crozer theological seminary mlk

Maybe after all I have been religious for a number of years, and am now only becoming aware of it.I can remember very vividly how in my recent seminary days, I was a le to strengthen my spiritual life through communing with nature.

I try to answer her as regularly as possible.Well I guess I must go back to studying. As I reflect on the matter, however, I do remember moments that I have been awe awakened; there have been times that I have been carried out of myself by something greater than myself and to that something I gave myself. Liberalism provided me with an intellectual satisfaction that I had never found in fundamentalism. True, the Marxist would argue that the state is an "interim" reality which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges; but the state is the end while it lasts, and man only a means to that end.

Sometimes I watch the moon as it walks across the sky as a queen walks across her masterly mansion. I felt that the Christian ethic of love was confined to individual relationships.

Nineteenth-century capitalism failed to see that life is social and Marxism failed and still fails to see that life is individual and personal. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity. There is God. I had been reading parts of Then one Sunday afternoon I traveled to Philadelphia to hear a sermon by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, president of Howard University. He presented capitalism as essentially a struggle between the owners of the productive resources and the workers, whom Marx regarded as the real producers.

I was absolutely convinced of the natural goodness of man and the natural power of human reason.On the other hand, part of my liberal leaning had its source in another branch of the same root.

I had gotten some valuable information about Boston University from him, and I was convinced that there were definite advantages there for me.A CONCEPTION AND IMPRESSION OF RELIGION DRAWN FROM DR. EDGAR S. BRIGHTMAN'S BOOK ENTITLED It is religion that gives meaning to life. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.I also sought systematic answers to Marx's critique of modern bourgeois culture. I had a general knowledge of my field, but I had not done adequate research to meet the scholarly issues which I would confront in this area. There is God. The more I thought about human nature, the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin causes us to use our minds to rationalize our actions. King was drawn to the school’s unorthodox …

Its contribution to the philological-historical criticism of biblical literature has been of immeasurable value.I anticipated graduating from Crozer in May 1951. Of course, I don't ever think about them. In other words, I came to see the pacifist position not as sinless but as the lesser evil in the circumstances.

Every day I would sit on the edge of the campus by the side of the river and watch the beauties of nature. Like most of the students of Crozer, I felt that while war could never be a positive or absolute good, it could serve as a negative good in the sense of preventing the spread and growth of an evil force.

Sometimes I watch the sun as it gets up in the morning and paints its technicolor across the eastern horizon.

During my senior year in theological seminary, I engaged in the exciting reading of various theological theories.

As 1 of only 11 black students at the seminary in 1948, King was initially self-conscious.

The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contracts theory of Hobbes, the "back to nature" optimism of Rousseau, the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi.When I came to Crozer, I could accept the liberal interpretation of Christianity with relative ease. I felt that the pacifist would have a greater appeal if he did not claim to be free from the moral dilemmas that the Christian non-pacifist confronts.

Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School is a seminary in Rochester, New York affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. The seminary served as an American Baptist Church school, training seminarians for the entry into the Baptist ministry from 1869 to 1970. The seminary campus is a beautiful sight, particularly so in the spring.