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January
15
On this
date in 1929, Martin Luther King,
Jr., was born. The civil rights leader, Baptist minister and founder
of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference believed in a strict separation
of church and state. Although his many speeches are peppered with references to
Jesus and God and often depend for the force of their authority upon "the
natural law of God," the Rev. King knew that the religious status quo tended to
support segregation. In his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," dated April
16, 1963, King revealed his pique at continued criticism of the civil rights
movement by clergy, pointing out that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour
in the country. D.
1968.
“In the midst of
blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand
on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious
trivialities. . . . [H]ere we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth
century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing
as a tail light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading
men to higher levels of justice. . . . The contemporary Church is so often a
weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the
arch-supporter of the status quo. . . Is organized religion too inextricably
bound to the status quo to save our nation and the
world?”
—Martin
Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail,"
1963
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January
15
On this
date in 1622, playwright and poet Jean
Baptiste Poquelin, who adopted the stage name Moliere as an actor,
was born in Paris. His father was an upholsterer/valet to
the king. Jean Baptiste studied philosophy in college, started a Parisian acting
troupe and toured the provinces with it for many years, acting, directing and
writing. As a favorite of King Louis XIV, he produced a succession of 12 popular
comedies still being performed, including "The School for Wives" (1662), "Don
Juan" (1665), "Le Misanthrope" (1666), and "Tartuffe" (1667), all irreverent and
increasingly irreligious. "Tartuffe," a satire on religiosity, originally
featured a hypocritical priest. Although Moliere rewrote Tartuffe's profession
to avoid scandal, some religious officials nevertheless called for Moliere to be
burned alive as punishment for his impiety. Moliere was excommunicated in 1667.
He married actress Armande Bejart, when she was 19, and they had one daughter,
Esprit-Madeleine, in 1665. Becoming ill while playing the lead in his play, "The
Imaginary Invalid" (1673), Moliere insisted on finishing the show, after which
he died. Catholic officials refused to officiate or formally bury Moliere. It
took the intervention of the King to get him interred under cover of night at a
cemetery reserved for suicides. D.
1673.
" . . . there is
nothing, I think, so odious as the whitewashed outside of a specious zeal; as
those downright imposters, those bigots whose sacrilegious and deceitful
grimaces impose on others with impunity, and who trifle as they like with all
that mankind holds sacred; those men who, wholly given to mercenary ends, trade
upon godliness, and would purchase honour and reputation at the cost of
hypocritical looks and affected groans; who, seized with strange ardour, make
use of the next world to secure their fortune in this; who, with great
affectation and many prayers, daily preach solitude and retirement while they
themselves live at Court; who know how to reconcile their zeal with their vices;
who are passionate, revengeful, faithless, full of deceit, and who, to work the
destruction of a fellow-man, insolently cover their fierce resentment with the
cause of Heaven."
—Moliere,
monolog by Cleante, Tartuffe (1667)
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