I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Rev. Dr. James M. Lawson, Jr. this week while attending the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference in St. Petersberg, Florida.
One may ask, who is Dr. Lawson?
He is the architect of nonviolence in the 1960's Civil Rights Movement.
Dr. Lawson states,"It was a sanctifying moment for my life then, because I realized there was a Christian history, a long tradition, of some people - through oftentimes not the hierarchy nor the theologians, and often not the pastors preaching and teaching it - but that there was, based on the life of Jesus, that edge of people who insisted that love was all embracing and all compelling, that therefore in the spirit of love and the spirit of Jesus one could not resist evil by imitating the evil, but by seeking to over-come evil with good. I recognized that the battle against racism and segregation would be one of my concerns as a pastor, as a follower of Jesus, And I understood myself then as wanting to perhaps work in the South one day." He went to work in the South and became a confidant of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and informed him about the potential power of nonviolence as a strategy. He trained untold numbers of people in this Christian tactic that is recognized all around the world as a tool by the poor against the powerful.
Meeting and talking with him was a blessing indeed!
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