Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Religion & Law Blogs -> Religion Clause

Religion & Law

: Religion Clause

Obama Speaks At D.C. Church About Dr. King's Legacy

By Howard M. Friedman

Yesterday, President Barack Obama spoke at Washington, D.C.'s Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in remarks that the White House Blog captioned "Martin Luther King and the Challenges of a New Age." (Full text; Excerpts and video of full remarks.) The Church, founded by freed slaves after the Civil War was the site of a 1956 speech by Dr. King titled "The Challenges of a New Age." As part of his extensive remarks in advance of Martin Luther King Day, President Obama talked about religious faith:

Even as Dr. King stood in this church, a victory in the past and uncertainty in the future, he trusted God. He trusted that God would make a way. A way for prayers to be answered. A way for our union to be perfected. A way for the arc of the moral universe, no matter how long, to slowly bend towards truth and bend towards freedom, to bend towards justice. He had faith that God would make a way out of no way....

There are times when it feels like all these efforts are for naught, and change is so painfully slow in coming, and I have to confront my own doubts. But let me tell you -- during those times it's faith that keeps me calm. ... It's faith that gives me peace. The same faith that leads a single mother to work two jobs to put a roof over her head when she has doubts. The same faith that keeps an unemployed father to keep on submitting job applications even after he's been rejected a hundred times. The same faith that says to a teacher even if the first nine children she's teaching she can't reach, that that 10th one she's going to be able to reach. The same faith that breaks the silence of an earthquake's wake with the sound of prayers and hymns sung by a Haitian community. A faith in things not seen, in better days ahead, in Him who holds the future in the hollow of His hand. A faith that lets us mount up on wings like eagles; lets us run and not be weary; lets us walk and not faint.

So let us hold fast to that faith, as Joshua held fast to the faith of his fathers, and together, we shall overcome the challenges of a new age.... Together, we shall seize the promise of this moment. Together, we shall make a way through winter, and we're going to welcome the spring. Through God all things are possible.

Full post as published by Religion Clause on January 18, 2010 (boomark / email).