Creating A Beloved Community
by Coretta Scott King
 I
THINK IT IS IMPORTANT that people of every race, religion, and nation join
together to develop a shared vision of a world united in justice, peace, and
harmony.
We should dare to dream of a world where no child lives in fear of war or
suffers the ravages of militarism. Instead of spending more than two billion
dollars a day on the arms race, as the governments of the world do now, we must
invest in human and economic development, so that no one has to live in poverty.
We must project a bold vision of a world where valuable resources are no longer
squandered on the instruments of death and destruction, but are creatively
harnessed for economic development and opportunity.
Let's dare to dream of a Beloved Community where starvation, famine, hunger,
and malnutrition will not be tolerated because the civilized community of
nations won't allow it. Instead of five hundred million people going to bed
hungry every night, as is now the case, in the Beloved Community every human
being would be well nourished. We should dare to dream of a world being reborn
in freedom, justice, and peace, a world that nurtures all of its precious
children and protects them with compassion and caring. In such a Beloved
Community, every child will be enrolled in a good school that has all of the
resources needed to teach them to love learning. Young people will be able to
get as much education as their minds can absorb and a full range of cultural
opportunities to enrich their spirits.
In the Beloved Community, conflicts between nations will be resolved
peacefully. Dictators will be replaced, not by civil war and terrorism, but by
organized nonviolent movements that will insure that freedom, human rights, and
dignity will be honored under all flags. Instead of religious and racial
violence and wars between nations, there will be interreligious, interracial,
and international solidarity based on tolerance and respect for all cultures.
With such a commitment, we will not only reduce cultural conflict, but also
create a global community where a new vision of unity in faith can prevail.
We must find a way to tap the tremendous healing power of faith to promote a
higher level of cross-cultural understanding and cooperation, which can help rid
the world of war and violence. Even as we worship in many languages and call our
common creator by a host of different names, let the people of every religion
now make room in their hearts for interfaith brotherhood and sisterhood for the
sake of humanity.
All of the world's great problems -- the struggles for self-determination and
human rights, stopping war, halting the arms race, checking the exploitation of
multinational corporations, and confronting the global environmental crisis --
must be addressed by nonviolent movements. As my husband, Martin Luther King
Jr., said in a challenge he issued in 1967, "I suggest that the philosophy and
strategy of nonviolence become immediately a subject for study and for serious
implementation in every field of human conflict, and by no means excluding the
relations between nations." And as Mohandas K. Gandhi, who inspired Martin,
echoed, "we should train for nonviolence with the fullest faith in its limitless
possibilities."
Both Gandhi and my husband understood that the great advantage of nonviolence
is that its success does not depend on the integrity of political leaders. It
depends on the courage and commitment of people of goodwill. We must join
together in creating a nonviolent movement to achieve peace with justice that
spans the globe. With courage and determination, we must sound the knell for the
end of fear, apathy, and indifference to human suffering and proclaim a new
century of hope, a century of protest and nonviolent resistance to injustice and
repression throughout the nation and around the world.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we have an historic opportunity for
a great global healing and renewal. If we will accept the challenge of
nonviolent activism with faith, courage, and determination, we can bring this
great vision of a world united in peace and harmony from a distant ideal into a
glowing reality.
 This
article is excerpted from Architects of Peace, ?2000, by Michael Callopy.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World Library.
http://www.newworldlibrary.com
For Info or to Order this book as a hardcover or as a paperback,
click here.
About the Author
Born
near Marion, Alabama, in 1927, Coretta Scott King attended Antioch College and
the New England Conservatory of Music, where she met her future husband, Martin
Luther King Jr., a graduate theological student at Boston University. Throughout
the 1950s and 1960s, Mrs. King accompanied her husband in his campaign for civil
rights. After her husband's assassination in 1968, she founded the Martin Luther
King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia, to continue
their work.
www.thekingcenter.com
| Comments () >> |
 |
 |
