Another element that became prominent at Birmingham was MLK’s open chastisement of the wider Christian Church. We’ve already thought briefly in our series about the ‘prophetic’ role of the Church, that is engaged with proactively building justice and virtue into the legislative and cultural life of a society. But as King sat in a prison cell in Birmingham, he read in a local paper an open letter from various local Church leaders castigating him, and complaining that his protest was both unwise and untimely. His response is captured in his famous ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’, written initially in the margins of that newspaper and on toilet roll.

He began to speak more forcefully of the role of the Church in wider society. In order to prevent the Church becoming an ‘irrelevant’ social club, she must speak fearlessly and insistently in terms of justice and peace. A Church guilty of social neglect is ‘blemished and scarred’, and is under the judgement of God. And where a state or society is structured in a way that is unjust, and that perpetuates injustice, the Church is called not just to speak, but to act to defy that state, in order to restructure society. King saw the Church acting as a conscience, calling society into accordance with the revealed will of God.

King cast the civil rights struggle in these terms. He refused to separate out the political, moral and spiritual elements of that struggle. He sought to stir the conscience of the nation as well as change its laws. And in the meantime, he would break those laws … en masse. At Birmingham that articulated itself specifically in breaking a court order refusing permission to march. The decision to directly disobey a manifestly unjust law still caused King signifcant heart-searching, but he concluded that the responsiblity for the situation fell not on those who protested, but on those whose abuse of authority necessitated such protest. Scripture, King reasoned, commands us to turn from sin. Co-operation and compliance with a government which legislated evil was sin. That, King could never reconcile himself to. When the city government obtained a court injunction against the SCLC protests, campaign leaders decided to disobey the court order: “We cannot in all good conscience obey such an injunction which is an unjust, undemocratic and unconstitutional misuse of the legal process”. And so they marched.

Before the public marches however, a carefully planned schedule of smaller, co-ordinated and localised direct action (but non-violent) protests had begun; along with a two month long series of mass meetings, which included training in the principles of non-violence and teaching about civil disobedience, and which culminated in appeals for volunteers to ‘serve in our non-violent army’. The sustainable programme of lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall, and a boycott of local businesses and institutions that segregated, both raised awareness and prepared the ground for the larger scale protests and marches that were to follow.

Three factors magnified the effectiveness of King’s decision to break the law on such a massive scale:

The first was the patent and contrasting aggression of Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor, Birmingham’s Public Safety Commissioner (a role that gave him oversight of both police and fire departments). In 1961, during the Freedom Rides, Connor had ordered Birmingham police to stay away from the bus station while Klansmen attacked the arriving buses and Freedom Riders. This history partly lay behind King’s decision to target Birmingham. Connor met the non-violent protest with undisguised violence, ordering the use of fire hoses and attack dogs to disperse the marchers, eventually incarcerating over 3,000 demonstrators. The willingness to submit to the consequences of breaking the law was both (as we have seen in our series) embedded in the Bible’s teaching relating to the relationship of the Christian to the state; but was also a deliberate and pragmatic ploy. The justice system simply couldn’t cope with hundreds being arrested on a daily basis, and created an urgency for the protests to be resolved.

The second factor was the SCLC decision to allow young people, and even children to join the marches. This accentuated the effects of Connor’s use of violence. Hundreds of students and young people were arrested. The emotional and psychological impact of Connor’s violent tactics - met as it was with non-violence - was huge both on the citizens of Brimingham, and on a watching world. King meanwhile offered encouragement to parents of the young protesters: “Don’t worry about your children, they’re going to be alright. Don’t hold them back if they want to go to jail. For they are doing a job for not only themselves, but for all of America and for all mankind”.

The third aspect of the situation that massively increasd the impact of the SCLC’s campaign, was the presence of the Television cameras and reporters. During those few days images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses (which were sufficiently powerful to hospitalise adults), being clubbed by police officers, and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers, triggering international outrage. King’s vision of the Church awakening the consience of the nation (and the world) was realised.

With a tragic irony however, the Church was among the most reluctant to engage with King’s struggle. This was true of Christians across the racial divides. King explores both aspects in his book ‘Why We Can’t Wait’. In it he laments that ‘[t]he Negro in Birmingham has been skillfully brainwashed to the point where he had accepted that he … was inferior. He wanted to beleive that he was the equal of any man, but he did not know where to begin, or how to reist the influences that had conditioned him…’. The result was disunity amongst those who should have been marching and boycotting side by side. King saw himself as a Moses-like figure, who had to bring his people to an awareness of the reality of their own existence. He met with small groups of people, addressing their fears and concerns, challenging their thought and answering their accusations of interference. ‘Somehow, God gave me the power to transform the resentments, the suspicions, the fears and the misunderstanding I found … into faith and enthusiasm’.

King was equally distressed at the response of many white Christians. He had believed that because his cause was just, he would be able to count on the support of the wider Christian Church. King was disillusioned with the reality. ‘As our movement unfolded, and direct appeals were made to the white ministers’ he explained in a Playboy interview, ‘most folded their hands - and some even took stands against us’. There were notable exceptions. But such opposition from within the Church re-inforced King’s sense of being a prophet, who must expect and overcome opposition from within the community of the people of God.

As I’ve said before in this series of articles, it is simply too easy for the Church in our own day (i.e. us) to look back and see - with the benefit of hindsight - where Christians should have stood in solidarity. As we have noted several times , it is often much harder to see clearly in the moment. That isn’t to legitimise the mistakes and the sin of the past. But realising how badly the Chuch in the past has missed the way, should cause us to address such questions in our own generation with renewed diligence and vigour. Where is sin and injustice perpetrated by the laws and policies and traditions within our own context? And the more costly question: where - as Christians - ought we to be breaking those laws, and bearing the consequences?

These are not always straightforward questions, but my own sense is that they are ones we need - with some urgency - to learn to ask… and more importantly to answer.