MLK’s ‘beloved community’ has inspired social justice work for decades − what did he mean?

Volunteers paint columns in a hallway during the Martin Luther King Jr. National Day of Service at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C., in 2019. Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images by Jason Oliver Evans, University of Virginia Since 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed Martin Luther King Jr. Day into law, many Americans have observed the federal holiday to commemorate the life and legacy of the civil rights leader, Baptist minister and theologian. MLK Day volunteers typically perform community service that continues King’s fight to end racial discrimination and economic injustice – to build the “beloved community,” as he often said. King does not fully explain the phrase’s meaning in his published writings, speeches and sermons. Scholars Rufus Burrow Jr. and Lewis V. Baldwin, however, argue that the beloved community is King’s principal ethical goal, guiding the struggle against what he called the “three evils of American society”: racism, economic exploitation and militarism. As a Baptist minister and theologian myself, I believe it is important to understand the origins of the concept of the beloved community, how King understood it and how he worked to make it a reality. Older origins Although King popularized the...