This America is not the America Dr. King dreamed of—and until it is, we who share the dream need to steward that dream in such a way that it brings us conflict and discomfort and injury; because his dream requires such things from the privileged.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
Yet, the occasion, as painful and nauseating as it is, is actually helpful in reminding us of the cavernous distance between the two men, their respective visions of America, and the choice we all have to make moving forward:
will we lean into King’s long-postponed dream or Trump’s coming nightmare vision?
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream and MAGA America wasn’t it.
- This America, more fractured than ever.
- This heart sickness, as insidious as it’s ever been.
- This toxic enmity, still coursing through our veins.
- This denial of humanity based on pigmentation.
- This argument over the value of black lives.
- This President, the greatest of dividers, returning.
- These hateful men and women, applauding and amen-ing him and defending him.
- These white children of immigrants, still somehow imagining this place their sole birthright.
- These white Evangelicals, still wielding Bible and contempt for people of color simultaneously.
- This American church, still the most segregated space in the nation.
The America that Dr King dreamed of is still a place off in the distance.
It is still only an aspiration; a great hope yet unrealized, a glorious reality not yet stepped into.
It is a beautiful dream still relegated to the yet to come, still only the stuff of slumber.
And while these things remain true, we who believe in the dream can’t rest.
We cannot celebrate his life adequately without reminding this nation of (as he said), “the fierce urgency of now.”
This now is more fiercely urgent than it’s ever been.
It is a fine thing to contend that you celebrate the man; to post memes and share quotes and invoke his name, but know that these things are easy.
There is no real cost to them and no investment of yourself in them.
They are the cheapest and safest form of activism.
Dr King’s dream was costly.
It was a pearl of greatest price.
It was worth his life to him.
Is it worth our lives to us?
There is much work we need to do today if we want to rightly begin to honor the man and the dream.
We cannot celebrate Martin Luther King’s Jr’s life without fully grieving.
We can’t do it without lamenting Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller and Mitch McConnell and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
We can’t do it while defending the expulsion of immigrants and the denial of refugees.
We can’t do it while waving Confederate flags and worshiping monuments to slavery’s legacy.
We can’t do it without mourning the young black men who still die without cause during traffic stops and officers who face no accountability when they murder them.
We can’t do it while tolerating voter suppression and voter ID laws and gerrymandering.
We can’t do it without confronting our racist uncles and xenophobic neighbors; our prejudiced pastors, bigoted bosses, and supremacist Presidents—and the blind spots of these things within ourselves that enable and unknowingly partner with them all.
We can’t do it without seeing the privilege we are both blessed and afflicted with; without fighting to craft something redemptive out of it, without leveraging it in the cause of the Dream, without fashioning it into a shield against the dream-killers.
And we can’t celebrate Martin Luther King Jr’s life, honor his memory, mourn his passing, or continue his work, without actively and loudly resisting Donald Trump and his party.
We can’t do it without pushing back at the supremacy on display in the MAGA movement,
or tolerating legislation targeting refugees,
or excusing his remarks about dark-skinned immigrants.
We can’t do it while normalizing the way he dehumanizes Muslims.
We can’t do it while letting him vilify people of color.
We can’t do it while he takes us backward to the days before Dr King and his dream were born.
This America is not the America Dr. King dreamed of—and until it is, we who share the dream need to steward that dream in such a way that it brings us conflict and discomfort and injury; because his dream requires such things from the privileged.
It requires a cost greater than the seconds it takes to compose a social media post.
Dr King’s dream and his life and so worth celebrating.
They are worth remembering.
They are worth pausing to honor.
But more than that, they are worth living and fighting and dying for.
May we who share his dream steward it well until it is no longer a dream at all—but the glorious reality of our national daylight.
May we see the dawn arrive in our time.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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