Tag: Edward Gilbreath

MLK's April 1963 mugshot

Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Birmingham Revolution

January 18, 2016

For Martin Luther King, Jr. Day… Here’s a series of three posts I wrote in the summer of 2014, inspired by Ed Gilbreath’s Birmingham Revolution, on King’s famous letter from a jail in that Alabama city. Gilbreath (author of Reconciliation Blues and executive director of communications for my denomination) provides enough biographical and historical context that I began to realize just how little … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: Birmingham Revolution

MLK's April 1963 mugshot

Birmingham Revolution: Not Everyone’s a Prophet

August 15, 2014

Among the many people to whom I recommended Ed Gilbreath’s new book this summer were colleagues and students in Bethel University’s Christianity and Western Culture (CWC) course. While that course effectively ends its narrative around 1800 (I go as far as the British parliament abolishing the slave trade in 1807) and we barely touch on U.S. history, the … More Birmingham Revolution: Not Everyone’s a Prophet

Clarion story about December 1960 visit to Bethel by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Birmingham Revolution: How to Silence a Prophetic Voice

July 15, 2014

For years after King’s death, many white Christians continued to eye him with suspicion, even as families like mine proudly displayed his portrait on our walls. Today, in an era when all fifty U.S. states now observe the King holiday and a resplendent monument to the man stands in our nation’s capital, it’s difficult to … More Birmingham Revolution: How to Silence a Prophetic Voice

Gilbreath, Birmingham Revolution

Birmingham Revolution: MLK’s “Great Epistle to the Church”

July 10, 2014

It feels a bit eery to carry a book about Martin Luther King, Jr. around the city where he died, but during a trip to Memphis last weekend, I had the pleasure of reading Edward Gilbreath’s Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Epic Challenge to the Church. It’s given me plenty to think about, enough that I want … More Birmingham Revolution: MLK’s “Great Epistle to the Church”