Keeping Up and Checking In

In a 1956 sermon, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stated, “peace is not merely the absence of tension, but the presence of justice.” He expanded on this idea in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” describing an “obnoxious negative peace” as a state where people passively accept injustice. He argued that true peace involves the active pursuit of justice, where all people respect each other’s dignity.

King explained that nonviolent direct action doesn’t create tension but exposes it, revealing the hidden social fractures that need addressing. The real creators of tension, he argued, are those who enforce unjust laws and systems, yet they wrongly blame those who resist as disturbers of peace. He also noted that many who call him an extremist for his activism fail to recognize the radical love and justice of figures like Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson.