Episode 50 | MLK Bonus: What King Said About People Like Me

What King said about white moderates still confronts the church today.

In this MLK bonus episode, Kristen reflects on being born in 1963, the same year Martin Luther King Jr. wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail, and what his words reveal about comfort, delay, and Christian resistance to justice.

Rather than beginning with King’s now-famous letter, this episode starts with the lesser-known statement that provoked it: A Call for Unity, written by eight white clergymen who urged patience, order, and restraint in the face of segregation, brutality, and state violence. Their words sound measured. Reasonable. Even familiar.

This is not another tribute to Dr. King. It’s a reckoning with who he was actually writing to in 1963, not the extremists, but the moderates. The well-meaning religious leaders who agreed with justice in theory but were unwilling to be disrupted by it in practice.

Kristen reflects on what it means to inherit that distance, socially, theologically, and spiritually, and how many of us are still living inside an unfinished revolution. The systems King confronted were never fully dismantled; they were managed, delayed, and reframed as “order.” And generations later, we are still being asked to wait—often by people who are not the ones waiting.

In this bonus episode of Jesus, Justice & Mercy, we explore:

• Why Letter from Birmingham Jail was written in response—not isolation
• What King meant by the “white moderate.”
• How Christian calls for “order,” “unity,” and “patience” delay justice
• The difference between negative peace and positive peace
• Why comfort—not hatred—is often the greatest obstacle to liberation
• What it means to inherit an unfinished revolution

For women who stayed small and called it faithfulness : a reading list to start finding your way back. Get it here!

If this episode was meaningful for you, the best way to help others find the show is to:

• Text this episode to a friend who might need it
• Leave a 5-star rating and review
• Subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes
• Wrestling with faith and justice and not sure where to start?
• Grab my free theological reading list, Beyond Faith as Usual, HERE!

Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

Holy Disruption: Reclaiming a Justice-Rooted Faith course info and interest list

Justice Coaching options!

"Find your justice mindset" quiz!

Transcript

Episode 50 | MLK Bonus | What King Said About People Like Me

January 1963. A white baby girl, born a few weeks early, small, but still healthy. Born into a white world. Her parents are planning a move back to her dad's home, California, where they'll raise her and her yet-to-be-born little brothers. Building their life. That little girl was me.

A few months later, in April of that year, Martin Luther King Jr. is sitting in a Birmingham jail cell, writing a letter on napkins, toilet paper, and the margins of a newspaper.

And that September, just nine months after I was born, four little girls were killed when 19 sticks of dynamite exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in that same city. Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair. Murdered,  just because of the color of their skin.

I think about that timing a lot. About what it means for me to have entered the world in that particular year, in this particular body, in that particular place.

Because here's what many people don't know about King's famous letter. He wrote nearly 7,000 words longhand during eight days in solitary confinement - initially without even a mattress, denied access to lawyers or any communication with his wife.

And he was responding to something specific.

On Good Friday, April 12, 1963 - the same day King was arrested - eight white Alabama clergymen published a statement in the Birmingham News. 2 Ministers, 5 bishops, and a Rabbi all signed, and they called it "A Call for Unity."

And that's where I want to start today. Not with King's letter - you've probably heard quotes from that. But with the statement that prompted it. The one most people have never read.

To set the scene, this was during the Birmingham Campaign - a coordinated series of sit-ins, marches, and boycotts aimed at ending segregation in what was considered the most segregated city in America. Bull Connor, Birmingham's notorious Public Safety Commissioner, was responding with fire hoses and police dogs against peaceful demonstrators, many of them children. People were being beaten, arrested, brutalized for sitting at lunch counters, for marching, for asking to be treated as human beings.

And when you read what those eight clergymen actually said, something becomes uncomfortably clear.

They sound... reasonable.

Let me read you some of what they said:

"We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these actions are unwise and untimely."

Unwise and untimely. Not wrong. Just... not now.

They went on:

"When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets."

Work within the system. Be patient. Use the proper channels.

And then this:

We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled."

They praised the police. For their restraint. For maintaining order.

Let me say that again: They praised Bull Connor's police - the ones with fire hoses and dogs - for their calm, restrained handling of peaceful protesters.

Law and order. That's what they valued. Even when order meant violence. Even when order meant brutalizing children who were simply demanding their dignity Sound familiar?.

These weren't Klan members who wrote this letter. These were religious leaders. Educated men. They acknowledged that Black Americans had legitimate grievances. They just thought the demonstrations were counterproductive. Too confrontational. Bad timing.

And when you read what those eight clergymen actually said, you might find yourself nodding along.

That's the danger. That's where we recognize ourselves.

These men had good intentions. Some would later work for integration. They thought they were being helpful, wise, pastoral.

But King understood something crucial: good intentions don't matter when you're telling Black Americans to wait for their freedom while Black children are attacked with dogs and fire hoses and dynamite.

These men - these well-meaning, educated religious leaders - this is who King was writing to from that jail cell. Not the segregationists. Not Bull Connor or the Klan.

He was writing to the moderates. The reasonable people. The goodhearted people who weren't against civil rights, ,but who kept finding reasons why now wasn't the right time, why those tactics were too extreme, why everyone needed to calm down and be patient.

He was writing to white America in 1963, the world into which I was born. Not to the people throwing rocks or burning crosses. To the people who would read those eight clergymen and nod along. To the people preaching patience. To the people who thought they were being sensible.

And what King said about the white moderate changed me

Listen to his famous words: "I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."

More devoted to ORDER than to JUSTICE.

A negative peace - the absence of tension - over a positive peace - the presence of justice.

He was writing to people who kept saying, "I agree with your goals, but not your methods." The sit-ins were too disruptive. The marches were too confrontational.

And here's the bitter irony: today, many white Christians - especially evangelicals - have no problem with harsh methods as long as they serve their goals. They applaud cruelty at the border, celebrate mass deportations, and cheer punitive policies.

But peaceful protest? That makes them uneasy. That's too disruptive. That's probably paid agitators and left-wing lunatics. Certainly not Christians.

The biggest obstacle to freedom in 1963 wasn't hatred.

It was comfort.

It was people who valued their own peace of mind over someone else's liberation. People who could distance themselves and rationalize inaction.

We still see it.

King was writing from a jail cell to clergymen. Religious leaders. People whose calling was to embody the life of Jesus – the one who stood with the oppressed, who demanded justice, who proclaimed liberation.

And they counseled to wait.

I was born into that. Some of it I inherited - the architecture of a segregated society, the luxury of not having to pay attention. Some of that distance I've created - the crises I don't need to tune into, the suffering I can scroll past if I want, the privilege of not HAVING to think about certain things unless I choose to.

Raising my biracial sons shortened some of that distance. What was once theoretical became immediately personal. What I could ignore, if I chose, before, became impossible to ignore after. But even then, even now, I carry distance.

And watching what's unfolding right now - Christians telling us we're overreacting, or that this is just end times prophecy so why fight it - I think we're not reacting nearly enough to all of this. 

There are too many people being told to wait - for reunification with their children, for shelter, for the right to exist as themselves, for freedom from cages we call justice. And the people telling them to wait aren't sleeping on concrete. Aren't wondering if they'll see their kids again. Aren't fighting for their humanity.

King wasn't writing to people who hated justice. He was writing to people who loved it in theory but weren't willing to be inconvenienced by it in practice. He was writing to religious leaders who should have known better. He was writing to us.

We love to quote King. We post his words on social media. We celebrate his legacy. But quoting him is easy. Living what he asked of us? That's different.

His letter forces us to answer some hard questions:

What does "wait" mean when you're not the one being asked to wait? What's the difference between peace and justice? Who decides when the time is "right"?

The question his letter asks - the question it still asks - is this: Whose struggle are you willing to treat as your own? And whose wait are you comfortable with because it's not yours?

I don't have clean answers. But I know this:

I was born in 1963, the same year King wrote those words. I inherited an unfinished revolution.

The fear gripping so many of us right now - about rights being stripped away, about safety, about what kind of country this is becoming - people of color have carried that fear every day in this country. The only difference is we're finally paying attention.

The time for waiting is over. It was over in 1963. It's over now.

Happy birthday, Dr. King. May your letter finally reach us, white moderates, with the urgency you felt your entire life. Thanks for listening to Jesus, Justice + Mercy.