Martin Luther King and Religious Freedom
Chuck Colson May/June 2013“It is a perfect time for schools to help students connect the dots between Martin Luther King’s fight for civil rights and the freedom of religious expression in America. Dr. King’s call for justice was guided by his religious convictions and the liberty to act on those convictions.
You’ve heard me say often on BreakPoint that religious freedom is coming under increasing assault in this country. It’s one reason I and others drafted and signed the Manhattan Declaration, which has been signed by half a million people. The Declaration specifically cites Dr. King’s magnificent ‘Letter From a Birmingham Jail,’ in which he taught that ‘a just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.’ An unjust law, however, ‘is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law,’ and therefore has no binding power over human conscience.”
From BreakPoint with Chuck Colson, a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries January 15, 2012. Colson, a central figure in the Watergate scandal, turned his life around and became an evangelical Christian leader and national figure. He died April 21, 2012.