“Martin Luther King’s Choices and Ours” – Dr. Vincent Harding

Dr. Vincent Harding engages a discussion around the themes of a quote by MLK and Matthew 25: 31 -40.

I choose to identify with the underprivileged.
I choose to identify with the poor.
I choose to give my life for the hungry.
I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity.
I choose to live for and with those who find themselves seeing life as a long and desolate corridor with no exit sign.
This is the way I’m going.
If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way.
If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way.
If it means dying for them, I’m going that way, because
I heard a voice saying, ‘Do something for others.’
           –Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. Vincent Harding is a celebrated Civil Rights leader and scholar who was a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr. and the first director of the King Center in Atlanta. Harding also worked closely with Mennonites during the early 1960s, directing the “Mennonite House” in Atlanta from 1961-1964. In 1967, Harding drafted King’s important and controversial “Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam” speech. He is the author of several books on the Civil Rights Movement, was the senior academic advisor for the PBS documentary “Eyes on the Prize” series, and in 1997 he founded the Veterans of Hope Project which collects the stories of people who dedicated their lives to compassionate social change. In 2011 he engaged in a panel with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Sister Helen Prejean and this inspired his 2013 book, America Will Be!: Conversations on Hope, Freedom, and Democracy, co-authored with Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda.
The entire campus community is invited to every chapel service on campus. Eastern Mennonite Seminary hosts chapel gatherings in Martin Chapel every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 11:00.