It was the dreaded church “calendaring meeting” — juggling special Sundays, worship themes, vacation dates and competing programming for the months ahead. We were finally past Advent to languidly plan January.
Martin Luther King Jr. did not have to go to Birmingham.
He had options, Rev. Dr. Kevin W. Crosby recalled Wednesday morning during the annual Presbyterian Center Service of Commemoration for the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Well on his way to becoming the youngest Nobel Prize winner in history, to that point, King seemed poised for the pulpit at his home church in Atlanta, or maybe the presidency of Morehouse College.
Birmingham was a powder keg, known as “Bombingham” because of the pervasive race-based violence in the Alabama city. But after prayer, King told his father and his mentor that his place was with “the suffering people of Birmingham,” Cosby said. “He went down there and was arrested.”
And that is where he wrote the iconic Letter from Birmingham Jail, which formed the basis for Wednesday’s worship service at the third floor chapel with the Ohio River serving as a backdrop.
