"I HAVE A DREAM"

[rose2u]

On 28 August, 1963, MARTIN LUTHER KING delivered his magnificent
"I have a dream speech" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Below is part text of his speech.
_______________



'I HAVE A DREAM'....

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning: "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California.
But not only that.
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

 

[Islander]

A great moment in American history. Have you read any of his other great literature? His letter from a Birmingham jail is excellent. I have a book I started reading but haven't finished of his sermons on love. I strongly recommend his works.

 

[Skywarp]

What a great day in American History. MLK was such a brilliant man.

 

[BeanMak]

 

[Saint Philip]

The "I Have a Dream" speech was ripped off from an Archibald Carey speech delivered to the Republican Convention 11 years prior and the old song "My country 'tis of thee."

I am also less than impressed by the quality of the speech (hey, I'm not passing myself off as a great speaker nor am I copying this post from anyone, so don't say anything about the quality of my post). "Not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." What is that? Race is more than skin color (else, bigots would have to be prejudiced against tans). And, character doesn't have content. King should have said "Not judged by their race but by their character."

Of course, this is a popular sentiment that existed well before King.

BTW, Rose2U, you may be guilty of copyright violations for posting that. While every other Civil Rights leader, US president, etc. have donated their works and images to the Public Domain, the King family demands royalties.

 

[Babygirl_02]

^^And your point is? He was still brilliant nevertheless because of his character and what he stood for. We should definetly commemorate him.

 

[LifeInYou]

I'm reading Steven Oats' biography on King right now, it's magnificient. I've also been watching some of the series "Eyes on the Prize" which has excellent footage of the CR movement. King was a truly amazing figure in both American and World history.

 

[Nicaea 325]

 

[Nicaea 325]

How long?
Not long,
For though the arm of the universe is long it bends towards justice.

 

[Rango]

MLK was an interesting guy, he did much and sacrificed much but he unfortunantly wasn't a Christian. Most people think he was seeing as he was a Baptist minister but as is often the case life is stranger than fiction.

 

[SqueezetheShaman]

MLK was an interesting guy, he did much and sacrificed much but he unfortunantly wasn't a Christian. Most people think he was seeing as he was a Baptist minister but as is often the case life is stranger than fiction.

Removed anti-catholic link.

- JeffreyLloyd
CF Moderator: History
Team Faithfulness

give me a break.

 

[ChristFollowers]

Squeeze.....have you ever read his book he wrote??? If not, please read it and read it carefully. I respect Martin Luther no matter what his religion is. He is a very courageous man.....well respected. One of my role models.

 

[TScott]

MLK was an interesting guy, he did much and sacrificed much but he unfortunantly wasn't a Christian.

Actually he was.

Your cite is not even worth discussing. It is 100% innuendo. What is truly amazing is that anyone would fall for that stuff.

 

[Annabel Lee]

MLK was an interesting guy, he did much and sacrificed much but he unfortunantly wasn't a Christian. Most people think he was seeing as he was a Baptist minister but as is often the case life is stranger than fiction.


Removed anti-catholic link.

- JeffreyLloyd
CF Moderator: History
Team Faithfulness

You linked to a hate site, Rango.
Anyone care to check out the main site?

Removed anti-catholic link.

- JeffreyLloyd
CF Moderator: History
Team Faithfulness

[sarcasm]I especially liked the Anti-Christ Sideshow featuring the Great harlot of Revelation...The Roman Catholic Church[/sarcasm]

 

[JeffreyLloyd]

One friendly reminder

[notroll]

You are not allowed to post links to websites that break any of Christian Forums rules:

http://www.christianforums.com/rules.html

 

[Annabel Lee]

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

[pmarquette]

The "I Have a Dream" speech was ripped off from an Archibald Carey speech delivered to the Republican Convention 11 years prior and the old song "My country 'tis of thee."
.... and JFK's ask not what you can do is a paraphrase from the bible ..... ; Lincoln's house divided speach ripped off from Jesus ; what goes around comes around - bible ; get off your dead bottom - bible .... Ford did not invent the car, he improved the marketing and sales .... Joseph Smith plagerized the KJV and added a scifi book from the Bahammas to come up with his book .... what's the point ?

do we have to annote and footnote , what the Holy Spirit places on our heart to speak ?

 

[SqueezetheShaman]

Squeeze.....have you ever read his book he wrote??? If not, please read it and read it carefully. I respect Martin Luther no matter what his religion is. He is a very courageous man.....well respected. One of my role models.

my comment was not out of disrespect for the man, it was out of disrespect for the post, and the link.

 

[cbk]

Great speech. I just wonder how many Americans have read or heard it all. For it seems that most of those who elevate MLK are in favor of doing things that 1)are quite opposite his words and 2) are preventing this nation from truely unifying without regard to the color of one's skin.

 

[Rango]

I didn't see any hate at the website but I didn't read any of the links. What she posted about Martin Luther King was correct from what I read (it was about her view on his account of Christian history, I didn't notice her promoting hate or anything anti-Catholic).


I read MLK's paper on the history of Christianity a few weeks ago and saw this subject and looked for the article and that one came up, it quoted what I had read so I posted it.
I found the original source at Stanford University's site. I hope the moderators don't find them too hateful or evil minded for providing his paper on this particular subject. I'll post a few relevent comments and you can decide for yourself if he was a Christian. My comments in red.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/papers/vol1/491123-A_Study_of_Mithraism.htm

Now there was something of this in Paul too, for he thought of the believer as buried with Christ in baptism and as feeding upon him in the eucharist. This is only one of many examples that I could give to prove the similarity between the developing Christian Church and the Mystery Religions.

King was wrong here, I've looked into it carefully and there is no solid evidence that the ever changing and vague mystery religions provided Christianity with anything. Any artifacts resembling Christianity beyond a very general scope is dated no earlier than 2 AD and since Christianity was growing very rapidly it seems more likely it influenced them (look at Gnosticism as a written example), not the other way around.


When they sat down to write they were expressing consciously that which had dwelled in their subconscious minds. It is also significant to know that Roman tolerance had favoured this great syncretism of religious ideas. Borrowing was not only natural but inevitable.

It was many of these doctrines that became very influential in later years to the Christian religion.

Conclusion

That Christianity did copy and borrow from Mithraism cannot be denied, but it was generally a natural and unconscious process rather than a deliberate plan of action.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/...ol1/491123-What_Experiences_of_Christians.htm

Even the synoptic gospels picture Jesus as a victim of human experiences. Such human experiences as growth, learning, prayer, and defeat are not at all uncommon in the life of Jesus. How then did this doctrine of divine sonship come into being?

Who was this Jesus? They saw that Jesus could not merely be explained in terms of the psychological mood of the age in which he lived, for such explaination failed to answer another inescapable question: Why did Jesus differ from many others in the same setting? And so the early Christians answered this question by saying that he was the divine son of God. As Hedley laconically states, "the church had found God in Jesus, and so it called Jesus the Christ; and later under the influence of Greek thought-forms, the only begotten Son of God."\[Footnote:] Hedley, op. cit., p. 37.\ The Church called Jesus divine because they had found God in him. They could only identify him with the highest and best in the universe. It was this great experience with the historical Jesus that led the early Christians to see him as the divine son of God.

Moreover, the Gospel of Mark, the most primitive and authentic of the four, gives not the slightest suggestion of the virgin birth. The effort to justify this doctrine on the grounds that it was predicted by the prophet Isaiah is immediately eliminated, for all New Testament scholars agree that the word virgin is not found in the Hebrew original, but only in the Greek text which is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for "young woman." How then did this doctrine arise?

A clue to this inquiry may be found in a sentence from St. Justin's First Apology. Here Justin states that the birth of Jesus is quite similar to the birth of the sons of Zeus. It was believed in Greek thought that an extraordinary person could only be explained by saying that he had a father who was more than human. It is probable that this Greek idea influenced Christian thought.

King is wrong on this as well. Justin Maryr was absolutely not saying that, he misunderstood his comments quite grossly. Justin Martyr in his Apology was telling the reader that this Jesus concept was not to be held as unbelievable as it was no more incredible than the Zeus story. I can elaborate if necessary.


The root of our inquiry is found in the fact that the early Christians had lived with Jesus. They had been captivated by the magnetic power of his personality. This basic experience led to the faith that he could never die. And so in the pre-scientific thought pattern of the first century, this inner faith took outward form. But it must be remembered that before the doctrine was formulated or the event recorded, the early Christians had had a lasting experience with the Christ. They had come to see that the essential note in the Fourth Gospel is the ultimate force in Christianity: The living, deathless person of Christ. They expressed this in terms of the outward, but it was an inner experience that lead to its expression.