Rev. William G. Sinkford

Address delivered at Riverside Church in New York City

April 4, 2005

Two years before his 1967 speech here at Riverside Church, Dr. King delivered the eulogy for the Rev. James Reeb, the Unitarian Universalist minister killed in Selma, Alabama, just a few days after Bloody Sunday. In that stirring eulogy, Dr. King said, “Old systems of exploitation and oppression are passing away. Out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born.”

The following year, in the summer of 1966, I sat in a room in Florida filled to overflowing as Dr. King addressed the assembled Unitarian Universalist delegates at our annual General Assembly. With his prophetic voice he warned “don’t sleep through the revolution.” Despite the tensions and uncertainties of the day, he was optimistic that “we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.” Don’t sleep through the revolution.

And then 38 years ago today Dr. King came here to these hallowed halls, to this sacred space, to speak truth to power about the evils of “the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism.” At the end of that speech, Dr. King, at the start of his last year on this earth, warned that if we did not act against these three evils, “we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.”

With respect to our country’s involvement in Iraq, I fear Dr. King’s dire prediction has come to pass. To our shame, we rejected the involvement of the United Nations and the world community and, for the first time in the history of our nation, embarked on a unilateral invasion of a country that had done us no harm. And we did so based upon lies about weapons of mass destruction.

I fear Dr. King’s dire prediction has come to pass. To our shame, what does it say about us as a country when we don’t even bother to keep a count of the number of Iraqis killed in the military conflict we initiated? We are right to honor and grieve for the more than 1500 Americans who have sacrificed their lives in the service of their country, but are the lives of thousands of Iraqis any less precious in the eyes of God? Is it not hypocritical to preach about a culture of life at home but to kill with impunity abroad?

I fear Dr. King’s dire prediction has come to pass. To our shame, our society today is even more materialistic than the one criticized by Dr. King 38 years ago. In the words of the poet, “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” Dr. King said that America’s foreign policy in 1967 was motivated by our “refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment,” and I am called to ask again today, as the gap between the rich and the poor grows ever wider, as billionaire CEOs loot their corporations and middle-class workers lose their entire life savings, as the cost of the war rises ever higher and allows our government to say there is no money available for schools or health care or the safety net for our neediest citizens, what role did our voracious thirst for more oil play in our unprovoked, unilateral invasion of Iraq?

As a Black man who came of age in the 1960s, I revere the deeds and memory of Dr. King, but I fear we have been inadequate heirs to his legacy. On April 4, 1967, he said, “We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.” Today we must speak against a foreign policy based on lies, “on power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.” We must speak for the poor, the sick, the elderly whose needs are sacrificed due to the billions spent on the war.

The Unitarian Universalist faith community and other progressive communities of faith were called to stand with Dr. King in the 1960s. Today, we are again called to stand for justice and peace. Our need for a revolution is as deep today as it was in the 1960s. To be worthy of the legacy of Dr. King, we must not sleep through that revolution.

Sinkford Issues Call to See “Beyond Iraq”

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