REMARKS BY DR. ALVEDA C. KING
OCTOBER 11, 2013
As we stand together today, praying for faith, family, and opportunity for all, we can only be amazed by the hope that is rising among “We the People.”
As I approach my tenth year as Director of African American Outreach for Priests for Life, I look back at how far we’ve come – but I don’t look back for long! Because at the same time, I know how far we must yet travel.
Together we can embrace the power of faith working in our lives through God’s agape love. We must believe that that love will carry us over difficult bridges.
We are indeed facing turbulent times. You may remember that last year a man, Theodore Shulman, was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for threatening the life of Fr. Frank Pavone, the National Director of Priests for Life.
Here in D. C., The Family Research Council, however, faced more than a threat. You endured an attack on the lives of everyone on the FRC staff.
A gay rights activist entered the FRC building with enough ammunition to kill everyone in it. He came to FRC as a gunman, fueled by hate mongering from The Southern Poverty Law Center. The shooter admitted he was directed to FRC’s location by the Southern Poverty law Center’s website. While SPLC claims to fight against hate, they have been saying hateful things about the Family Research Council and perhaps other groups who are represented here today. By the grace of God and the heroism of FRC security officer Mr. Leo Johnson, who took a bullet from the shooter, many deaths were averted. Today, the shooter is behind bars as a result of being convicted for domestic terrorism. But the SPLC and many others who couch hate and anger in false claims of civil rights activism still roam free to confuse the masses with their deceptions.
Friends, make no mistake, no matter our political affiliations or our church denominations, or our personal designer issue of the day; we are now called together to humbly fight the good fight.
So together in unity and love for humanity, we gird ourselves with the truth, we walk with the gospel of peace, and we carry the shield of faith. Our sword is not a spinning sound bite, a poll, or a focus group, but the word of God.
Please permit a confession:
At the top of my list of regrets are the deaths of three of my children – one through miscarriage and two by abortion.
Down the list, I regret having said to a group of peers that my Uncle M.L. (The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.) was a Republican. Yes my Grandfather, Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr. was a registered Republican, but Uncle M.L. was an independent.
As a Christian and civil rights activist, Uncle M.L. followed a pattern of not publicly endorsing a political party or candidate. He once wrote,
“I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of both – not the servant or master of either. I’m not inextricably bound to either party.”
As one who has been elected to the Georgia House of Representatives as a Democrat and been a Presidential appointee in a Republican administration, I am beginning to understand the wisdom of my Uncle M.L. My aim is not to become involved in political squabbles, but to speak the truth as best I can.
We are commanded to pray for those in authority and I know we all do that. We also pray for our nation; understanding that human reasoning and human solutions are too finite to bring an ultimate resolution to our problems. The saddest and sickest heart longs for the gift of salvation in Christ.
Recent remarks by Pope Francis remind us that human beings have immediate problems in their lives and these problems are not limited to the great moral questions of our time
Pope Francis says that he must deal with the entire human condition, not just two pressing questions, abortion and marriage. Yet he is not suggesting that there is in any way a license to sin; rather, he is advocating for a license to repent, be healed, and be delivered from human failings.
Human issues, “social issues” are all intertwined. Abortion, for instance, cannot be separated from the breakdown of the family, which cannot be separated from the attack on natural procreative marriage. Neither can abortion be separated from human trafficking, rape, child abuse or a host of other issues.
I believe that when Pope Francis is looking at the entire human condition. So must we.
When I look at this human condition today, I see evil triplets – a three-headed monster – racism, reproductive genocide, and sexual perversion. And it will take Jesus to set the record straight!
I once thought that white people killed my uncle. Not just one white man or a conspiracy of white men, but all white men were responsible. My father, Rev. Alfred Daniel Williams King, corrected me. He said:
Alveda, you cannot hate white people. White people did not kill your uncle, the devil did. White people march and die for us, fighting for freedom for everyone.
Before that, I thought that God wanted me to hate white people, and I was angry with God for creating white people and the human condition called racism.
It took my earthly father and my Heavenly Father to help me realize that Acts 17:26 is true. There is only one human race, not separate races. We are all of one human blood.
I have met people who battle with sexual perversion and human sexuality issues. For example, I’ve met, according to Matthew 19, some people who may have been born gay, some people who may have been made to be gay, and some people who have chosen to be gay.
On the other hand, I have met people who were born with conditions or developed conditions of sickness and disease in their bodies; high blood pressure, high blood sugar, heart problems, all kinds of things. I myself have suffered from a human error called abortion. Yet, I’ve been forgiven and healed by the blood of Jesus Christ.
So there is no human condition, whether it is lust or sickness or greed or any condition of the heart, the body, or the soul that cannot be cured, healed, or delivered and set free and transformed by the blood of Jesus. If we were born a certain way, no matter what it is, we can be born again!
So therefore, we must all embrace each other in what my Uncle M.L. called the beloved community. In love we must carry all of our cares to the Lord and leave them there.
Today, we are at an impasse over Obamacare. The President says that if we won’t pay for free birth control and abortion, he won’t let the government operate.
My friends, I have daughters and granddaughters. They need free poison birth control and life destroying abortions like they need holes in their heads.
What our families need is good education, decent and safe living environments, good jobs as they grow up, and good work ethics and moral values. They need the security of living in a world free from terrorism. They need healthy bodies and a healthy growing economy. They need so much, and Washington isn’t delivering a check banked on a solid foundation.
Recently, as I went through airport security, the TSA officer was so sad that I had to stop and pray for him before I made it through the check point. The officer was on salary furlough, but was required to work anyway because of the shutdown. After the prayer, I received a somber “thank you,” and my credentials were returned to me.
What is so amazing to me is that our veterans and others are being needlessly and directly impacted, with no end in sight for relief. Why must veterans and honest, hard working Americans suffer so that forcibly subsidized birth control and abortions can reign?
Friends, this is why this Summit is so important. We can pray together for those who are in authority so that we can live peaceful – and not deceitful – lives. And we can act together to encourage and elect government officials who have hearts for righteousness.
My Uncle M.L., in his 1967 Christmas sermon, spoke these words:
“…Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be respected as such….And when we truly believe in the sacredness of human personality, we won’t exploit people, we won’t trample over people with the iron feet of oppression, we won’t kill anybody.”
My Uncle also wrote a book titled Why We Can’t Wait. Well, I am so encouraged to see that we are not waiting anymore. We the people – red and yellow, black and white, all precious in God’s sight – are crossing every barrier to march to the polls and vote for true freedom and liberty.
As we move ahead, may God bless and guide us. Amen.