Christian socialism was a significant movement in the first half of the 20th Century. As you demonstrate, MLK rejected atheist communism as practiced by the USSR and other state socialist societies, and parroted the talking points of the anti-Communist brainwashing that was being fed to people my age in school in the 1960s, i.e. socialism sounds good but it turns into totalitarian atheism. But he advocated policies that are called socialism in the US today, and even in the 1960s the politics of the Socialist Party were markedly different from the politics of the Communist Party. My guess is that, if asked, he would not have repudiated the Christian socialist movement. He was certainly close to the social gospel movement and I think identified with it. He carried Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited which , while not socialist, is not really "liberal" either insofar as it is about challenging structures of domination. You are writing a bait and switch. --Pam Oliver
Christian socialism was a significant movement in the first half of the 20th Century. As you demonstrate, MLK rejected atheist communism as practiced by the USSR and other state socialist societies, and parroted the talking points of the anti-Communist brainwashing that was being fed to people my age in school in the 1960s, i.e. socialism sounds good but it turns into totalitarian atheism. But he advocated policies that are called socialism in the US today, and even in the 1960s the politics of the Socialist Party were markedly different from the politics of the Communist Party. My guess is that, if asked, he would not have repudiated the Christian socialist movement. He was certainly close to the social gospel movement and I think identified with it. He carried Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited which , while not socialist, is not really "liberal" either insofar as it is about challenging structures of domination. You are writing a bait and switch. --Pam Oliver