Martin Luther King on the Relationship between Politics and Religion

Much has been written in the Jewish Journal (click here) these past few weeks about the place of political sermons on bimas.  Rabbi Stern also wrote a response (click here, scroll down) The Social Justice Committee believes that issues of grave concern to the community must be addressed in a respectful and non-partisan way.  The words from Martin Luther King below provide an essential rationale.

   …any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the economic conditions that damn the soul, the social conditions that corrupt men, and the city governments that cripple them, is a dry, dead, do-nothing religion in need of new blood. For it overlooks the basic fact that man is a biological being with a physical body. This must stand as a principle in any doctrine of man.    -- Martin Luther King, Jr., The Measure of a Man, Minneapolis: Fortress Press (1959), p. 12