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Wisdom of the Well-Connected
16 June 2005"Charles Marsh would recall that the civil rights movement owes little but grief to conservative evangelicals and Niebuhrian realists. Indeed, as Marsh demonstrates in The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today, St. Reinhold himself, polestar of gravitas in the liberal firmament, urged a suffocating 'patience' on King and his movement, and was, thank God, rejected. Seldom has "realism" been so clearly exposed as the wisdom of the well-connected. Aiming squarely at the latest generation of pharisees, Marsh indicts their ministration to a twisted patriotism, 'a cult of self-worship consecrated by court prophets robed in pinstriped suits.'" Eugene McCarraher gives high praise to Marsh (and damns with faint praise Jim Wallis, reviewed above) in Books & Culture. Marsh may sound like he's talking about history, but the redefinition of MLK -- and, for that matter, Reinhold Neibuhr -- across the political spectrum is still news, and Marsh is a good man to bring it to us. More Marsh, on Killing the Buddha.
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