by Patrick Parr
The Development of Christian Ideas
George Washington Davis, BD, ThM (Colgate-Rochester), PhD (Yale)
Course Description: “Introduction to the important persons and terms in the history of Christianity; the development of the ideas of God, the person of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, man, salvation (the work of Christ) and the Kingdom of God.” (Credit hours: 4; ML’s grade: A)
Ethics and Philosophy of History
Elizabeth Flower, BS (Wilson), PhD (UPenn); Assistant Professor of Philosophy (UPenn)
Course Description: “The issue as it arises in the 18th century: Vico and Herder. The Kantian restatement. The scientific-naturalistic conceptions: Taine, Marx, and Spencer. The historical-critical position of Hegel, Spengler, Dilthey, and Spranger. Contemporary controversies:
Croce, Mannheim, Weber, and Toynbee.” King audited this course, which was held at the University of Pennsylvania. (Credit hours: 2; ML’s grade: None given)
Pastoral Counseling
Seward Hiltner, BA (Lafayette); Visiting Lecturer in Pastoral Counseling
Course Description: “Basic principles of counseling and their application to pastoral work; pastoral function; analysis of pastoral task in terms of work with individuals; methods of individual work; religion and mental health; counseling procedures and skills; limitations of psychology and psychiatry; process of referral; uses of group counseling in the church.” King audited this course. (Credit hours: N/A; ML’s grade: None given)
On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, a half-hour period was set aside at 10:00 AM for services in the chapel. On Tuesdays was a mandatory service led by interim president Dr. Howard Wayne Smith. Wednesday services were optional, generally led by a member of the faculty or an invited pastor from an evangelical institution. The Friday devotional period was run by the students themselves and presided over by ML as chairman of the Devotions Committee.10
In an effort to expand his educational experience at Crozer, ML asked the dean, Charles Batten, for approval to study at the University of Pennsylvania. It was an option the seminary offered to a few well-qualified students, and after evaluating ML’s grades from his first year and discussing the issue with the faculty, Dean Batten agreed. Instead of attending vespers service on Thursday afternoons, ML would audit a class with Dr. Elizabeth Flower, a thirty-five-year-old professor who’d chosen Ethics and Philosophy of History as the topic of her first-ever graduate seminar.11
Studying at UPenn may have helped ML recharge his spiritual battery, as it meant a break from biblical analysis and a tighter focus on humanistic principles. It was also a chance for him to broaden his perspective on northern culture. He’d been to Philadelphia plenty of times for many reasons—girls, church services, sightseeing—but this would be a unique challenge: taking a course at an Ivy League school.
To get to UPenn without a car was a bit of an adventure. ML pushed open the front doors of Old Main and headed down the center walkway. He snagged a seat on the local bus that stopped in front of Old Main for the fifteen-minute ride to catch the train. The bus turned right, then traveled down Seminary Avenue, going past the Chester Rural Cemetery, a graveyard so close to the campus that it could be viewed by students from inside Old Main—a sobering reminder of their own mortality, perhaps, and also the resting place of a few of the wounded Civil War soldiers who had stayed in their rooms and written their names in the building’s cupola.12 After a right turn onto Edgemont Avenue, it was a straight shot to Chester’s main train station.
ML boarded the train bound for downtown Philadelphia, and twenty or so minutes later he was there, walking out of the Thirtieth Street station toward UPenn’s Bennett Hall. From 4:00 to 6:00 PM, ML sat with at most ten other students in Dr. Flower’s classroom. The fact that Flower was a woman must have felt a bit out of the ordinary to ML, since the overwhelming majority of professors he’d had at Morehouse and Crozer had been men. Nevertheless, he made a positive impression on Flower, who later remembered him very clearly, writing that he “sat in the last row, second from the end, at my left. Although the seats were fixed, this did not hinder the . . . community of discussion.”13
To Flower’s recollection, the seminar never specifically addressed the issues of discrimination that would become one of the central focuses of King’s life. But discussions of “peace and of conflict” and of taking “a moral stance (as in Gandhi) were much in the air.” ML’s back-and-forth discussions with Rev. Barbour about nonviolence apparently served him well: whenever ML contributed in class, Flower was impressed by how his thoughts were “already vigorous and well-forged.”14
Here, in Dr. Flower’s words, are what they covered in the seminar:
In addition to standard materials from Hume to Hegel to Marx, we also read Gandhi and Tolstoy—remember that the independence of India was strikingly contemporary—but perhaps Kant was central. . . . Kant’s view of equality as tied to the intrinsic moral worth of each individual. . . . Every human [according to Kant] is a center of freedom and dignity, legislating a common morality for all rational beings.”15
Flower was careful when considering the impact her seminar may have had on the course of ML’s life. “While it is highly unlikely that I had an influence on Martin Luther King,” she wrote, “I have since cherished the thought that some of the materials we read and discussed provided their own insight and strength.”16 This thought could very well be accurate, since he spent his Christmas vacation poring over the works of Marx, one of the “standard” topics he would have discussed in Flower’s class.
Dr. Flower also crossed paths with ML outside of her seminar. She often saw him at Horn & Hardart, a cafeteria near the UPenn campus, with Dr. William Fontaine, UPenn’s “first fully affiliated African American faculty member.”17 Dr. Flower believes that ML took a course with Dr. Fontaine, but there are no records to confirm this. Nevertheless, it is clear that ML was starting to find a bit of a comfort zone in the larger academic world beyond the Crozer campus.
Preaching Problems; Conduct of Church Services
“The preacher has inevitable moments of despair, frustration, and defeat. It cannot be otherwise. He does not live a secluded existence, nor does he merely accept life; he challenges it and seeks to make it nobler, and these very ambitions lead him over difficult paths.”
—Robert Keighton18
ML was quickly gaining experience behind the pulpit, but in the process he frequently encountered issues his limited experience hadn’t yet taught him how to overcome. Offering guidance with such issues was the purpose of Robert Keighton’s Preaching Problems course.
Unfortunately, ML couldn’t rely on Keighton for help with his deeper issues, such as how to address the social concerns his Ebenezer congregation faced daily. The South was hundreds of miles away, and Keighton’s relation to it thousands. His course emphasized general problems that any preacher would face; regional issues needed to be addressed on a case-by-case basis, which was not conducive to classroom discussion.
As a result, ML focused his inquiries in class on a few of the more basic problems he’d encountered as an active preacher:
1) . . . Difficulty in preaching on special days that appear in the Christian year.
2) . . . Difficulty in applying the Old Testament to modern life.
3) I often get criticisms from laymen and unlettered ministers for using a modern translation of the Bible as a source of preaching resurrection.19
These were slight problems—easily addressable in a classroom environment. According to Rev. Michael Frank, a Cleveland, Ohio, minister for forty-one years and a former seminarian, ML’s first difficulty could have simply been related to the fact that he was young and thus “didn’t like any form of constraint” placed on his preaching, such as the demands of crafting a sermon to commemorate a particular Christian holiday. It’s also not unusual for a young, inexperienced preacher to have trouble relating the Old Testament to the modern world. And ML’s third problem reflects a common controversy that persi
sts to this day. As Rev. Frank puts it:
Some Christians, for odd and to me utterly indiscernible reasons, think the King James version of the Bible to carry a kind of authority that other translations don’t. But the point is that the original scripture was written in Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT), and since language changes new translations are appropriate. King was right on this one, and I understand his frustration.20
Though Professor Keighton’s responses to ML’s concerns are unknown, as an experienced preacher he would have recognized the disadvantages of youth and advised his student to push past any discomfort with having his ideas constrained. As Keighton wrote in his book The Man Who Would Preach, “A man must learn to preach the things that lay hold upon him rather than the things that he has laid hold upon. He can possess the latter, but he can lose them, too.”21
As for ML’s second class with Keighton this term, Conduct of Church Services, not much has been recorded about it, either. But judging from the course description, ML may have found his role as Devotions Committee chairman helpful in connecting with the subject matter. The course’s focus on the “conduct” and “function” of church ceremonies would have related directly to the Devotions Committee’s work organizing a weekly service for the student body.
Pastoral Counseling
“It is our obligation [as preachers] to have some special kind of relationship with our people, whether it be a counseling relationship or not, in connection with all the crises of life . . . working backwards: bereavement, marriage, vocational choice, adult entrance into Christian fellowship, and concern for babies and children.”
—Seward Hiltner22
Imagine for a moment that you are twenty years old and in charge of a church congregation. It’s Sunday, and you have prepared an epic sermon that swirls together some of the timeless ideals of religion and philosophy. As you stand behind the pulpit, your parishioners marvel at your use of passages from the New Testament (probably John, since his words tend to soar). You throw in dashes of the poet Longfellow, or Plato—or even Ovid, to show ’em you’ve done your homework. You finish with a few personal anecdotes, and you can see half of the congregation with their eyes closed, nodding, some with hands up. You hear their words of approval (Mmhm). You’ve hooked them—or, in the sensationalized words of Rev. Barbour, “I murdered them Sunday.”23
But after you step down from the pulpit, you are still the associate pastor of a church, and your congregation still needs your guidance throughout the rest of the week. To provide it, you must now become a regular human being—relatable, unintimidating, caring. As you sit at your desk, a woman enters. She is much older than you, married. She and her husband have been loyal parishioners for years, and after taking a seat, she tells you that she has decided to divorce him. “I know it may shock you, especially since we’ve both been so active in the church. And [my husband] always puts up a good front when he’s around here. I just don’t see anything to do except get a divorce. Don’t you think I’d be justified?”24
Hmm . . .
The prospect of facing such a situation at Ebenezer Baptist very well could have been why ML decided to audit Pastoral Counseling. At the time Daddy King, being older and more established, took care of most of their church’s counseling needs, but ML knew he would one day need to be more than simply an excellent preacher and church spokesman. As the course’s professor, Seward Hiltner, put it, a minister like ML would eventually need to be a “shepherd, friend, guide, therapist, counselor, and spanker in his work as a pastor.”25
He could not have had a better guide to this subject than Professor Hiltner. He had very recently published a book titled Pastoral Counseling, and would go on to teach at Princeton Seminary and attain global recognition in his field. Forty years old at the time, Hiltner was not in any way a stuffy, disconnected professor. His personality ranged from charming to blunt to exacting. He actually had experience as a door-to-door salesman for the Fuller Brush Company, and this background meant a classroom persona that differed greatly from Keighton’s wall of dignity or George W. Davis’s kindly but authoritative presence. Hiltner’s “greatest gift,” wrote the Princeton Seminary Bulletin, “was an intuitive ability to grasp the essentials of a problem or issue confronting some group of which he was a part. He could state the essence in such a way that those present would say to themselves and to one another, ‘That’s it.’”26
From 2:00 to 4:00 each Friday, Hiltner presented his class with counseling scenarios, all eventually ending with the question What should you do? One of his examples was the situation described earlier of a wife who planned to leave her husband. Hiltner described two obvious ways of answering a plea for divorce—both of which are wrong:
One thing the pastor clearly cannot say is: “Why of course. Don’t give it a second thought. I believe in divorce. Go right ahead. . . .
On the other hand, neither does he say: “Why that’s terrible. How can you think of such a thing? Divorce is ruining our society.”27
To Hiltner, a minister must find a middle ground, and that can only be reached through patience and a neutral, nonjudgmental tone. Something like this:
“You’ve been trying with might and main to make this marriage work; but you just don’t see now how it can be saved without making things worse for every one concerned. And yet you’re still not quite sure.”
This answer would be standard, perhaps borderline stereotypical, for a psychologist, but coming from a man of the church, a minister, it expresses something altogether different: it is not a sin to be having these thoughts. It allows this woman to discuss her situation without being judged.
For a twenty-year-old, single, and childless young man like ML, Pastoral Counseling was a perfect opportunity to better understand the gray areas of being a preacher. Even though he could not personally relate to every problem with which a conflicted human being might approach him, he could nonetheless calibrate his tone so that he could be of the most help to each of them. That, in Hiltner’s mind, was the most valuable lesson he could convey. ML could preach of legends long past and deliver those words with a voice that immediately turned heads, but there was more to being a preacher than just the Sunday sermon. There were everyday people, struggling through the murk of life, and he would need to show them that he was one of them.
Christian Theology for Today 241; The Development of Christian Ideas
ML’s first class each morning was the second term of the required Christian Theology for Today course, with George W. Davis. A former student in this class recalls one of Professor Davis’s slightly peculiar habits: “His style of thinking was to read off of his cards [during class]. Very prepared.” But he also recalls him as “congenial. He wasn’t nearly as stiff as his classes.” To ML, on the other hand, Davis’s congeniality shone through in his lectures; King later remembered that “the atmosphere” of Davis’s classroom was “saturated with a warm evangelical liberalism.”28 Contributing to that feeling, perhaps, was the knowledge that a dinner at the professor’s home was just around the corner. Davis enjoyed serving as a host for his students, helping them to grow more comfortable discussing their faith.
True to the professor’s efforts, by this point ML was particularly at ease with Davis, if his writing in class is any indication. In most of Davis’s classes, ML’s work fluctuated between lazy and brutally honest. He seemed allergic to quotation marks, often either forgetting or choosing to forget to properly indicate the words of another author. Perhaps ML believed that Davis was not a stickler for citation, and it appears that the professor wasn’t. On the other hand, with comfort comes trust, and ML shared with Davis several personal thoughts about racism that he could have never shared with the likes of Keighton, Pritchard, or Enslin.
In Christian Theology for Today, ML wrote a paper debating the merits of a neo-orthodox perspective versus a liberal one. Neo-orthodoxy had grown in popularity after the violence and moral devastation of World War I, when many sought a conservative and practical
philosophy to combat the at times excessive optimism associated with liberalism. ML felt tugged between the two philosophies, but when describing his “leaning toward a mild neo-orthodox view of man,” instead of using a published author to support his feelings, he brought up his own childhood: “[Neo-orthodoxy] may root back to certain experiences I had in the south. Some of the experiences that I encountered there made it very difficult to believe in the essential goodness of man.”
ML didn’t go on to list those experiences, but they could have filled a page. At an early age he’d had white friends taken from him simply because of the color of his skin. Once while waiting for his mother to finish shopping, he’d been slapped in the face by a white woman: “You’re the little nigger who stepped on my foot!” ML had done no such thing, and stood in bewilderment until his mother returned. That’s the way things are, he was told. Growing up in Atlanta in the 1930s also meant regular encounters with the Ku Klux Klan as they held public gatherings and parades, and set off “bombs and dynamite” in random spots as a form of intimidation. When black residents moved into new neighborhoods, the KKK would even target them directly. By phone or letter, the message was sent: Don’t get comfortable in this neighborhood. You don’t belong.29
ML opened up to Davis again in another paper for the class, an outline based on the book Beliefs That Matter by William Adams Brown. It reflected an issue King had been pondering deeply at Crozer: how for centuries the church had ignored and even perpetuated the problem of slavery. This neglect had given birth to a different kind of church, a personalized communion among those suffering under the maddening sins of the American white man. In his outline, ML included a passage written in 1949 by African American philosopher Howard Thurman: