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The interesting question, which Warren doesn't address, is how King modified the language he borrowed from others. For example, how did his focus on liberation and the love of enemy refocus Protestant preaching in his day? How did King put his own stamp on his public preaching of the gospel?

Likewise, a catalog of King's figures of speech, though interesting to the student of rhetoric, does not answer the question of how King's gorgeous rhetoric functioned on the big stage of American politics and religion. Was he merely speaking over the head of his audiences? Or by the beauty of his language was he lending nobility to what was often a sweaty and dangerous struggle? And how did King's many intellectual and poetic allusions knit together white liberals and moderates? There is more complexity to King's strategy of language than meets the eye.

Warren says the underlying theme of King's sermons was that all people should live together "in equal personhood." In the last decade of research, however, we have witnessed a growing recognition of King's powerful, prophetic anger. David Garrow meticulously documented it in his biography of King, and James Cone suggested that King and Malcolm X were on a converging path when they died.

In the last three years of his life, after Selma and in the agony of the Vietnam War, something turned in King. He quit repeating the platitudes he had inherited from liberal philosophy and theology and assumed the posture of the angry prophet. He issued denunciations of America that would have been unthinkable earlier in his career. He accused his own country and the white church of endemic racism. He intimated genocide in Vietnam. The topic of his final sermon (which he did not live to preach) was "Why America May Go to Hell."

Warren's book offers useful insights into the sermons of Martin Luther King. But I wish it had taken into account the later, more confrontational King as well, the prophet whose outrage defies quantitative analysis. This King, too, demands our passionate response.

Richard Lischer teaches at Duke University Divinity School. He is the author of The Preacher King. His most recent book is Open Secrets (Doubleday), a memoir of his first pastorate.

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

King Came Preaching is available at Christianbook.com.

Richard Lischer's The Preacher King is available at Amazon.com. The book was reviewed by Christianity Today sister publication Books and Culture in "Jesus in Mississippi" and "The Burden of the Black Leader."

Previous Christianity Today articles on Martin Luther King, Jr. include:

Martin Luther King, Jr.: A History | No Christian played a more prominent role in the century's most significant social justice movement than Martin Luther King, Jr. (Jan. 17, 2000)

Catching Up With a Dream | Evangelicals and Race 30 Years After the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr. (March 2, 1998)

She Has a Dream, Too | Bernice King talks about her father's death, her call to ministry, and what the church still needs to do about racism. (June 16, 1997)

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January (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46