{"id":19557,"date":"2020-12-02T09:30:48","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T14:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19557"},"modified":"2020-12-02T09:30:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T14:30:48","slug":"spirituality-in-the-civil-rights-movement%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19557","title":{"rendered":"Spirituality in the Civil Rights Movement\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Spirituality and Social\nMovements<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Spirituality\nin the Civil Rights Movement<\/strong><br>\nWednesday, December 2, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/g02mOpdNDtY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>The\ndeeply spiritual foundation of the Civil Rights movement is often\nunderemphasized. The movement that sought political and legal equality for\nBlack Americans was grounded in faith. The devout Christian commitment of\nvirtually all its leaders, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Fannie Lou Hamer to\nJohn Lewis, inspired them to work for the dignity and equality of all.\nRosemarie Freeney Harding (1930\u20132004), the wife of civil rights leader Vincent\nHarding (1931-2014), recalls the power of the Holy Spirit working in the\nmovement during that time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One\nof the most exciting things for me about being in the freedom movement was\ndiscovering other people who were compelled by the Spirit at the heart of our\norganizing work, and who were also interested in the mysticism that can be\nnurtured in social justice activism. We experienced something extraordinary in\nthe freedom movement, something that hinted at a tremendous potential for love\nand community and transformation that exists here in this scarred, spectacular\ncountry. For many of us, that \u201csomething\u201d touched us in the deepest part of our\nselves and challenged us in ways both personal and political.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\nwas an energy moving in those times. Something other than just sit-ins and\nvoter registration and Freedom Schools. Something represented by these signal\nefforts but broader. As I traveled around the country in the sixties, it seemed\nto me that the nation\u2014from the largest community to the smallest\u2014was permeated\nwith hope; the idea that people can bring about transformation; that what we do\nmatters. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Martin\nand Coretta [King] and Anne Braden and Ella Baker and others like them had a\nbeautiful effect on people who spent time with them. Living and working in\ntheir presence hastened changes in your own thoughts, your reactions, your\npriorities; even if you weren\u2019t always cognizant of the shift. . . . Being\nconstantly in the presence of people who lived so fervently in the power of\nnonviolence, who believed and acted from the understanding that love and\nforgiveness were essential tools for social justice; being surrounded by people\nlike that fed those commitments in me, in many of us. And it infused the\nnation. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For\na lot of people in the Movement, our participation gave us a craving for\nspiritual depth. . . . Sometimes not knowing what was right or wrong in a\nsituation, they had to be quiet about it. Had to go somewhere and just meditate\nabout it. Pray on it. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Rosemarie Harding\u2019s description of\nthe Spirit working within the young people of the Civil Rights movement reminds\nme of my time with the New Jerusalem Community where we also sang, prayed, and\ntrusted that God would speak to us\u2014and God did!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spirituality and Social Movements Spirituality in the Civil Rights Movement Wednesday, December 2, 2020 The deeply spiritual foundation of the Civil Rights movement is often underemphasized. The movement that sought political and legal equality for Black Americans was grounded in faith. The devout Christian commitment of virtually all its leaders, from Martin Luther King, Jr. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19557"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19557"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19561,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19557\/revisions\/19561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}