Revisioning the Church: Martin Luther King Jr. as a Model for Reflection

Abstract

This essay has arisen from the author'sresearch on the nature and purpose of the church in the view of Martin Luther King Jr. It contends that King was first and foremost a man of the church, that his sense of the church as a prophetic witness and movement was central to his social activism, and that there is a need for a reappropriation of many of his ideas for the contemporary church. The essay teases out some of King'smost striking images of the church without imposing a systematic ecclesiology on his thinking.