Today we are celebrating the birth of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Last fall we celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, which was initiated by his namesake, Martin Luther.
Martin Luther, a Catholic monk, could not adjust to the corruption in church practices during his day, so in 1517 he nailed his 95 theses on the door of the cathedral challenging the selling of indulgences. Indulgences were payments by friends and family to the church in Rome to—among other things—reduce time in purgatory for dead loved ones. Luther’s theses questioned the Pope’s power to manage purgatory, and he criticized the church’s wealth. Of course, they excommunicated him, splitting the Catholic Church and starting Protestantism.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was named after his father; however, when he was born his father’s name was Michael Lewis King. Therefore, that was junior’s name. However, that changed in 1930 when Daddy King attended a Baptist conference in Germany. Apparently inspired by the story of Martin Luther and his refusal to “go along to get along” he returned home and renamed himself and his toddler son, Martin Luther King.
According to Martin Luther King’s definition, Martin Luther was creatively maladjusted, and he calls on more of us to do likewise:
“And I call upon you to be maladjusted and all people of good will to be maladjusted to these things until the good society is realized. I never intend to adjust myself to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, and leave millions of people perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of prosperity. I must honestly say, however much criticism it brings, that I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, and to the self-defeating effects of physical violence…
I must confess that I believe firmly that our world is in dire need of a new organization – the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. Men and women as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day, cried out in words that echo across the centuries—”Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.