THE SOCIAL STUDIES

2018, VOL. 109, NO. 1, 45–56

https://doi.org/10.1080/00377996.2018.1431197

“I Just Want to Do God’s Will:” Teaching Martin Luther King, Jr. as a Religious
Leader
David Neumanna,b
a
Education, Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona, California, USA; bLong Beach, California, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Teachers often respond to the perils of teaching about religion by simply avoiding the subject. An Civil discourse; civil rights
investigation of secondary lesson plans on three prominent Martin Luther King, Jr. websites reveals movement; Martin Luther
little attention to the ideology of the civil rights movement, especially those touching on religious King, Jr; religion
ideas. Ignoring King’s religious views risks fundamentally misrepresenting his identity, his ideology,
and his motivation for nonviolence. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, King’s 1958
account of the Montgomery Bus Boycott articulates three key features of the theological framework
that inspired his activism: the spiritual motivation for his leadership, the ethical basis for his strategy
of nonviolent direct action, and the theological understanding of human nature that undergirded
his leadership and strategy. These points provide a useful model for introducing King’s ideas in the
classroom. The effort to intentionally and thoughtfully teach religion could contribute one step
toward inculcating genuine tolerance among students. Civil discourse is not fostered simply by
identifying core principles everyone shares but also through thoughtful, critical engagement with
disparate ideas, including what are, for many people, the most heavily freighted ideas.

Since its 2011 unveiling the Martin Luther King, Jr.
Memorial in Washington, DC, has provoked grum-
bling for aesthetic reasons, with some finding the King
statue’s posture too aggressive and others bothered by
its Socialist Realism style (Kennicott, 2011). But the
monument also raises an interpretive problem: it
presents 20th-century America’s most influential reli-
gious leader as a secular figure. The only hint of the
seminary-trained Baptist pastor’s religious identity
comes from one of the 12 quotes on the wall behind
the statue, where King promises to stay in Montgom-
ery and fight until justice runs “down like water, and
righteousness like a mighty stream.” The phrase,
though placed in quotations, includes no attribution
of its biblical source. The religious theme embedded
in the statue’s central metaphor—a “stone of hope”
carved from a “mountain of despair”—has been
completely chiseled away. This metaphor is drawn
from the climatic passage of the “I Have a Dream”
speech from the 1963 March on Washington. The par-
agraph in its entirety reads:
I have a dream today … I have a dream that one day
every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall
be made low. The rough places will be made plain, and
the crooked places will be made straight. And the glory of
the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it
together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back
to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew
out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With
this faith we will be able to transform the jangling dis-
cords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of broth-
erhood. With this faith we will be able to work together,
to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail
together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that
we will be free one day. (King, 1963)
The italicized text is King’s direct quote from the
book of Isaiah, seamlessly interwoven into his speech.
King’s “stone of hope” was carved from the funda-
mental conviction that “the glory of the Lord shall be
revealed” when equality is established.
Minimizing King’s religious views in this setting
may be understandable. Celebrating heritage involves
a conscious communal choice about what to remem-
ber and how (Lowenthal, 1985) or, as Sanford Levin-
son says, states “organize public space, to form a
particular kind of national consciousness” (1998,
p. 10). A public King memorial on federal land invites
collective memory of a key moment in the nation’s

CONTACT David Neumann djneumann@cpp.edu College of Education & Integrative Studies, Cal Poly Pomona, 3801 W. Temple Ave, Pomona, CA 91768.
© 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
46 D. NEUMANN
shared past; a sectarian memorial would inhibit joint
commemoration and celebration. As the National
Park Service explains, King’s “message is universal: a
non-violent philosophy striving for freedom, justice,
and equality.” (National Park Service, n.d.)
But this same logic often spills into the classroom,
where public memorialization should be replaced with
nuanced, contextualized inquiry. Here, secularizing
King risks fundamentally misrepresenting his identity,
his ideology, and his motivation for nonviolence. But
all too often, teachers respond to the perils of teaching
about religion by minimizing it or simply avoiding it
altogether. This sin of omission distorts King, who
insisted the night before he was murdered that “I just
want to do God’s will,” as well as the larger civil rights
movement (King, 1968).
Ignoring King’s religion in the classroom
A brief review of more than 40 middle and high school
lessons illustrates the issue. The lessons examined
were drawn from three sites that serve as repositories
of King’s papers or commemorative sites and have
perhaps the best claim as national keepers of King’s
legacy: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Edu-
cation Institute at Stanford (n.d.), The Birmingham
Civil Rights Institute (n.d.), and the National Park
Service’s Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site
(n.d.). While there are useful lessons on these sites,
collectively they give little attention to the ideology of
the civil rights movement—which seems problematic
in its own right—and even less to religious ideas.
One lesson that did directly deal with ideas exem-
plifies the studious avoidance of King’s religious views
at the precise point where such discussion would be
most illuminating. The lesson focused on King’s six
principles of nonviolent direct action. The linchpin of
the six principles, judging by the extensive amount of
text King devoted to it, was the fifth, which explained
the challenging “principle of love” that forbids retalia-
tion. The lesson plan ignored King’s careful theologi-
cal explanation of this very counterintuitive principle.
King, anxious to avoid being misunderstood as advo-
cating a “sentimental or affectionate emotion,”
explained that love must be interpreted in light of its
New Testament usage. Nonviolent direct action
depends on agape, disinterested love that springs from
the other person’s need. King’s model of agape was
God’s own action as revealed in the gospel. “The cross
is the eternal expression of the length to which God
will go in order to restore broken community.” The
divine command of agape was “the only cement that
can hold this broken community together” (King,
1958, pp. 104–107).
There are several related reasons why King’s reli-
gious ideas are often ignored in the classroom. First,
some teachers are averse to focusing on ideas more
broadly, not just religious tenets. Instructors some-
times fear that students will find learning about ideas
too complex or abstract or boring. And there is no
shortage of dramatic events and crucial concepts to
teach apart from religion, from marches, to sit-ins, to
freedom rides. On the other hand, teaching about
ideas like non-retaliation has the potential to be
extremely engaging, particularly when these ideas are
linked to dramatic events.
Many teachers also feel anxious about teaching
about religion, even where it might appropriately sur-
face in the curriculum. Some worry about misrepre-
senting the religious views of historical figures or
groups that may be different from their own, or open-
ing the door to student proselytization. More often,
teachers fear that if they teach about religion, angry
parents will accuse them of advocacy. Consequently,
teachers often play it safe by discussing religious topics
as little as possible. But minimizing or avoiding the
role of religion in American and world history is obvi-
ously an inadequate solution to a very real challenge.
There may be another factor at play specifically for
King. Encouraged by state curriculum documents,
many teachers approach King in the same way as the
Washington, DC, King Memorial: as a means of
imparting civic education. It is much easier to present
King as a public civic figure by focusing on ways his
language addressed values shared by all Americans,
rooted in the Constitution and the broader liberal tra-
dition. But the religious beliefs of a leader whose
speeches and writings were suffused with biblical allu-
sions should be considered alongside his appeals to
liberty and rights. King’s religious allusiveness is
sometimes treated as artistic flourish, a religious
superstructure resting lightly atop a solid base of secu-
lar American rights-talk. Or, to put it another way,
people sometimes assume that King did not believe
what he said about God, but instead used religion “as
an opiate of social reform” (Marsh, 2002, p. 19).
Viewing King’s religious discourse as mere
embellishment is abetted by the frequent practice of

analyzing his rhetorical strategies in texts like “Letter
from Birmingham Jail.” This practice receives explicit
encouragement in the Common Core Standards,
which indicate that students should “Analyze seminal
U.S. documents of historical and literary significance,”
such as the “Letter,” “including how they address
related themes and concepts” (National Governors
Association, 2010, p. 40). This is a valuable instruc-
tional strategy, because the “ability to speak the gospel
in universally acceptable terms” that King learned in
seminary was a gift, as Richard Lischer says. But focus-
ing solely on the mechanics of King’s skilled biblical
intertextuality can deflect attention from the theologi-
cal content of the language. As Lischer points out,
King’s theological training equally enabled him to
reclaim “a deeper sense of the viability and power” of
the religious convictions introduced to him as a child
(Lischer, 1995, p. 71).
This argument should not be pressed too far. There
was no requirement that those who joined the move-
ment share particular theological views, and it drew
individuals from across the religious spectrum—Jews,
Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and more—
and those of no faith at all, like Julian Bond, who was
an atheist (Mehta, 2015). Still, the ethos of the move-
ment among much of the early leadership was deeply
imbued with Christian ideas. The famous dream that
King had was “theologically specific,” as Charles
Marsh (2008, p. 2) says: “beloved community as the
realization of divine love in lived social relation.”
King’s Stride Toward Freedom as an instructional
model
Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story,
King’s very accessible 1958 account of the Montgom-
ery Bus Boycott—and something of a self-introduction
to a nation who mostly knew him through newspaper
headlines—provides a useful model for introducing
King’s ideas in the classroom. In it, King articulates
three key theological ideas that inspired his activism:
the spiritual motivation for his leadership, the ethical
basis for his strategy of nonviolent direct action, and
the theological understanding of human nature that
undergirded his leadership and strategy.
1. Leadership: Called by God, motivated to finish
The 26-year-old King had no intention of leading a move-
ment when he accepted the pastorate of Montgomery’s
THE SOCIAL STUDIES 47
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. But he came to see his role
as a civil rights leader as a vocation—quite literally a “call-
ing”—from God and found strength to continue in the dif-
ficult work through the belief that God was benevolently
moving the nation toward justice.
King explained that early on in his theological
training, he was won over to personalism, the convic-
tion that personality is the key insight to meaning.
The value of individuals was found in their bounded
identity, or personality, which was in turn linked to
the character and care of a personal God. Personalism,
in King’s words, “gave me the metaphysical and philo-
sophical grounding for the idea of a personal God,
and it gave me a metaphysical basis for the dignity
and worth of all human personality” (King, 1958, p.
100). This sense of self-worth was foundational to civil
rights activism. Blacks’ “growing self-respect,” based
on the recognition of their “eternal worth to God,”
inspired them with a “determination to struggle and
sacrifice until first-class citizenship becomes a reality”
(King, 1958, p. 190).
A transcendent experience in the kitchen of his
Montgomery parsonage convinced King that this per-
sonal God was calling him to fight for civil rights. One
night, late in January, when the boycott had been
going on for more than six weeks, King was awakened
by a caller who used a racial slur and threatened his
life. Ready to give up the fight, King made a cup of
coffee, sat at his kitchen table, and began to pray. It
was a pivotal moment. “I am here taking a stand for
what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people
are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before
them without strength and courage, they too will fal-
ter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left.
I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.” He
immediately experienced “the presence of the Divine
as I had never experienced Him before.” He heard an
inner voice telling him, “Stand up for righteousness,
stand up for truth; and God will be at our side forever”
(King, 1958, pp. 134–135). Right away, his fears began
to dissipate.
But many challenges remained ahead. King was
convinced not only that God was with him personally
but that he was “on the side of justice” and that the
protest would therefore be successful. Though he con-
ceded that not all those who practiced nonviolence
shared his belief in a “personal God,” he insisted that
they did all share some view of a benevolent power
working for them: “Whether we call it an unconscious
48 D. NEUMANN
process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being
of matchless and infinite love, there is a creative force
in this universe that works to bring the disconnected
aspects of reality into a harmonious whole” (King,
1958, p. 107). In invoking God’s great love, King
clearly tipped his hand regarding which view he con-
sidered most attractive.
2. Strategy: Jesus, Gandhi, and nonviolence
The strategy of nonviolence was fundamentally
grounded in religious convictions. The unity and con-
tinuity of the movement required “a philosophy that
wins and holds people’s allegiance; and it depends
upon open channels of communication between the
people and their leaders.” In King’s view, the boycott
movement, which held together for more than a year,
joined people across denominational and class lines
“in the bond of Christian love.” Common conviction
was forged through song, prayer, and Scripture read-
ing—a favorite passage being Paul’s First Letter to the
Corinthians, “And now abideth faith, hope, love, these
three; but the greatest of these is love” (King, 1958, pp.
85–88).
Early on, before labels were introduced—nonvio-
lent resistance, noncooperation, and passive resis-
tance—the “phrase most often heard was ‘Christian
love.’” Scripture gave rise to strategy, rather than the
other way around. “It was the Sermon on the Mount,
rather than a doctrine of passive resistance, that ini-
tially inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified
social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth who stirred the
Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love”
(King, 1958, p. 84). Two elements from the Sermon
were particularly influential: the love of enemies and
non-retaliation. The willingness to suffer injustice
held the power to transform social relations.
The idea of redemptive suffering was a key point of
commonality between the New Testament and
Gandhi. King attests that as he began studying
Gandhi’s teachings more thoroughly, satyagraha
became “profoundly significant to me” (King, 1958,
p. 96). Gandhi’s teaching and Christian ideals were
mutually reinforcing. “Nonviolent resistance had
emerged as the technique of the movement, while love
stood as the regulating ideal. In other words,” he clari-
fied, “Christ furnished the spirit and motivation, while
Gandhi furnished the method.” The idealistic and the
pragmatic commingled, as retaliation against violence
was “both impractical and immoral” (King, 1958, p.
85). “To meet hate with retaliatory hate would do
nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the uni-
verse…We must meet the forces of hate with the
power of love. We must meet physical force with soul
force” (King, 1958, p. 87).
3. Human nature: Tempered optimism
It was not enough to be convinced that God was on his
side and that he had an appropriate strategy. An
appropriate view of human nature was also required.
Again, King’s understanding of human nature was
guided by theology. On one hand, he believed in the
fundamental value and dignity of all people, even his
oppressors. This was implied in his views on personal-
ism and in the strategy of nonviolence, which did not
seek to harm the oppressor, who was ultimately his
“neighbor.” King’s refusal to demonize opponents
reflected a theologically based optimism. As creatures
made in the image of God, white oppressors retained
intrinsic goodness, a moral conscience, and the capac-
ity to be shamed into acting in accordance with the
better angels of their natures. The ultimate goal was
“redemption and reconciliation,” culminating in the
“creation of the beloved community” (King, 1958,
p. 102). The optimistic vision of the “beloved commu-
nity,” as one scholar put it, “bridged the yawning gap
between the present reality of ‘church,’ burdened by
the scandal of denominational and racial division,
and the distant hope for the ‘Kingdom of God’
(Luker, 2002, pp. 44–45). Without such hope, it would
have been impossible for King to carry on.
At the same time, this optimism was tempered by a
sober conviction regarding the sinfulness of human
nature. While mainstream Protestant theology in the
early 20th century had moved away from Augustine’s
view of “original sin,” theologian Reinhold Niebuhr
had helped to reintroduce this view in the postwar
period (Chappell, 2002, p. 4). Niebuhr shaped King’s
views in important ways. Fellow civil rights leader
Andrew Young reported that King always said he was
“much more influenced” by Niebuhr than Gandhi
(Fox, 1985, p. 283). Niebuhr, King thought, had
“extraordinary insight into human nature.”
He is keenly aware of the complexity of human motives
and of the relation of morality and power. His theology
is a persistent reminder of the reality of sin on every level
of man’s existence. These elements in Niebuhr’s thinking

helped me to recognize the illusions of a superficial opti-
mism concerning human nature and the dangers of a
false idealism. While I still believed in man’s potential
for good, Niebuhr made me realize his potential for evil
as well (King, 1958, p. 99).
Niebuhr thought that whites “will not admit the
Negro to equal rights unless forced to do so,” but that
only nonviolence held the hope of attaining “a degree
of justice” (Niebuhr, 1932, pp. 253–254). This assess-
ment of human sin prevented King from expecting
victory to come quickly or easily. And his realism led
him to recognize that demands for just treatment
could precede a change of heart among whites.
“Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be reg-
ulated. The law cannot make an employer love me,
but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because
of the color of my skin. We must depend on religion
and education to alter the errors of the heart and
mind; but meanwhile it is an immoral act to compel a
man to accept injustice until another man’s heart is
set straight” (King, 1958, p. 198).
Teaching about religion in the classroom
The example of King and the movement as a whole
speaks to the larger challenge of integrating religion in
the curriculum. The remainder of this article offers
some practical suggestions for teaching about religion
in two different ways. First, it explores several strate-
gies for addressing the role of religion specifically in
the civil rights movement. Then it provides a number
of broader suggestions for thinking about how to
approach teaching about religious topics in secondary
classrooms.
1. Highlight the religious ideas expressed in texts
students already study
One of the easiest implementation strategies may
already be hiding in plain sight. As suggested above,
King’s religious beliefs are often imbedded in his most
famous speeches. Teachers could begin by simply
highlighting the ideas in texts they already use and ask
students to consider them as tenets rather than as
(mere) rhetoric.
In the Letter from Birmingham Jail, probably the
most frequently taught King text, he makes several
explicit theological points to his clergy audience. King
presents his religious views as the inevitable outwork-
ing of his basic identity. “I love the church. How could
THE SOCIAL STUDIES 49
I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of
being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of
preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ.
But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that
body through social neglect and through fear of being
nonconformists” (King, 1963, April 16). He uses
Augustine and Aquinas to justify civil disobedience.
He also compares his own role to several notable
Christian leaders, biblical and otherwise. He presents
himself as a contemporary prophet and, embracing
his opponents’ critique, calls himself an “extremist”
like Amos, Paul, and Martin Luther. Most daringly, he
compares himself to Jesus. Addressing the issue of suf-
fering, he recalls the experiences of martyrs in early
church history and equates the mistreatment of blacks
to the crucifixion. And he warns about the coming
judgment of God upon the church for its ambivalence
toward racial justice.
The “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered less than
five months later, also reflected King’s religious views.
As indicated in the introduction, King quotes the
prophet Isaiah directly in his vision of a coming age of
justice. The “stone of hope” hewn from a “mountain
of despair” echoes a prophetic dream in the Old Testa-
ment book of Daniel, where a small stone “cut from
the mountain not by hands” unexpectedly destroys
the world’s great empires, after which “the God of
heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be
destroyed.” In King’s application of this metaphor, the
kingdom represents the civil rights movement,
empowered by God, rather than human effort alone,
and destined to destroy the oppressive reigning order
and produce an era of peace. King’s proclamation that
“we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like
waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” echoes
one of his favorite texts, Amos 5:24. And his famous
speech ends by quoting a popular black hymn. More
than simple poetic language, these quotes and allu-
sions indicate the theological hopes and ethical con-
victions that fueled his ongoing drive for justice.
The last speech of King’s life, delivered the night
before he was murdered, provides the poignant self-
reflection of a prophet who sensed that he would die
before seeing his calling fulfilled. Returning repeatedly
to the biblical motifs of exile and deliverance, he
presents himself as a latter-day Moses who has
glimpsed the promised land but will not experience it
directly. Tempted to ask God for more time, he has
nevertheless reached contentment. “But I’m not
50 D. NEUMANN
concerned about that now, I just want to do God’s
will” (King, 1968, p. 7). Video and audio recordings of
King speeches are widely available online, and it can
be powerful for students to see or hear King’s delivery.
Various print editions of his speeches are also avail-
able, but it might be especially effective for students to
experience the immediacy and authenticity of actual
primary sources by viewing facsimile copies hosted at
The King Library and Archives in Atlanta or Stanford
University’s The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research
and Education Institute.
Teachers could certainly extend the use of docu-
ments beyond King to other leaders. The Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) con-
stitution, for example, articulated their philosophy of
nonviolence in religious terms, reflecting the way “reli-
gious language saturated” the movement’s early litera-
ture (Marsh, 2008, p. 3): “Love is the central motif of
nonviolence. Love is the force by which God binds
man to himself and man to man. Such love goes to the
extreme; it remains loving and forgiving even in the
midst of hostility” (Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, 1962). A facsimile copy of this and many
other documents from SNCC and other organizations
can be found at the Civil Rights Movement Veteransn
website.
2. Use biography to highlight the role of religious
faith
Apart from texts like Stride Toward Freedom, auto-
biographies and biographies provide a way of teaching
about religious faith in the movement. Accounts of
several pivotal leaders that discuss their religious con-
victions are widely available from public libraries or
for purchase. In her autobiography Quiet Strength
Rosa Parks echoed King’s conviction that God was the
source of her strength who drove away her fear. “I felt
the Lord would give me the strength to endure what-
ever I had to face,” she reflected. “God did away with
all my fear” (Parks and Reed, 1994, p. 17).
The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) like Ralph Abernathy, James
Bevel, Fred Shuttlesworth, C. T. Vivian, and Andrew
Young were, like King, ordained ministers driven by
their religious convictions. So was Reverend James
Lawson, who provided practical training in nonviolent
techniques to many in the movement. Bayard Rustin,
one of SCLC’s organizers, was fundamentally shaped
by his Quaker beliefs (Pace, 1987).
Many early SNCC leaders shared the religious con-
victions of SCLC leaders. John Lewis, an ordained
Baptist minister and perhaps the most famous SNCC
leader, said in a 2004 interview, “I’m deeply concerned
that many people today fail to recognize that the
movement was built on deep-seated religious convic-
tions. And the movement grew out of a sense of
faith—faith in God and faith in one’s fellow human
beings” (Lawton, 2004). Ella Baker’s beliefs were
deeply shaped by her Baptist mother and her preacher
grandfather (Ross, 2003, pp. 32–50). Diane Nash’s
scripture reading and prayer helped her endure her
monthlong incarceration (Ross, 2003, p. 202). Fanny
Lou Hamer linked racial equality to her understanding
of God. “Ain’t no such thing as I can hate anybody
and hope to see God’s face,” she explained (Ross,
2003, p. 115).
3. Explore the role of religious music as a source
of inspiration
Investigating songs within the movement offers
another means of exploring religious ideas. Movement
songs stirred the emotions, generated courage, and
provided a theological framework for the struggle.
Andrew Young explained that when activists were
“faced with innumerable and insuperable obstacles,”
they “could transcend those difficulties and forge a
new determination, a new faith and strength.” Music
was a gift, “a bottomless reservoir of spiritual power”
(Harvey, 2005, p. 172). During the Montgomery Bus
Boycott, protestors sang Baptist and Methodist hymns
and “Negro spirituals.” “One could not help but be
moved by these traditional songs,” King reflected
“which brought to mind the long history of the
Negro’s suffering” (Stride Toward Freedom, 86).
Songs, he said, were “the soul of the movement” (Why
We Can’t Wait, 48).
Returning to a familiar comparison between bond-
age and racial injustice, King explained that activists
“sing the freedom songs today for the same reason the
slaves sang them, because we too are in bondage and
the songs add hope to our determination that ‘We
shall overcome, Black and white together, We shall
overcome someday’’’ (King, Why, 86, cited in Songs).
“We Shall Overcome” became the “unofficial anthem
of the movement” (Songs). Wyatt T. Walker, executive

director of SCLC, said, ‘‘One cannot describe the vital-
ity and emotion this one song evokes across the
Southland. I have heard it sung in great mass meetings
with a thousand voices singing as one; I’ve heard a
half-dozen sing it softly behind the bars of the Hinds
County prison in Mississippi; I’ve heard old women
singing it on the way to work in Albany, Georgia; I’ve
heard the students singing it as they were being
dragged away to jail. It generates power that is inde-
scribable” (quoted in Songs). Younger civil rights acti-
vists in SNCC and elsewhere often updated the lyrics
to reflect current struggles. While the new lyrics often
took on a more secular cast, they never entirely lost
their spiritual roots. Various recordings are available
online or for purchase, the most notable of which is
probably the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
album, Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black
American Freedom Songs 1960–1966, available from
iTunes, which includes 44 songs.
4. Examine the role of black churches in the
movement
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was a central rallying
point for protestors during the Montgomery Bus Boy-
cott, reflecting the larger reality that “the black church
functioned as the institutional center of the modern
civil rights movement,” as Morris, 1984, p. 4 puts it.
Acts of terror against black churches, including the
1963 bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Bir-
mingham that killed four girls, provide grim evidence
that the Ku Klux Klan understood this role as well as
the protestors. In a segregated society the church was
one of the few black institutions that enjoyed auton-
omy from white control. As the daughter of one Bap-
tist minister later recalled, “you were more free to do
things in the church than any place else” (cited in Har-
vey, 2005, p. 176), which made it a crucial recruiting
center for labor unions and the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People. As Taylor
Branch explains in his Pulitzer prize-winning mono-
graph Parting the Waters (1989, p. 3), “all roads con-
verged at the Negro church. It served not only as a
place of worship but also as a bulletin board to a peo-
ple who owned no organs of communication, a credit
union to those without banks and even a kind of peo-
ple’s court. These and a hundred extra functions fur-
ther enhanced the importance of the minister,
creating opportunities and pressures that forged what
THE SOCIAL STUDIES 51
amounted to a new creature and caused the learned
skeptic W.E.B. Du Bois to declare…that ‘the preacher
is the most unique personality developed by the Negro
on American soil.’” The function of black churches as
political, social, and religious institutions challenges
the popular tendency to relegate religion to the private
sphere of the individual. Major histories of the move-
ment typically discuss the role of black churches in
the movement, including arguably the definitive work
on the movement, Branch’s three-volume series,
which includes Parting the Waters: America in the
King Years, 1954–1963; Pillar of Fire: America in the
King Years, 1963–1965; and At Canaan’s Edge:
America in the King Years, 1965–1968.
5. Include the role of religion among white
Southerners
Teachers should also consider exploring the views of
Southern whites. Some white Christian leaders sup-
ported the movement, such as the two ministers
involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. For his
efforts Robert Hughes, a Methodist minister with a
degree from Emory, ran afoul of the Methodist state
synod, the Klan, and the courts. Lutheran minister
Robert S. Graetz had his home bombed for his activ-
ism (Harvey, 2005, pp. 180–181). And white moder-
ates were challenged to examine their assumptions
about racial hierarchy for the first time. On balance,
however, most white Southern churches were actively
hostile to civil rights. In fact, Carolyn Ren
ee Dupont
(2013, p. 2) argues that the major white denomina-
tions of the South—Southern Baptists, Methodists,
and Presbyterians—all expressed “two great enthusi-
asms:” “ardent devotion to the Christian gospel and
equal zeal for what can only be described as white
supremacy.” Some racist ministers preached that the
“curse of Ham” rendered blacks inferior to whites and
warned about the dangers of race-mixing, which vio-
lated the separation of races originally designed by
God. But white Christian racism is not adequately
captured by the arguments of “a few unsophisticated
extremists;” instead, it must be seen through the
“often subtle articulation by more polished religious
leaders and prominent laymen” (p. 6). If black
churches provided institutional, theological, and moti-
vational resources to fight for justice, they were mir-
rored by racist white churches. While this is an
important and sobering topic, it might be challenging
52 D. NEUMANN
to incorporate into instruction. Primary sources are
not as abundant as those by civil rights leaders, and
teachers may be reluctant to devote space in a
crowded curriculum to first-person expressions of
hatred. Still, teachers could discuss the views of white
racists, including Christians, in lecture or in the con-
text of a larger classroom discussion.
Beyond these ideas for teaching specifically about reli-
gion and the civil rights movement, it is helpful to consider
broader ways to think about teaching religion in history
classrooms, both things to do and things to avoid. With a
nod toward the theme of this article, this section consoli-
dated these “shalls” and “shall nots” into ten statements,
though there is no suggestion that they should be consid-
ered commandments. Rather, these principles invite
reflection in recognition that religion is often a fraught
topic for teachers, students, and their parents alike.
1. “Know thyself”
In the spirit of Socrates’s injunction, teachers should
practice self-reflectiveness for their religious world-
views. Metacognition is a frequently discussed princi-
ple of teacher training programs and professional
development workshops, but it is nowhere more
pressing than when it comes to teaching religion.
Teachers sometimes implicitly assume that only stu-
dents (and their parents) have religious prejudices, but
of course we are all shaped by our particular religious
or antireligious convictions. More than one teacher
has used their classroom platform to denigrate beliefs
they don’t endorse, including religious beliefs. This
often happens subtly and unconsciously, which is pre-
cisely why active self-examination must take place.
Teachers should reflect on what their convictions are,
what their biases are likely to be, and how those biases
might manifest in their instruction. Teachers often ask
whether they should tell students their own beliefs.
There is probably no single correct answer to this
question; much depends on the type of class, the age
of the students, and the teachers’ relationship with
them. But whatever teachers decide, they should be
aware of their privileged position of power as instruc-
tors and the impact this might have on sharing their
personal beliefs with students.
2. Practice transparent instruction
Teachers should explicitly tell students what they will
be learning about and why the topic is important.
Conversely, instructors should be equally clear that
they will not proselytize students or ask them to par-
ticipate in religious rituals. Students often share the
same confusion as some teachers regarding the differ-
ence between teaching about religion and teaching
religion; many assume that any teaching about reli-
gion is unacceptable. Often, it is helpful to address this
topic head-on and dispel misunderstanding. Such a
discussion also provides an opportunity to explain
why religious topics are often essential for understand-
ing past and present societies. This kind of transpar-
ency can ease anxiety all-around—and save teachers
from responding to lots of concerned emails and
phone calls. Some teachers send home notes when
they teach about topics they may consider controver-
sial. Again, this is a matter of discretion, though teach-
ers should be reluctant to convey a sense of
defensiveness about addressing religious topics.
Instead, they could frankly acknowledge that many
topics in history can be controversial, that controversy
should be embraced, and that the teacher can help the
class safely navigate such topics.
3. Avoid student experts
When teachers find out that a student in their class is a
member of a particular religious tradition, especially a
minority tradition within the United States, they often
begin to treat this student as an expert in their tradi-
tion. This is problematic for a number of reasons. It
essentializes students as knowledgeable simply by vir-
tue of their identity, and it can be deeply embarrassing
to students to be singled out in this way. Also, many
students do not actually know much about their tradi-
tions, particularly when the topic is the historical ori-
gins and development of the religious tradition, rather
than current practices. There may be appropriate sit-
uations for students to share about the practices in
their religious tradition, provided that they volunteer
such information and that it is germane to the class.
Teachers’ tendency to fall into the student expert trap
most often stems from insecurity about their level of
command of the particular religious tradition being
discussed. But it is ultimately the teacher’s job to
teach, so lack of knowledge should be seen as a prob-
lem that needs to be addressed, rather than an inevita-
ble state of affairs one serenely accepts (see 10.
Educate thyself below).

4. Confront students’ prejudices
Most students implicitly understand that tolerance is a
strong American social value. So while they may make
the occasional offensive joke—which teachers should
address quickly and firmly—student prejudices often
appear in subtler ways. One way students tend to cri-
tique an unfamiliar tradition is by asking questions
that identify perceived contradictions. Sometimes this
stems from a sincere attempt to understand, but other
times is amounts to a kind of “Gotcha” implicitly
aimed at devaluing the religion. For example, my high
school students sometimes asked me how Buddhists
could long for nirvana if they were supposed to free
themselves from desire and attachment. Teachers can
address this issue explicitly at the beginning of their
instruction on a new religion by telling students that
all religions teach complex transcendent ideas and
often revel in paradoxes. If students have discovered
such a paradox in their first hour of learning about a
religion, they can be sure that the many intelligent
people who practice that religion are also aware of it.
Out of respect, they owe it to practitioners—who may
be their own classmates—to strive for holistic under-
standing of that faith as a plausible, coherent set of
beliefs.
5. Present religions historically
Teachers should strive to teach religions historically,
that is, as phenomena subject to change over time.
Religions “exist in time and space and are constantly
interpreted and reinterpreted by believers” (AAR Reli-
gion, 2010, p. 13). Failing to do so can create problems
in a number of areas. First, it can be a problem “mov-
ing forward” from the past to the present. If students
view beliefs as static, they may see religious adherents
as na€ıve or simplistic, unable to deal with the contem-
porary world. Practitioners of contemporary religions
are all aware of and live in the modern world, and reli-
gions survive by confronting new evidence and adapt-
ing in various ways. Failing to treat religions
historically can be a problem “moving backward” as
well, that is, in applying contemporary understandings
to earlier times. For example, the notion of choosing
one’s own beliefs is a given in most students’ assump-
tions about religious practice today. But this is by no
means universal; in the premodern world (and in
some cases today as well), religious identity was often
THE SOCIAL STUDIES 53
inherited or imposed and choice did not enter the
equation.
6. Reject a secular teleology
Articulated most persuasively in Berger’s 1967 The
Sacred Canopy, scholars for decades accepted the
notion that modernity and religion are incompatible
because modern conditions dismantle the “plausibility
structures” that support it in premodern circumstan-
ces. Two decades ago, Berger (1999, p. 2) retracted
this argument, acknowledging that “the assumption
that we live in a secularized world is false. The world
today, with some exceptions…is as furiously religious
as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever.”
But earlier secularization notions remain popular
among non-experts. It is true that religion has become
increasingly privatized under modern conditions and
that in the last decade formal religious adherence has
declined in the United States. But American religious
activity remains high and belief in the divine even
higher. More importantly, substantial evidence indi-
cates that religion remains a powerful global force.
According to the Pew Research Center (2017), roughly
85% of the world’s population remains part of an
identifiable religion. Teachers need to resist providing
a teleological secularization narrative, particularly
when that narrative has a triumphalist tone. For
example, in teaching about intellectual developments
like the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment
teachers should avoid descriptions that imply the
inevitable downfall of religious belief.
7. Strive for nuance
“In schools and in popular culture, faith traditions are
often presented,” as the AAR (2010, p. 12) points out,
“as a single set of beliefs, practices, and representations
without internal variation.” Teachers should routinely
strive to teach “against the grain” (Neumann, 2013),
countering students’ preconceptions and inviting
them to understand the past with more complexity.
This notion has important implications for simplistic
assumptions about religion. Teachers could begin by
identifying places in their course content that might
be especially prone to stereotyping and search for
counterexamples. Pernicious stereotypes about Islam
as inherently violent and opposed to cultural develop-
ment could be countered by examples of cultural,
scientific, and artistic achievements in the Abbasid
54 D. NEUMANN
empire and relative tolerance in the Ottoman and
Mughal empires. In the United States, when teachers
cover the Scopes Trial, they could point out that not
all Christians were fundamentalists who rejected evo-
lution. Regarding contemporary debates over abortion
and gay marriage, students should know that many
religious groups adopt a more liberal stance than ster-
eotypes would suggest. Teachers may rightly worry
that too much nuance can create confusion, but they
still need to routinely provide examples that make
clear that the central narrative is not the entire story.
8. Contextualize religious activities
History teachers commonly use mnemonic devices
like “PERSIA” to help students identify different cate-
gories as they read or review content. Heuristically,
this is useful for analysis, but the “hermeneutical
cycle” must be completed by reassembling the parts
into a coherent whole again. In practical terms, this
means asking students to consider relationships
between different categories. Religion is often treated
as an entirely independent factor that does not
impinge on other elements of a society. In premodern
societies, however, what we now call religion was
seamlessly interwoven into various dimensions of life.
In ancient Rome, for example, religion touched on
politics, as civic duty required honoring the gods. Reli-
gion had a social function, because the gods were hon-
ored in the household and various ceremonies bound
communities and family members together. And the
economy was deeply shaped by the presence of a
priestly class, artisans who made ritual objects, and
producers whose animals, grain, and wine were used
in sacrifices. Even in the modern world the privatiza-
tion of religion should not be taken too far. Whenever
religion is addressed in the classroom, teachers should
underscore the point that “religions are influenced by
cultures while also influencing cultures” (AAR Reli-
gion, 20120, p. 14).
9. Look for opportunities
Religion has historically been one key element of
human experience. So rather than simply hoping to
navigate the shoals of controversy in teaching about
religion, instructors should actively look for opportuni-
ties to teach about it. In world history, religious topics
are hard to avoid. The spread of global religions like
Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism religions is often a
significant topic. But religion has been significant
throughout American history as well. Religion could be
explored during every significant moment of the Amer-
ican past: pre-Columbian societies, the differences in
European and Indian religious worldviews at the point
of encounter, religious factors in the American Revolu-
tion, evangelical and Unitarian involvement in antebel-
lum reform, the Social Gospel as a response to
industrialization, and the emergence of the New Right
are just a few examples. Teachers could also point out
the religious dimensions of current events, from
debates about Muslim women wearing veils and “bur-
kinis” in France, to persecution of the Rohingya minor-
ity in Myanmar, to Hindu nationalist efforts to make
International Yoga Day an annual holiday. The Pew
Research Center’s Religion and Public Life website
offers many resources for teaching about contemporary
religious trends, providing outstanding data and analy-
sis of religious issues within the United States and
around the world.
10. Educate thyself
Finally, because this section began with a call for
teachers to learn about themselves, it will conclude
with an exhortation to learn about others. There are
few places where the demand for deepening content
knowledge is more pressing than with religion. Given
the volume of misinformation on religious topics
available online, it behooves teachers to be wary about
where they obtain their information. Wikipedia must
be used cautiously, because entries may reflect the
commitments of contributors interested in contempo-
rary practice or who do not recognize the historical
nature of religion. To avoid ahistorical or anachronis-
tic understandings, teachers turn to published books
by identified scholars in their fields. Teachers might
invest in individual encyclopedias of the various reli-
gions covered in their courses. They could also explore
shorter stand-alone books. Oxford University Press’s
Very Short Introductions are less than 150 pages and
often include charts, images, and primary source
excerpts. Books in I. B. Taurus’s Introduction to Reli-
gion are longer but still remain relatively brief. Books
in both series explain religious tenets in clear language
without being simplistic. Both sets offer recommenda-
tions for further reading, though many teachers will
find the books themselves sufficient for their own
instruction.
 THE SOCIAL STUDIES 55

Conclusion great sacrifice and efforts toward justice. In the case

study presented here, the goal is not to encourage stu-
Nearly 30 years ago, more than a dozen educational
dents to agree or disagree with King’s theological ideas
and religious organizations drafted a joint statement
but to understand how these ideas motivated his actions.
that concluded that “Omission of facts about religion
For some students the most salutary outcome of the les-
can give students the false impression that the reli-
son might be grappling with the dissonance they experi-
gious life of humankind is insignificant or unimpor-
ence if they do not find his religious views compelling
tant” (Religion in the public school curriculum, 1990,
but still admire his courageous actions.
p. 310). Since the release of this paper, state standards
The effort to intentionally and thoughtfully teach reli-
documents and textbooks have gradually included
gion could contribute to a badly needed effort to incul-
more coverage of religion, but teachers often still shy
cate genuine tolerance among students. Civil discourse
away from the subject, prompting the need for a reaf-
is not fostered simply by identifying core principles
firmation of the importance of teaching about religion.
everyone shares, though that is certainly an important
The National Council for the Social Studies, 2014
element. Meaningful civic engagement must also invite
position statement Study about religions in the social
thoughtful, critical engagement with disparate ideas,
studies curriculum affirms that “study about religions
including what are, for many people, the most heavily
should be an essential part of the social studies curric-
freighted ideas. As Barton and Levstik (2004, p. 40)
ulum. Knowledge about religions is not only a charac-
point out in Teaching History for the Common Good,
teristic of an educated person but is necessary for
democratic citizenship—“citizenship that is participatory,
effective and engaged citizenship in a diverse nation
pluralist, and deliberative”—is a contentious process that
and world. Religious literacy dispels stereotypes, pro-
requires the kind of preparation that history instruction
motes cross-cultural understanding, and encourages
provides. “[T]he study of history is especially well suited
respect for the rights of others to religious liberty”
for such preparation because it allows students to ‘drink
(National Council for the Social Studies, 2014).
at the great wells of human experience’—a process that
The American Academy of Religion’s Guidelines for
has potential both to develop reasoned judgment and to
teaching about religion in K–12 public schools in the
promote an expanded view of history.” Few individuals
United States (2010) argues that religious illiteracy is
provide a better model for helping us move toward
widespread and fuels intolerance; conversely, this illit-
democratic citizenship and greater tolerance than Mar-
eracy “be diminished by teaching about religion in
tin Luther King, Jr.
public schools using a non-devotional, academic per-
spective.” This document provides excellent guidance
for navigating this challenging issue. Among other References
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