After the assassination of Dr. King, Wheaton College decided to hold a memorial for the Civil Rights leader. Conservative white pastors were angry. Tim LaHaye of the “Left Behind” books fame, wrote the letter below to Wheaton in protest when he was a pastor.

The truth of the matter is that while even I want to post quotes from Dr. King, I would have probably been more like Tim LaHaye in that day, knowing the denomination I grew up in and their stance at that time. We will cherry pick our favorite “whitewashed” quotes from Dr. King and ignore the ones we are uncomfortable with. As more conservative white clergy in our day, we would be uncomfortable with the total package of Dr. King even today.

We are still uneven in our approach to civil rights in this country. We are still uneven in our support of people not like us.

I love Dr. King. I want to honor Dr. King, and I will today. But I still have to keep learning 364 other days of the year. I have to hear my Black friends and understand their pain and perspective, their hopes and dreams. I truly want to know.

So I will be present for my friends today. And try to refrain from posting quotes that just may ring hollow.

Dr. King speaks to me, and I feel the sting of the rebuke, when he penned this to moderate white ministers in Birmingham from the jail:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.