Martin Luther King’s policy of non-violent protest in the struggle for civil rights in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century led to fundamental shifts in American government policy relating to segregation, and a cultural shift in the treatment of African Americans. King’s 1964 book Why We Can’t Wait creates strong, well-structured arguments as to why he and his followers chose to wage a nonviolent struggle in the fight to advance freedom and equality for black people following ‘three hundred years of humiliation, abuse, and deprivation.’ The author highlights a number of reasons why African Americans must demand their civil rights, including frustration at the lack of political will to tackle racism and inequality. Freedoms gained by African nations after years of colonial rule, as well as the US trumpeting its own values of freedom and equality in an ideological war with the Soviet Union, also played their part. King dealt with the counter-argument that civil rights for blacks would be detrimental to whites in America by explaining that racism is a disease that deeply penetrates both the white and the black psyche. His reasoning dictated that the brave act of nonviolent mass protest would provoke the kind of thinking that would eventually eliminate racism, and give birth to equality for all of ‘God’s children.’

It has been nearly fifty years since Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Appraisals of King's contributions began almost immediately and continue to this day. The author explores a great many of King's chief ideas and socio-ethical practices: his concept of a moral universe, his doctrine of human dignity, his belief that not all suffering is redemptive, his brand of personalism, his contribution to the development of social ethics, the inclusion of young people in the movement, sexism as a contradiction to his personalism, the problem of black-on-black violence, and others. The book reveals both the strengths and the limitations in King's theological socio-ethical project, and shows him to have relentlessly applied personalist ideas to organized nonviolent resistance campaigns in order to change the world. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Critical studies of the range of King’s public discourse as forms of sermonic rhetoric The nine essays in this volume offer critical studies of the range of King’s public discourse as forms of sermonic rhetoric. They focus on five diverse and relative short examples from King’s body of work: “Death of Evil on the Seashore,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “I Have a Dream,” “A Time to Break Silence,” and “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” Taken collectively, these five works span both the duration of King’s career as a public advocate but also represent the broad scope of his efforts to craft and project a persuasive vision a beloved community that persists through time.

“Fascinating and instructive...King’s philosophy, speaking to us through the written word, may turn out to constitute his most enduring legacy.” —Annette Gordon-Reed, New York Review of Books Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of America’s most revered figures, yet despite his mythic stature, the significance of his political thought remains underappreciated. In this indispensable reappraisal, leading scholars—including Cornel West, Martha Nussbaum, and Danielle Allen—consider the substance of his lesser known writings on racism, economic inequality, virtue ethics, just-war theory, reparations, voting rights, civil disobedience, and social justice and find in them an array of compelling challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our time. “King was not simply a compelling speaker, but a deeply philosophical intellectual...We still have much to learn from him.” —Quartz “A compelling work of philosophy, all the more so because it treats King seriously without inoculating him from the kind of critique important to both his theory and practice.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

The Black History You Never Knew: Uncovering Unsung Heroes in the Struggle for Racial Justice. The Spirit of Justice reveals the stories of the people who fought against racism and agitated for justice—and what we can learn from their example, their suffering, their methods, and their hope. How is it that people still work for change after continuously seeing the worst of humanity and experiencing the most demoralizing setbacks? What keeps them going? It is that spirit of justice that rises up "like a war horse," as Myrlie Evers-Williams famously said. It is a sense in the hearts of people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. In this book, award-winning author Jemar Tisby will open your eyes to the "pattern of endurance" in the centuries-long struggle for Black freedom in America. Through a historical survey of the nation from its founding to the present day, this book gives real-world examples of people who opposed racism, how they did it, what it cost, and what they gained for themselves and others. For those who were galvanized by Tisby's call to action in his acclaimed The Color of Compromise, this book will inspire you to see past the complicity of the church and gain the determination to join the fight for racial justice, no matter the cost. As Tisby writes, "The Spirit of justice is always at work to inspire followers of Christ to undertake acts of liberation and bear witness to the good news of their savior."

"Reclaiming the Great World House in the 21st Century: Cross-Disciplinary Explorations of the Vision of Martin Luther King, Jr., does just that. Established and emerging scholars explore Martin Luther King, Jr.'s global vision and his lasting relevance to a globalized rights culture. The editors further explain that this edited collection looks at: King afresh in his own historical context, while also refocusing his legacy of ideas and social praxis in broader directions for today and tomorrow. Employing King's metaphor of "the great world house," with major attention to racism, poverty, and war - or what he called 'the evil triumvirate"--the focus is on King's appraisal of and approach to the global-human struggle in the 1950s and 60s, and on the extent to which his social witness and praxis takes on new hues and pertinence not only in the ongoing struggles against racism, poverty and economic injustice, and violence and human destruction, but also in the mounting efforts to eliminate problems such sexism, homophobia, and religious bigotry and intolerance from the global landscape. The conclusion is that King's ideas and models of social protest are not only alive but also growing in vitality and popularity in the 21st century, especially as humans worldwide are struggling daily with the lingering, antiquated thinking and behavior around race and ethnicity, the widening gap between "the haves" and "the have-nots," the mounting cycles of violence, torture, and terrorism, and the frustrating and growing chasms resulting from religious pluralism and the subordination and marginalization of certain sectors of the human family based on gender and sexuality"--

Martin Luther King, Jr. is celebrated widely as the quintessential model of Christian activism in his time, but his understanding of and vision for the church has been surprisingly neglected. In this book, Lewis V. Baldwin contends that King was fundamentally a man of the church. Beginning with King's roots in Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, Baldwin traces the evolution of King's attitude toward the church through his college, seminary, graduate school, and civil rights years. The emphasis is on King's concept of the church as "the voice of conscience." Baldwin persuasively claims that King challenged the church over the need for a higher spiritual and ethical ideal, and that King's moral leadership and eventual martyrdom did much to reestablish the credibility of the church at a time when some theologians were declaring the death of God. Baldwin critiques the contemporary church on the basis of King's prophetic model, and concludes by insisting that this model, not the entrepreneurial spirituality of the contemporary megachurches, embodies the best potential for much-needed church renewal.

Robert Lucas is known among economists as one of the most influential macroeconomists of recent times – a reputation founded in no small part on the critical thinking skills displayed in his seminal 1990 paper ‘Why Doesn’t Capital Flow from Rich to Poor Countries?’ Lucas’s paper tackles a puzzle in economic theory that has since come to be known as the ‘Lucas paradox,’ and it deploys the author’s brilliant problem solving skills to explain why such an apparent paradox in fact makes sense. Classical economic theory makes a simple prediction of how capital flows between countries: it should, it states, flow from rich to poor countries, because of the law of diminishing returns on capital. Since poor countries have so little capital invested in them, the returns on new investment should be proportionally far better than investment in rich countries. This should mean that investors seeking new opportunities will invest in poorer countries, making capital consistently flow from rich nations to poorer ones. But, problematically, this is not in fact the case. Having defined the problem, Lucas did what any good problem solver would: he looked critically at the criteria involved, and offered a series of possible solutions. Indeed, in just six pages, he puts forward four hypotheses to explain the paradox’s existence. The popularity of his paper, and the influence it has had, are also greatly magnified by careful reasoning embodied in Lucas’s marshalling of evidence and his explanations of the judgements he has made.

The book of Acts has served as the foundational biblical text for the development of Pentecostal theology and biblical studies since the outpouring of the Spirit at the Azuza Street Revival in 1906. Now, over one hundred years have past since the Azuza Street Revival and the book of Acts is still at the forefront of the Pentecostal dialogue. Trajectories in Acts draws together the work of leading Pentecostal scholars each bringing their expertise to bear in tracing and developing trajectories in Acts. These essays have been brought together as a Festschrift in order to celebrate the influence, scholarship, and teaching career of John Wesley Wyckoff, a noted figure in the Assemblies of God and a known voice in the Pentecostal dialogue.

Mary Douglas is an outstanding example of an evaluative thinker at work. In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, she delves in great detail into existing arguments that portray traditional societies as “evolving” from “savage” beliefs in magic, to religion, to modern science, then explains why she believes those arguments are wrong. She also adeptly chaperones readers through a vast amount of data, from firsthand research in the Congo to close readings of the Old Testament, and analyzes it in depth to provide evidence that traditional and Western religions have more in common than the first comparative religion scholars and early anthropologists thought. First evaluating her scholarly predecessors by marshalling their arguments, Douglas identifies their main weakness: that they dismiss traditional societies and their religions by identifying their practices as “magic,” thereby creating a chasm between savages who believe in magic and sophisticates who practice religion.