Reflections on Martin Luther King Day
Sometimes theology—thinking carefully about God—seems utterly irrelevant. Today, Martin Luther King Day, as I write this, is such a day. On this day, we think again of the dream that has been at the heart of who we are as Americans, a dream forever outside our grasp and yet a dream forever worth grasping. In this past year, our national holidays have gained an outsized importance: the Fourth of July, celebrating the aspirational document from which we date the founding of our nation 250 years ago; Memorial Day, on which we count the price of freedom; Labor Day, a day to ponder the work of building a just and free society, and today, Martin Luther King Day, a day on which to renew the dream—the dream that seems to be fast slipping away. Is there still a place for theology—for thinking and writing about that which is beyond us?
Daily, as you and I read the headlines, we see new assaults on our constitutional and international order. Who would have imagined a year ago that the streets of our cities would be occupied by masked men intent on snatching people off the streets, responding with violence to peaceful protesters? Who would have thought that our government would threaten to seize Greenland from the Danes, and when other Europeans nations protest, slap tariffs on their exports? Who would have supposed that our armed forces would shoot people in international waters on the unproved assumption that they are carrying drugs? And when they survive, helpless, clinging to their boat, shoot them anyway? Who would have imagined that the US would snatch a dictator from a sovereign nation, only to hand over power to the dictator’s own appointed officials? Who would have thought that despite the overheated rhetoric about stopping the drug trade, persons convicted of drug trafficking would be pardoned? Against such outrages (and others) theology—thinking carefully about God—seems not only irrelevant but distracting: we have more immediate things to attend to. Let theology take care of itself; we need to be in the streets.
Perhaps. But I note that the dream, the dream for which Dr. King died, arises out of the scriptures—out of theology. The Bible was always on Dr. King’s lips, especially the prophets. His vision of justice arose out of Amos and Isaiah. In his last speech, he evoked Moses. “I’ve been to the mountaintop,” he said.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land.
I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.
This is biblical, theological language.
As Dr. King says, it’s a matter of where you look. One of the most important biblical ideas is that we are what we see, and what we see depends on where we are looking, to what we are paying attention. Attention is perhaps the most precious commodity of our time (on this, see Chris Hayes recent book, The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, 2025). The media, advertisers, the current administration, and countless others vie for our attention. We doomscroll our way through life, seeing nothing but what is being fed to us. And what is being fed to us is our worst selves. In the most vicious of circles, we look for what angers us, and what we see feeds our anger until we seethe with rage. Until we become our rage.
In a fine essay from more than twenty years ago, David Bentley Hart reflects theologically on an image in the work of the 4th century theologian, Gregory of Nyssa (“The Mirror of the Infinite: Gregory of Nyssa on the Vestigia Trinitatis” in Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa, edited by Sarah Coakley, 2003). The image is the mirror. In Gregory’s thinking, we are what we mirror, what we reflect. “Human nature,” Bentley Hart tells us, “Is a mirror that takes in any appearance [and] bears the impression of any form. . ..” “The soul,” he adds, “always bears the impress of what [it] mirrors.”
The question implicit in this is what are we mirroring? Has the daily dose of the headlines, fed to us by perverse, attention-seeking algorithms, flatten our souls into a cardboard image of what they should be? As Genesis 1 has it, we were created to mirror God—image God. It’s in mirroring God that the depth of our soul is developed.
Perhaps, then, we need theology. We need theology to become the persons who can stand up to oppression. We need theology so that we do not become what those clamoring for our attention would make of us. We need to think about God so that we are not consumed by what is less than God.
Which means, in my experience, that we need liturgy. Worship. Not preachers so much, although preachers can help (or not). We need Word and sacrament, song and prayer. Last night, as we walked out of an evensong service, my wife said, “In times like this, we need to pray.” We do.
Near the end of Bentley Hart’s essay, he turns to the role of the other. He says, “for Gregory no less than for Augustine, the turn inward proves to be, in a still more radical sense, a turn outward.” He says in the spirit of Gregory:
I am an openness whose depth does not belong to me, but to the boundless light that creates me, and whose identity is then given to me as other. And as the otherness of God is the soul’s true depth, [it] can possess no identity apart from the otherness of the neighbor. . .
We discover the depths of our soul by looking outward to the other: to God and to our neighbor. It’s this otherness that much of contemporary culture lacks. We are fed only ourselves. We are given what we like and think and believe. Theology forces us to face the other. In doing so, it gives us back our souls.
In these narcissistic times, more than ever, we need theology.
Clay