Feb. 4 issue
Mennonite influence on King’s Vietnam stance
By Andre Gingerich StonerPage:
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On April 4, 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in New York City.
Gingerich Stoner
That day he became the most prominent American to speak out publicly against America’s brutal and brutalizing military adventure in Southeast Asia.
He called on young men of draft age to declare themselves conscientious objectors to that war. The speech caused a storm of criticism in the press and among prominent white politicians and religious leaders who told him to stick to civil rights. Some black leaders, too, criticized him harshly. They feared he would hurt the cause of racial equality.
King said, “I cannot segregate my conscience.” With courage and conviction he persisted in his witness. One year later to the day, he was assassinated.
Most people — including Mennonites — don’t know that King’s perspectives on Vietnam were shaped by years of conversation with Vincent Harding, who had served as pastor of Woodlawn Mennonite Church in Chicago. Harding and his wife, Rosemarie, became friends and co-workers of the Kings when they moved to Atlanta in 1961 to start Mennonite House, a project of Mennonite Central Committee. (For detailed first-person accounts of this work, see the first two chapters of Widening the Circle: Experiments in Christian Discipleship, edited by Joanna Shenk, published by Herald Press, 2011.)
The Hardings returned to the Chicago area in 1964 so that Vincent could complete his doctorate in history. Before returning to Atlanta, while they lived at Reba Place Fellowship during the summer of 1965, he immersed himself in the study of Vietnam. One of his key sources was reports from MCC workers.
Harding was an adviser to King while debate persisted among King’s staff about whether he should speak publicly against the war. When he decided he must do so, King asked Harding to write the draft of that pivotal speech.
According to David Jehnsen, the Southern Freedom Movement (often called the civil rights movement) should be considered a fourth historic peace church. The son of a Church of the Brethren pastor, Jehnsen worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Chicago in the 1960s and has been a trainer of Kingian nonviolence for more than 40 years. Deeply rooted in the biblical story and in the black church, the Southern Freedom Movement was committed to active nonviolence in the cause of justice.
Despite the kinship and some powerful personal relationships, most Mennonites of that period were deeply skeptical of King and the movement he led. A history of cultural assimilation, segregation and racism, as well as political quietism, all played a role. Few Mennonite leaders were personally engaged in the freedom struggle, and even fewer were on a first-name basis with movement leaders.
As Harding felt the need to stand more deeply in the heart of the black community, some Mennonites felt he was leaving them. After teaching at Spellman College, he became a professor at Iliff School of Theology in Denver and continued as a mentor and advocate for justice.
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Comments
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Before we Mennonites pat ourselves on the back too much for influencing King's Vietnam stance, we might want to listen to the recent interview with Vincent Harding on Krista Tippet's "On Being". The interview is an hour and a half long, and Harding talks about Mennonites for about 4 minutes. The link is:
http://www.onbeing.org/program/civility-history-and-hope/79/extraaudio
Thanks to Jon Harder of Mennolink for this info. The part about Mennonites starts at the 7 minute mark. What influence, if any, Mennonites really had on King's denunciation of the Vietnam war is highly debatable. According to my memory, at the time of King's speech in 1967 the majority of the Mennonite church was not actively protesting the Vietnam War.
To put this into some perspective, I just came across a Goshen College History Seminar paper from 2006 by Dominique Burgunder-Johnson titled "Black, White, Mennonite: African-American Students at Goshen College 1968-1983." It should be read as one of many pieces of evidence about Mennonites and how they influenced black people during that era.
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Sorry -- the link to Burgunder-Johnson's paper is:
http://www.goshen.edu/library/BlackWhiteMennonitethesis.pdf
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Forgive me for becoming a bit obsessed with this issue, but I must say that the notion that the Mennonites shaped Martin Luther King's thinking on the Vietnam War, and led him to make his 1967 antiwar speech is really too much of a stretch.
What Harding says in his interview with Joanna Shenk in "Widening the Circle" strikes me as the very gracious and forgiving words of this heroic man as he looks back on his life.
For a much more rigorous account of Harding's relationships with the Mennonites, see Tobin Miller Shearer's "Moving Beyond Charisma in Civil Rights Scholarship: Vincent Harding's Sojourn with the Mennonites 1958-1966" in Mennonite Quarterly Review April 2008:
http://www.goshen.edu/mqr/pastissues/apr08millershearer.html
Shearer's article details Harding's immense frustration with the Mennonite church, its deep-seated racism and reluctance to be involved in any meaningful way in the civil rights struggle. As I noted above, the Mennonite church of that era was similarly resistant to active protest against the Vietnam War, and it strains credulity to think that it might have had any influence at all on King's heroic stand. After all, King went to jail numerous times and was finally assassinated for his efforts. It's difficult to think of a Mennonite church leader who suffered in a similar way.
Mennonites have a tendency to think well of themselves and even as heroic when the opposite was the case in the civil rights and Vietnam War era. There were certainly some notable individual exceptions, but by and large Mennonites were not leaders in these struggles. To tell ourselves differently is a malignant fairy tale.
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Thanks, Ross, for these comments and links. The title given to this column makes more claims for Mennonites than does my column. The column sought to highlight the important role of Dr. Harding and his conversations with King while lamenting the skepticism toward King of many Mennonites of the time and the general lack of Mennonite involvement in the Southern Freedom movement.
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