What King said about white moderates still confronts the church today.

In this MLK bonus episode, Kristen reflects on being born in 1963, the same year Martin Luther King Jr. wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail, and what his words reveal about comfort, delay, and Christian resistance to justice.

Rather than beginning with King’s now-famous letter, this episode starts with the lesser-known statement that provoked it: A Call for Unity, written by eight white clergymen who urged patience, order, and restraint in the face of segregation, brutality, and state violence. Their words sound measured. Reasonable. Even familiar.

This is not another tribute to Dr. King. It’s a reckoning with who he was actually writing to in 1963, not the extremists, but the moderates. The well-meaning religious leaders who agreed with justice in theory but were unwilling to be disrupted by it in practice.

Kristen reflects on what it means to inherit that distance, socially, theologically, and spiritually, and how many of us are still living inside an unfinished revolution. The systems King confronted were never fully dismantled; they were managed, delayed, and reframed as “order.” And generations later, we are still being asked to wait—often by people who are not the ones waiting.

In this bonus episode of Jesus, Justice & Mercy, we explore:

• Why Letter from Birmingham Jail was written in response—not isolation
• What King meant by the “white moderate.”
• How Christian calls for “order,” “unity,” and “patience” delay justice
• The difference between negative peace and positive peace
• Why comfort—not hatred—is often the greatest obstacle to liberation
• What it means to inherit an unfinished revolution

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Here’s to a faith that tells the truth, refuses silence in the face of harm, and follows Jesus all the way into healing and justice.

RESOURCES:

www.kristenannette.com

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