacy,' Rev. Osagyefo Sekou elaborated a stirring call for deep moral change in America. It is a fundamental change, argues Sekou, that recalls Dr. King's moral and physical courage, his willingness to speak and act when others demanded his silence, to respond to anger with love, and to take up the cause of the poor and downtrodden.

Rev. Sekou, who identifies himself with the Christian tradition, works with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and is a Senior Community Minister at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City and formerly a member of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq a a now-defunct working group associated with United for Peace and Justice.

What does it mean to honor Dr. King's legacy? asks Sekou. It means living up to the values we claim to hold dear, speaking truth to power.

In an interview with Political Affairs recently, Rev. Sekou drew parallels between Dr. King's advocacy for ending the war in Vietnam and our own efforts today to bring the troops home from Iraq.

The Iraq war is 'extracting resources from our domestic situation here and breeding a domestic crisis here,' he said. He linked the housing crisis, credit crunch, and energy price inflation to the war.

'To paraphrase Dr. King in another way, the bombs in Iraq blew up the levees in New Orleans,' he said.

But the issue isn't purely economic, he added. 'Something happens to the soul of a nation when it engages in war,' he emphasized.

'I believe that nothing less than an epistemic break that has the depth of the founding of Christianity and the breadth of the Reformation can change the course that we're on,' he asserted.

He gave credit to the Religious Right (predominantly Christian fundamentalists) for so successfully dominating the religious discourse in the country that it managed to 'define the way in which we define meaning for ourselves, the way in which humans come to know themselves as human beings, citizens have come to define themselves within a democracy.'

It was a profound insight in that what Sekou was arguing was that in monopolizing the public discourse on politics, morality, and culture, the Religious Right had stolen some key democratic tools: the right and ability to challenge the dominant system, speaking up when one disagrees, and adopting tolerant, accepting, and egalitarian views of otherness. Meanwhile, many right-wing Christian leaders, in an effort to gain political prominence, have abandoned some of the core features of Christianity itself such as the social gospel, the commandment to love one's enemies, and the denunciation of hypocrisy and profit.

'It has hindered us in thinking in ways that are different and unique,' Sekou said. 'As a result, we do not have a viable political discourse around, race, religion, around politics in America.'

Sekou views the solution to this pressing problem as simultaneously a philosophical and political struggle against religious/political forces that seek to crush democratic rights. 'The only role religion has in the public sphere is to expand democratic rights,' Sekou argued.

Efforts on the 'religious left' that refuse to directly address issues that are broadly considered moral or cultural issues, such as 'intelligent design,' gay marriage, and a woman' right to choose, will not alter the monopoly of the Religious Right on moral discourse, he argued.

'The Religious Right has set the stage for the political discourse that we are participating in,' Sekou said. 'They're setting the rules of the game, setting the rules of the discourse.'

Sekou asserted that like Dr. King, the religious left, if it is to be viable, is going to have to be willing to 'wrestle' with issues that the Religious Right has claimed moral privilege over.

The deep philosophical break needed to win a real transformation in the US and its public policies, in Sekou's view, is intimately linked to the political struggle among religious and spiritual folk of all faiths to reclaim public morality in terms of expanding democratic rights rather than imposing private values on public citizens.

--Reach Joel Wendland at