The best part about reading Letter from Birmingham Jail and The Service of Faith and Promotion of
Justice in congruence with one another was the juxtaposition of
perspective. Father Peter Hans
Kolvenbach comes from a position of esteem, respect, and whether we like to
admit it or not, social and, yes, racial hierarchy. King, although verily equal in intellect, wit, and rhetoric
to Kolvenbach, is articulating social ideals and arguing for the implementation
of just practices, like Kolvenbach, but writes from the perspective of one
representing the target group.
Thus, we as readers, must understand, that King’s rhetoric and appeal
takes on a different meaning than Kolvenbach’s.
Both discuss “home” in some sense
no doubt. Kolvenbach largely
discusses a “home” or “identity” that is well established. His propositions regarding the
promotion of justice in Jesuit higher education aim to strengthen a homeland
that already exists (but does not yet wholly exist, in his opinion). In regard to this bolstering of one’s
homeland or identity, Kolvenbach says: “…The faith dimension was too often
presumed and left implicit, as if our identity as Jesuits were enough. Some rushed headlong towards the
promotion of justice without much analysis or reflection and with only
occasional reference to the justice of the Gospel. They seemed to consign the service of faith to a dying past.
[…] The Lord has patiently been teaching us to serve faith that does justice in
a more integral way” (28-29). This
very idea of “a faith that does justice” is the idea that Kolvenbach uses to
attribute meaning to the homeland that is Jesuit higher education. He revises it—he, in a sense, draws up
a new blueprint, a new schema, for this home.
King, being, as I mentioned before,
of the target group, needs to start at square one. He must, at a very basic level, tell his audience of white
clergymen: “Hey, this is my home
too.” Before getting on par with
Kolvenbach—at a place where he can recognize his homeland and attribute further
meaning to it—he must ensure that his homeland really is his. King believes
that his home cannot be his if all people do not recognize it. He says: “I am cognizant of the
interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about
what happens in Birmingham.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network
of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny” (1). Like Kolvenbach, he makes a call for a
stronger implementation of justice in his homeland, but unlike Kolvenbach, he
asks for a sort of justice, which, at a very fundamental level, gives him a
homeland.
The two men believe that home
and/or one’s identity necessitates the incorporation and promotion of
justice. It is perspective that
separates the two. Having agency
(like Kolvenbach) allows an individual to recognize their homeland and call on
others to attribute meaning to it.
As a target, though, one may wish for the promotion of justice, but it
comes from a different place, a place of suppression, in which one must ask for
the right to claim their homeland before asking for anything else.
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