“We Will Not Bow”: The Late King’s Black Faith

• Author: Isak Tranvik
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221095082
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917221095082

Political Theory

2022, Vol. 50(6) 889 –912

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DOI: 10.1177/00905917221095082

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Article

“We Will Not Bow”:

The Late King’s

Black Faith

Isak Tranvik1

Abstract

This essay turns to the late thought of Martin Luther King Jr. to bring matters

of faith back into debates about dissent in liberal democracies. Drawing on

unpublished speeches as well as scholarship in Black theology, religious studies,

and political theory, I contend that the post-1965 King is not as interested in

moral or pragmatic principles as many democratic theorists think. The late

King’s movement, I argue, is animated by what Black liberation theologian

James Cone calls “black faith.” Manifesting Jesus’s liberating love—a love that

the late King believes already transformed and was still transforming the

world—this movement with the poor and dispossessed is caring yet forceful,

quotidian yet spectacular, and nonviolent yet revolutionary. Foregrounding

the late King’s black faith and the movement it animates, I conclude, opens

up new horizons for theorizing dissent.

Keywords

civil disobedience, dissent, religion and politics, Martin Luther King Jr.

Introduction

As Martin Luther King Jr. stepped to the podium at the Southern Christian

Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) 1967 retreat in Frogmore, South Carolina,

the coalition that helped dismantle Jim Crow was splintering. Black

1Metropolitan State University, St. Paul, USA

Corresponding Author:

Isak Tranvik, Metropolitan State University, 700 E 7th St. St. Paul, MN 55106, USA.

Email: itranvik@gmail.com

1095082PTXXXX10.1177/00905917221095082Political TheoryTranvik

research-article2022

890 Political Theory 50(6)

nationalists criticized King for being too moderate; despite King’s insistence

on active resistance, he would not renounce his idea of a beloved commu-

nity. Others thought King had become too radical; his condemnation of the

Vietnam War and plans for a massive “Poor People’s Campaign” alienated

powerful allies both within the SCLC and outside it. King was also person-

ally exhausted. Recent setbacks after more than a decade of grueling strug-

gle had taken its toll on him. FBI harassment and the almost constant stream

of death threats directed at King and his family did not help matters. Indeed,

earlier that year King openly admitted that his dream had turned into a

nightmare.1

Yet King, of course, did not abandon the Freedom Movement. In fact, he

seemed more committed to it than ever. At the conclusion of his unpublished

Frogmore speech, delivered to close associates only five months before his

assassination, King—ever a preacher—shares a bible story to illustrate.

“Centuries ago King Nebuchadnezzar issues an order to all who fell under his

domain. That order was that at the sound of the trumpet everyone was to bow

before the golden image. The refusal to [follow it] would result in being

thrown into the fiery furnace” (n.d.a., 11). King continues, “There were three

young men who heard the order. They knew of the injunction that had been

issued by the king, but something deep down within them told them that they

had to violate the injunction and practice civil disobedience. They stood

before the king and said, ‘We know that the god that we worship is able to

deliver us, but if not, we will not bow. We know that he is able to deliver us

from the fiery furnace, but if not, we will not bow’” (n.d.a., 11). King spells

out the implications for his listeners:

They were saying something there. They were saying that they had discovered

something, so dear, so precious, so great that they were going on to live with

it. . . . They discovered that ultimately a great faith is not a “bargaining” faith.

It is never an “if” faith but it is a “though” faith. It doesn’t say if you do this

for me God. If you do this on that point and that on the other point then I will

serve you, but it goes on to say “though” He slay me, yet will I trust Him. The

greatest experiences of life are never “if” experiences, they are never

bargaining experiences, they are “though” experiences . . . I have decided on

this question of non-violence; I am going to stand by it. I am going to love

because it is just lovely to love. (n.d.a., 11)

1. See, for instance, his 1967 “Christmas Sermon on Peace” (1986, 256).