Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was – literally – a dream come true for me.
I was only five years old at the time and living in the poorest neighborhood of Shreveport, Louisiana, one of six children raised by a single mother. But I already dreamed of becoming a firefighter when I grew up. And that wasn’t even a possibility in the then all-white Shreveport Fire Department.
But this new law allowed me to be part of the first generation of “Dream Kids”… those that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of a year earlier in his famous speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Like much of what he wrote and said, his words that day challenged the American people to be true to their nation’s founding principles of liberty and equality, and put believers to challenge to defend God’s truth.
Most famously, he called for a new birth of freedom for a new generation, in which people “would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
It took a federal lawsuit to get the Shreveport Fire Department to do so, but in 1972 the city hired its first black firefighter. Nine years later, they hired me. A child of poverty, raised in the Christian faith and unwavering patriotism of my mother, I became this city’s fire chief, then administrator of the United States Fire Department under President Barack Obama.
While serving as Atlanta Fire Chief, I was investigated for sharing my personal beliefs in a book I wrote for Christian men in my spare time. One of these beliefs is that sexual relations should be reserved for marriage and that marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman. For expressing this conviction – shared for thousands of years by millions of people around the world – I was fired.
Nine years ago this week, Christian leaders stood with me at a rally to support my character and religious freedom. I will never stop being grateful for their support and encouragement. In recent years, I have often thought about what they have done, as I have watched so many other Christian leaders and churches retreat into silence in the face of growing persecution, racial unrest, and social upheaval.
I don’t need to imagine what Dr. King would think, watching Christians stand by quietly while so many people across our country today riot, reject the tenets of our faith, and denigrate the values of our Constitution. He spoke and wrote with almost prophetic insight – assessing the spirit of his age in terms that remain painfully true in ours.
Three months before this great speech in Washington, DC, Dr. King sat in Birmingham Jail and wrote these words:
“I see the Church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have tarnished and scarred this body through social neglect and fear of being non-conformists.
“Very often the contemporary Church is a weak, ineffective, uncertain-sounding voice…a staunch defender of the status quo. Far from being disrupted by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent – and often even vocal – sanction of things as they are.
“If the Church today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church, it will lose its authenticity, lose the loyalty of millions, and be seen as an unimportant social club with no meaning for the 20th century. »
Dr. King understood very well that for Christians to be able to bear effective witness in this world – for us to make a real and lasting difference – we must be willing to make sacrifices. Sacrifice our time. Our comfort. And the artificial “peace” that comes with trying to hide or collude with the forces of evil.
Having personally experienced the pain of persecution, I have learned that worldly consequences are inevitable when we challenge a hostile culture. But God prepares us for what is to come and uses our faithfulness to show our adversaries of freedom—and ourselves—a side of Himself that they would never see otherwise.
Additionally, it honors and rewards those who find the courage to stand up.
Dr. King understood all too well the risks of challenging an unjust culture. But he also knew, as he said in a speech in Selma in 1965, that:
“A man dies when he refuses to stand for what is right…when he refuses to stand for justice…when he refuses to stand for what is true.” »
Today, so many Christians are dying inside without even knowing it. I pray that as we enter what will likely be a contentious year for our country, believers will find the courage that Dr. King found, in the faith that he held fast to…and learn again to live the truth and justice of God.
Kelvin Cochran is a principal investigator and vice president of Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLégal).
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