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On July 2, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood behind President Lyndon Baines Johnson as the Texan signed into law the . Although not the first civil rights bill passed by Congress, it was the most comprehensive.

King  鈥渁 great moment 鈥� something like the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln.鈥� Johnson recognized King鈥檚 contributions to the law by gifting him a pen used to sign the historic legislation.

A year later, as Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law, King again .

But by the start of 1967, . In fact, they would not meet again before King fell to an assassin鈥檚 bullet on April 4, 1968.

King was foremost a minister who pastored to a local church throughout his career, even while he was doing national civil rights work. And he became concerned that his political ally Johnson was making a grave moral mistake in Vietnam.  American troop presence in Vietnam from 75,000 to 125,000 in 1965. And by 1968,  were stationed in the Southeast Asian nation.

As I write in my 2021 book , the Baptist preacher had been on a 鈥溾�� for years. And by 1967, he was a radical apostle of Christian nonviolence. 

King called on the United States to 鈥溾�� and undergo a 鈥�.鈥� King believed that Jim Crow segregation and the war in Vietnam were rooted in the same unjust ethic of race-based domination, and he called on the nation to change its ways. 

Speaking Against the Vietnam War

King preached nonviolent direct action for years, and his team organized massive protest movements in the cities of Albany, Georgia, and Selma and Birmingham in Alabama. But by 1967, King鈥檚 religious vision for nonviolence went beyond nonviolent street protest to include abolishing what he called the 鈥溾�� crippling American society. King defined the triple evils as racism, poverty, and militarism, and he believed these forces were contrary to God鈥檚 will for all people.

He came to believe, as he said in 1967, that racism, economic exploitation, and war were crippling America鈥檚 ability to create a 鈥渂eloved community鈥� defined by love and nonviolence. And on April 4, 1967, he publicly rebuked the president鈥檚 war policy in Vietnam at Riverside Church in New York City in a speech titled 鈥淏eyond Vietnam.鈥�

鈥淚 speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam,鈥� he told those gathered in the majestic cathedral. 鈥淚 speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.鈥�

King was initially optimistic that , which aimed to make historic investments in job growth, job training, and economic development, would tackle domestic poverty. But by 1967, the Great Society appeared to be a casualty of the mounting costs of the war in Vietnam. 鈥淚 was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such,鈥� . 

King saw the grinding poverty facing Black people at home as inseparable from the war overseas. As he , 鈥淚f our nation can spend 35 billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and 20 billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God鈥檚 children on their own two feet right here on earth.鈥� 

King could no longer ignore that military force ran contrary to the nonviolence he espoused. As  in Watts and Newark in the late 1960s rocked the nation, he pleaded with people to remain nonviolent.

鈥淏ut they ask鈥攁nd rightly so鈥攚hat about Vietnam?鈥� . 鈥淭hey ask if our own nation wasn鈥檛 using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today鈥攎y own government.鈥�

King鈥檚 Vision

By 1967, King鈥檚 vision of justice was one of flourishing for all people, not only civil rights for African Americans. King was criticized for expanding his vision beyond civil rights for Black Americans. Some worried that aligning with the peace movement would weaken the civil rights movement. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  clearly opposing what it saw as a merging of the civil rights and peace movements. 

But in his 1967 鈥淏eyond Vietnam鈥� speech, King called 鈥渇or a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one鈥檚 tribe, race, class, and nation 鈥� an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.鈥� Such unconditional love is 鈥渢he key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality,鈥� and he noted that this unifying principle was present in Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism. 

King was always first a religious leader. He never sought nor gained elected office, because he wanted to maintain a moral voice and be free to challenge policies he believed to be unjust. 

But the cost for King鈥檚 speaking out was high: By the time of his assassination, . 

He was not a morally perfect man. Declassified files show how the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover tried to target King over his extramarital affairs. Hoover  and sent those to his wife, Coretta Scott King, with a letter indicating King should kill himself because of his moral transgressions.

Honoring King

For those seeking to honor King鈥檚 legacy today, his religious nonviolence is demanding. It asks that people go beyond acts of service and charity鈥攁s important as those are鈥攖o both speak and act against violence and racism, as well as to organize to end those pernicious forces.

It is a radical concept of love that demands we embrace those we know and those we don鈥檛, to acknowledge, , 鈥渢hat all life is interrelated, that somehow we鈥檙e caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny.鈥� 

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the challenge may be to decipher the meaning of this idea in action for our own lives. The future of what King called  depends on it鈥攁 world at peace because justice is present.

This article was originally published by聽. It has been republished here with permission.