Reflection on Chapter 4 of Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder
God Will Fight For Us

In the last chapter Yoder and Trochme considered this passage in Matthew "If you pardon others for their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you do not forgive others, your father will not pardon your offenses."

In my last reflection I suggested that at the time this was said, its hearers would have had the word equations in their head "forgiveness of sin"= "release from debt" = "release from bondage." Jews of that time, (and of modern times too), would have also understood salvation in a communal sense. Since we don’t naturally have these equations in our head, we have to make them explicit in translation to get these ideas across. We are also biased towards interpreting sin individually instead of socially and need to make the social aspects explicit. Doing this we wind up with a translation like "If we order our community in a way that is a forerunner to the beloved community (by enacting the Jubilee for example) then God will save us from those that oppress us. If we do not order our community in this way, but instead try to gain salvation by the same means that other nations do (military alliances, etc), we should not expect God to save us."

In Chapter 4, Yoder describes several incidents in the Hebrew Bible in which this way of understanding salvation is manifest. In these stories, the Jews in a time of crisis obey God’s will and God intervenes on the Jews’ behalf, using one aspect of fallen creation to defeat another. In the Exodus story Pharaoh’s horsemen and chariots are hurled into the sea, in the story of Deborah a storm causes the enemy’s chariots to be stuck in the mud, in other stories enemies of Israel come to blows among themselves. God’s salvation in these stories is for Israel as a community and it is portrayed as part of history. Yoder writes "We have every reason to assume that the inauguration of the jubilee was understood by Jesus’s hearers with the same concreteness as the Exodus story or the deliverance of Jehoshaphat had for them."

This is good evidence for the idea that the community around Jesus would have understood salvation to be liberation from the Roman invaders. But it does so by drawing attention to the troubling fact that there are many instances in which God offers salvation in the Bible through violence. Many Christian pacifists do a selective reading of the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible that leaves them with the impression that God of the Hebrew Bible is violent and God of the New Testament is non-violent. This allows them to disregard the violence of God as something not relevant to the new age introduced by Jesus. But Yoder cautions against this. Yoder is saying that Jesus’s nonviolence was at least partially motivated by Hebrew Bible stories that portray God using violence and that this idea of God is as strongly present in the New Testament as it is in the Hebrew Bible. If we want to read the New Testament in a way closer to Jesus’s hearers would have understood it, we should read it with a conception of God that is informed by these Hebrew Bible stories and the interpretations given to them by the prophets.

As a pacifist inspired by the idea of the coherence of means and ends, I want Judaism and Christianity to unambiguously motivate pacifism by saying: "We should love because God loves. We should forgive because God forgives. We should be non-violent because God is nonviolent." But Yoder challenges us by showing ample examples for a Biblical pacifism founded on a different conception of God. In these stories God is the only legitimate user of violence. For us to use violence to attempt to achieve salvation is idolatrous and is doomed to failure because violence cannot be used by humans in a way that brings salvation. The Jewish Publication Society translation of Exodus 15.3 is "The Lord, the Warrior" which indicates that the title of warrior is for God alone. The NRSV "The Lord is a warrior" misses this. Even in those Bible stories where God does call on Israel to use violence, it often occurs after the salvation event and it is clear that this violence is not responsible for Israel’s salvation.

The idea that the use of violence in human hands does not bring salvation but that violence in the hands of God can bring salvation is consistent with the conception of God and people expressed in many New Testament passages, such as the one I led off this reflection with. We are obliged to forgive but God doesn’t have to forgive and sometimes won’t. The rules that we should abide by as members of the covenant community are not the same rules that God operates by.

Yoder does not say that other motivations for pacifism such as "We should be nonviolent because God is nonviolent" cannot be found in the Bible. These ideas can be found in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. As an example, Paul quotes from Proverbs when he says that only good can overcome evil. But Yoder’s goal in this chapter is to show that the holy war stories can be interpreted with a nonviolent meaning as well. These stories were told to and written for a violent people (who were just like us) to lead them away from violence. The prophets, at the time of impending military invasions, used these stories to council against Israel’s involvement in military alliances, to leave the warrior stuff to God. God would save Israel provided that Israel devoted itself fully to following God’s commandments to caring for orphans and widows and towards creating the beloved community. These stories can still serve that purpose today. But to modern liberal ears, stories that seem to conflate God with the means of the domination system can be pretty jarring. There was an interesting episode of This American Life recently in which a woman described her growing disbelief in the God portrayed in the Bible. Many of the stories that drove her towards atheism are the stories that say that God saves us by the methods of the domination system. The Bible is written by people and therefore it is marred by the domination system. Any stories that portray God in league with domination or endorsing the violence committed by Israel (not to mention sexism and slavery and a whole bunch of other really bad stuff), we can interpret as Israel justifying its violent actions by attributing them to God’s will. But just because we believe a text is marred by the domination system doesn’t mean it has nothing to teach us. What I like so much about Yoder is that his conception of the Bible prevents him from throwing any part of it away, even when he acknowledges that it is marred by domination. So Yoder has to wrestle with every text and always manages to find some wisdom in the very texts that on a first reading I would have been tempted to have thrown away as utterly wrong headed.

The idea that "God is nonviolent" and the idea that "God is the only legitimate purveyor of violence" appear to be based on incompatible conceptions of God. But the two seemingly contradictory concepts lead to precisely the same actions by us individually and communally as members of the faith community. The Bhagavad Gita also has multiple and seemingly contradictory conceptions of God in different parts of the text, some of which do not appear compatible with the idea of the coherence of means and ends. I wonder what Gandhi had to say about this. How do you deal with these different conceptions of God in the Bible?

Reflection on Chapter 3 of The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder
The implications of the Jubilee

Andre Trocme and Le Chambon
Yoder adapts this chapter almost word for word from the chapter with the same title in the book Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution by Andre Trocme. It is available as a free download from The Bruderhoff. During WWII, Trocme and the people of Le Chambon in Southern France, where Trocme was the minister, gave refuge to thousands of Jews who were making their way on the Underground Railroad to Switzerland. Le Chambon became a community living as close to Jesus's principles of a nonviolent community as any community has ever done. You can get a taste of Trocme and Le Chambon and the underground railroad in the new introduction to Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution and in Lest Innocent Blood be Shed by Philip Hallie. I have never seen it, but I understand that the documentary about Trocme and Le Chambon, Weapons of the Spirit, is excellent. I wonder if Trocme and Yoder were friends. Yoder served with the Mennonite Central Committee in France after WWII where there would have been ample opportunities for the two to meet since they traveled in the same Christian pacifist circles.

Jesus’s Prayer
The premise of this chapter is that Jesus inaugurated a community that would adopt the liberatory practices of the Jubilee as described in the Hebrew Bible. One of the jubilee prescriptions is the periodic remission of debt, and since chronic indebtedness led to enslavement, remission of debt would also mean liberation from slavery (although for real liberation from slavery one needed more than just remission from debt, since lack of assets will lead one back into indebtedness and slavery. This is why the jubilee also called for redistribution of capital). The remission of debt figured so prominently in Jesus’s theology that it is central to his prayer "remit us our debts as we have also remitted them to our debtors." The Greek word aphiemi that Yoder translates as remit can also mean liberate or release and is the word used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible in the jubilee passages. I think that the connection of indebtedness and bondage were so tied together in Jesus’s time that we loose the meaning of the prayer unless we also keep both in our heads when we are reading it. One gets interesting insights when one makes the replacements: forgiveness of sins = remission of debt = release from bondage in new testament texts. (I read somewhere that in Aramaic the words for sin and debt are the same. Since indebtedness led to slavery, then if all this is true then the parallel readings that I am suggesting will bring us closer to the way Jesus’s disciples would have understood his words.) The association of forgiveness of sin and release from bondage has been well understood by modern prophets as well.

I shall be released - Bob Dylan
They say everything can be replaced,
Yet every distance is not near.
So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.

They say every man needs protection,
They say every man must fall.
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Some place so high above this wall.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.

Standing next to me in this lonely crowd,
Is a man who swears he's not to blame.
All day long I hear him shout so loud,
Crying out that he was framed.
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now,
I shall be released.

Using the equation that forgiveness of sin = release from bondage, the statements in the gospels saying that God will not forgive our offenses unless we forgive those of others turns into statements about when we dominate others we place ourselves in a kind of bondage too. We free ourselves from this bondage when we live with others in a way that liberates others. The domination system has a way of using our own domination of others as a weapon against us. We gain a little freedom by refusing the domination system the use of this weapon.

Perhaps a translation close to the way Jesus’s listeners might have heard his prayer is "Release us from the bondage of the domination system as we practice a community life free from domination." The good news is that our liberation from the bondage of the domination system is at hand. The key to living in freedom is to be the change that we wish to see in the world and to liberate those under our domination. We can start today to live in an intentional community not driven by domination. The prayer takes as given that we have freed others from bondage and released others from debt before we ask God for anything.The prayer is a prayer for and about a faith community striving to be domination free. It uses "us" never "I" or "me." It is a prayer about social salvation not privatized salvation accounts.

Of course, the domination system will still victimize people and make them suffer, no matter how liberatory they are towards others. Sometimes we perceive no alternative to suffering that doesn’t involve coercion or violence. In this case our refusal to use the methods of the domination system compel us to accept suffering. As a suffering servant we at least have the solace that our suffering is benefiting the liberation of others in ways indiscernible by us. The final passage of Jesus’ prayer is a plea that it will not be our lot to be suffering servants. Jesus prays with the same sentiment the evening of his capture "My father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want." We must be prepared to take up the cross and we need to study and pray hard to accept it if necessary but we should not be ashamed to pray that we won’t have to. Ultimately our prayers and our liberation of others are no guarantee of our community’s own absolute freedom, only the freedom from the domination that we would experience if our community was structured like any other.

The Parable of the Merciless Servant.
Yoder and Trocme use these ideas to explain the parable of the merciless servant. I feel this parable gains from the context of the question that Peter puts to Jesus in which Jesus gives this parable as an answer. In Mathew 8:15-20 Jesus describes rules for community governance in which the violence and coercion of the domination system are entirely absent. But how do you make people do good if there is no recourse to violence or coercion? This is the point of Peter's question when he asks "Lord, if a member of the faith community sins (against me [in another book Yoder point out that these two words are not in earliest versions of the text]) how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?" Jesus says to him, "Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times." Jesus then tells the parable of the merciless servant which I believe he does as warning to show the consequences of a merciless community and merciless community leaders by giving an example of the domination system in action, where forgiveness is a scarce commodity. It is my belief that the human king in this parable should be understood to be the embodiment of the domination system, not God. When Jesus says that "the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who..." I think what is meant is "the kingdom of heaven may be contrasted against a king who..." Sometimes we can learn something about an ideal by studying its opposite. The confluence of earthly kings with God, when the intention is to associate the earthly king with the domination system and to contrast this with God is symptomatic of church that is corrupted by the dominations system. Even Yoder and Trocme make this mistake in interpreting this parable.

The parable starts with the wicked king demanding payment from a slave who can’t possible pay what is owed. The level of debt is insane, equal to 15,000 years of labor according to my annotated NRSV. The king knows that the slave can’t possible pay and orders him and his wife and children to be sold. The slave begs not to be sold and the king released him from his debt. But the slave knows that he has been saved by a whim of the king and this is only a temporary reprieve. It is an action of false charity designed to glorify the Kings power. It is not real justice. It is a false mercy. Without assets the slave will sink back into debt and he and his wife and family will almost certainly suffer the risk of being sold again. This could even happen tomorrow if the King awakens from the wrong side of bed. The King’s forgiveness is not real. It can be revoked at any time for any reason. So the slave does the only thing he can think to do and demands payment from another slave who owes him an amount of money equal to one hundred days of labor. In his anger and desperation he seizes the other slave by the throat but the second slave can’t pay either and the first slave puts the second in prison. The first slave continues to use the tools of the domination system and so his own freedom is transitory. The very thing that he was trying to prevent through the use of domination comes to pass. The king is angered by the slave’s mercilessness and hands the slave over to torturers, where he will be tortured to death and presumably his wife and children will still be sold into slavery to pay off the debt. If the king in the parable is God then the parable says be merciful to others or God won’t be merciful to you. But this does not make sense as an answer to Peter’s question in the context that he asked it. The parable is directed at Peter, a leader of the faith community who just asked Jesus how many times he should forgive community member transgressions instead of using the tools of the domination system for keeping order. Jesus isn’t telling Peter "Don’t be like that slave." He is telling Peter "Don’t be like that king." When others are not merciful you should still be merciful to them. Otherwise the community will suffer the ills of the domination system. The temptations and self righteousness that comes from judging others from a position of power will lead you to gross injustice and will cause enormous pain in the community which will make the community a reflection of the old society instead of the new. Instead be merciful and leave vengence in God's hands.

Reflection on Chapter 2 Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder
The Kingdom Coming

Yoder opens the chapter with the yearnings of Mary, Zechariah, and John for God to save the Jews through political and social deliverance from oppression, as God has done in the past. Mary says "..he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty." Messiah means anointed and refers to the King who will rid the land of Judea from the foreign occupier and bring about a new kingdom where peace and justice will be realized on this earth. The Messianic expectation, whatever else it was, was certainly focused on social change in this world. It appears as if the Constantinian approach to Christianity would have us believe that the Jews were wrong to have this expectation of what a Messiah is for and that Jesus really came for spiritual reasons of some kind. Yoder argues that if this were the intention of Luke, he would have indicated it in the text somewhere. Instead the text is filled with examples of political oppression. Yoder argues that it is not the expectation of social change that is misplaced but the means by which this social change is to occur that Jesus clarifies. This tension between means and ends is dramatically presented in the temptation narrative.

Yoder presents the three temptations in the wilderness as canonical temptations that a would-be Messiah would face when trying to liberate his people from oppression. They are the temptations that any social change leader faces. All of the temptations involve using means that are inconsistent with the desired ends. Yoder portrays the temptation account as a forerunner to Jesus’s public ministry. Each temptation that Jesus faces in the wilderness, he is to face again. The temptation, to turn the stones to bread, refers to Jesus’s temptation to gain a following by means of satisfying the desperate economic needs of the people. It is not wrong to feed people who are hungry. But charity should not be mistaken for justice. It is a temptation because charity is safe while working for real justice inevitably puts one’s life at risk. But working for justice is an essential aspect of the beloved community. When Jesus does feed the thousands, immediately afterwards he preaches very hard sayings about the costs of discipleship, including the expectation of capital punishment for seditious acts against the state.

Bread and Roses
by James Oppenheim inspired by the 1912 walkout of textile workers in Lawrence Mass.

As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!

As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses.

As we go marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread.
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew.
Yes, it is bread we fight for, but we fight for roses too.

As we go marching, marching, we bring the greater days,
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler, ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and roses, bread and roses.

The second temptation is the one where Jesus is offered Kingship by means of the devil, the spirit of the domination system. The temptation is to take power as most revolutionary leaders do, through violence, and to hold power through the normal means of violence, coercion, hierarchy, and inequitable distribution of power. Yoder thinks that this was Jesus’s most powerful temptation. Many of his followers believed that the Romans needed to be fought with violence. There had been short-lived victories in the past. The bible can be read in a way that suggests that God intends to liberate Judea through a violent revolt. Plus the ability to do good once in power seems well worth the cost to get there. Nowadays this temptation to go to war for peace, justice, and democracy is called Just War theory. But it doesn’t work. Satan cannot be cast out by means of Satan. The universe is so constructed that only good can overcome evil. Only love can overcome hatred. Only truth can overcome falseness. Jesus refuses to use violent means to bring about a peaceful future and he refuses to use social structures based on domination and coercion to bring about a beloved community. Yoder thinks that Jesus is faced with the temptation to use violence and domination most compellingly when he has overturned the tables at the temple and the people are with him. They could storm the Roman fortress across the street but do not. I think that Jesus and his followers are faced with this temptation as Jesus leads the huge procession from Jericho to Jerusalem and his thinking is described in Luke 19.11 in which kingship leads to a social order where people retain positions of power by exploiting others and murdering dissidents. Jesus leads the people to the temple instead of the Roman fortress because one must overcome oppression not by using violence against it and using unjust structures, but by creating a community of peace and justice. The purpose of Israel is to be a light to the nations. This means ridding the temple of its collusion with the domination system. Jesus goes to the temple instead of the Roman fortress for the same reason that Epiphany UCC has been focused on workers rights at Advocate Hospital. We have to attend to the log in our own eye first. I have no song for this temptation. Just the famous quote by Gandhi that there is coherence of means and ends and the equivalent statement made famous by A.J. Muste "There is no way to Peace. Peace is the way." What song would you suggest?

The first temptation is for the community to focus its efforts towards charity alone instead of justice as well. The second temptation is to work towards justice through unjust means and to not focus primarily on the unjust social relations that we personally benefit from in our own communities. The third temptation is to expect that a way can be found that does not entail a great deal of unjust suffering for us. Yoder sees this temptation of Jesus when he is captured and refuses to unleash the legion of angels to come to his defense. Another possible interpretation (not addressed by Yoder) focuses on the leap from the temple instead of the miraculous protection from harm. It is the temptation to reject the existing community as unredeemably corrupt, to leave tradition behind, and start a new community that does not respect the traditions of our elders. These two are related because one cannot withstand unjust suffering without the support of a community suffering along side you. Jesus clearly skirted the boundaries of tradition on many occasions but always defended his beliefs within the tradition and not in opposition to it, and for the purpose of making the community more true to its mission to see the messianic community and the suffering servant community as one and to model Israel's social structures after it.

In all three gospels where the parable of the sower is given, Jesus calls it the parable without which no other parable can be understood. I think it is the key to understanding the temptation account as well. I believe there is a one-to-one correspondence between them. The birds eat the first set of seeds. Jesus compares the birds to the devil, the spirit of the domination system. This is consistent with the idea that birds were a symbol of Rome. The correspondence is with the devil’s temptation in the wilderness for Jesus to become king through force of violence and to adopt unjust means for just ends. The second set of seeds fell on rock and withered due to lack of moisture. Jesus says that these seeds can not take root and in time of testing will fall away. These are the seeds that try to make due without the support of a community. But the unjust suffering that is part of working for the beloved community is intolerable without the support of a community living for the same purpose. I think it corresponds to the temptation for Jesus to leap from the temple. Since it has the imagery of putting oneself above others, it could also represent self righteousness. It could also imply racism, sexism, or any caste distinctions that create divisions in society that place some above others. But the temptations for a community to adopt the social stratifications of the surrounding society are also covered by the temptation to use unjust means for just ends. The last group of seeds are choked out by thorns. Jesus says these are the riches and pleasures of life. This corresponds to the temptation of bread without roses, to satisfy our desires while others suffer but to feel justified through the charity we bestow on those less fortunate. It is also a temptation to confuse our personal financial security with the beloved community and to hide ourselves from the fact the world is incredibly unjust and fallen. These are all temptations that communities face. All communities are tempted to act in coercive ways. All communities are tempted to be self-righteous. All communities are tempted to distribute power inequitably. All communities are tempted to avoid suffering. All communities are tempted to hold on tight to their purse strings and to justify their wealth by the charity they offer through their abundance. All communities are tempted to live by the illusion that the domination system is not that bad and all things will work out for the best without extraordinary efforts on our parts. A community that is aware of these ever-present temptations can structure itself to make these temptations less strong.

How should a church community, through its worship, education, missions, and other means, structure itself to counter these temptations?

I will start this blog with some chapter-by-chapter reflections on The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder. I had previously written reflections on Chapters 1 through 4 and will post those right away. I hope to write reflections on other chapters in the weeks ahead.

Reflection on Chapter 1 of John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus
The Possibility of a Messianic Ethic

Yoder begins his book, which was first published in 1972, with the observation that students are becoming aware that Jesus is a model of radical political action. Those of you who read the beginning of Moltmann's book, The Crucified God, should find this familiar. Moltmann starts his book in the same way. There is nothing unique to the 60's about this. Here is a 1940 song by Woody Guthrie:

Jesus Christ (to the tune of Jesse James)

Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land
A hard-working man and brave
He said to the rich, "Give your goods to the poor,"
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave

Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand
His followers true and brave
but all the legislators called them dirty agitators
And they laid Jesus Christ in His Grave

He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff
He told them all the same
"Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,"
And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what he did say
But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross,
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

And the people held their breath when they heard about his death
Everybody wondered why
It was the big landlord and the soldiers that they hired
To nail Jesus Christ in the sky

This song was written in New York City
Of rich man, preacher, and slave
If Jesus was to preach here what He preached in Galilee,
They would lay Jesus Christ in his grave.

Non-christian activists like Woody Guthrie generally find it easy to see Jesus as predominantly concerned with social ethics. A famous example is Gandhi’s lament that the only people who don’t believe that Jesus taught non-violence are Christians.

Yoder’s critique of some non-Christian radicals’ use of Jesus is that they take from Jesus that which conforms to their beliefs and leave it at that. So Woody’s Jesus is concerned about Woody’s main concern, distributive justice, but is silent on non-violence. However, the Christian who entirely denies that Jesus had a social ethic (or finds only an individual ethic) is distorting Jesus just as much or more than the non-Christian radical. Yoder contends that Christians avoid the social ethics of the gospel by interpreting the bible entirely spiritually. This separation between social ethics and spirituality is akin to the “theological world view” described by Walter Wink in which there is a sharp difference between the material and the spiritual, so much so that they exist in different realms. Yoder talks about throwing a cable between the chasm that separates these realms. I believe that he is implicitly stating that the division between social ethics and spirituality is imposed on the text by modern readers and the biblical writers had no such division in mind, so by drawing these realms together we are coming closer to the way that early readers would have read the text. (Paul does talk about flesh and spirit but it is reasonable to believe that for Paul these are in the same realm just as the letter and spirit of a law are both of the same law.)

Yoder lists many ways that people have found to reason that Jesus should not inform our social ethics. In the epilogue to the second edition he lists several more. I just want to focus on one in the epilogue: the tradition that the function of the law is less to tell us what we can do than to bring us to our knees because we cannot do it. Jesus’s social ethic is strenuous, but this doesn’t mean we are supposed to admit our inadequacy and look for a social ethic elsewhere. It is possible for a social ethic to be both strenuous and relevant. For example, Tolstoy says that Jesus’s ethic tells us which way is up. It is our efforts to climb up and our rate of accent that matter not where we are on the ladder (the only occurrence of differential calculus in theology that I am aware of.) Yoder suggests that when Jesus is not the source of social ethics for Christians, they take their social ethics from other sources, such as the secular laws of the state which are derived from “common sense” and “the nature of things.” Yoder goes in to this more deeply, including a strong critique of the brothers Niebuhr in chapter 6. So I won't comment on this now (although this doesn't mean that you shouldn't!), except to say that this is where the "just war" doctrine comes from.

Yoder also indicates how the denial of Jesus’s social ethics, leads to distorted interpretations of the New Testament. The arrest of Jesus by the Roman authorities only makes sense if Jesus is understood to have taught and acted upon a social ethic that was threatening to the state. It does not make sense if he merely taught that we should love one another. Martin Luther King and Mr. Rogers both taught that we should love one another. Martin Luther King was a threat to the state. Mr. Rogers was not.