Is America Approaching Spiritual Death? The Warfare State-MLK

[chlamor]

"This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death: Martin Luther King: 4 April 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York


Approaching Spiritual Death 

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” 

Gary G. Kohls, MD 

03/29/05 "ICH" - - Those were the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous speech 38 years ago, April 4, 1967, (Listen to full speech here) one year to the day of his1968 assassination in Memphis, TN. The people who heard that speech recognized it as one of the most powerful speeches ever given articulating the immorality of the Viet Nam War. Some also saw that King was signing his own death warrant by exposing so forcefully the perpetrators of what was known as “the overwhelming atrocity that was Viet Nam.” 

King was speaking out from his deeply felt sense of outrage and anguish over the horrible suffering of millions of innocent and unarmed Vietnamese civilians. King knew that women and children were the main victims of a whole host of highly lethal US weapons, including one of the US Air Force’s favorites, napalm, which burned the flesh off of whatever part of the body that the flaming, jellied gasoline splashed on. 

King knew of the atrocities that our GIs were ordered to commit in the name of “anti-communism.” He saw the connections between the killing of dispensable “gooks” on the battlefields of Southeast Asia and the oppression, impoverishment, imprisoning and lynching of “dispensable blacks” in America. 

King was being faithful to his commitment to the nonviolence teachings and life of Jesus of Nazareth by speaking out against injustice wherever he saw it. He knew that the violence of racism, the violence of orchestrated poverty and the violence of militarism have the same sources: fear of “the other” and the willingness to protect one’s own wealth and privilege from the poor and underprivileged. 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8405.htm


By Rev. Martin Luther King

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.

[bpilgrim]

1. religious leaders must band together a speak-out AGAIN

consider the end, resist the beginnings

peace

[peacetalksforall]

2. I agree with this post and MLK. As of today, we are in a lock down

because of the stolen elections and the refusal of the great majority of Democrat leaders who won't do anything about it and the media lock down. Our only out is a vote, but the thieves can still crow about their theft and our inactions and stalemates.

Protests won't work - how do you pick up the kids and take care of the pets and get the car fixed while protesting.

We need a Pro-America fight to save us and all the beautiful, admirable, passionate, hard-working citizens who came before us.

[chlamor]

4. So True

And folks are waiting and waiting as the water begins to boil. where is the mass outrage? How much more criminal must it become?

[Amy6627]

3. Here, here! Check out this website:

http://liberalslikechrist.org/churchstate/index.htm

This is from that website:

"Now, Liberals Like Christ invite you to come along and eavesdrop on a powerful series of pages that we have designed to challenge so-called "Conservative Christians" to face the fact that it is virtually impossible to believe what Jesus Christ taught AND be Conservative in America today. Rather, one must make a choice between being either self-centered (and Conservative), OR community-directed (and Christian). I swear that I am not inviting you to read these many of passages of the Bible in the hope of converting anyone to Christianity. What we are striving to achieve is to alert good Liberals like yourself to the tremendous opportunity that lies hidden in the terrible success of the "Religious Reicht". The vast majority of those who follow and support the insincere leaders of this movement are inherently good -- if temporarily misguided -- Americans. They are devoting their time, money and energies to what they have been led to believe are good and holy causes. What we propose to do is to reach as many of these innocent victims as possible and show them how out of step they are with the very founder and leader of Christianity whom they want to believe in and follow, Jesus of Nazareth. They will then understand that to follow Christ in America these days is to be a very dedicated and activist Liberal!
Regardless of what you believe personally, if you get to know these pages, and you will be in a position to get "Conservative" Christians to to stop attributing so many of the ideas and policies which we Liberals espouse to Karl Marx, and to start recognizing them as the teaching of the very Bible and Master in whom they profess to believe!"