Martin Luther King III opens Washington DC Interfaith Meeting

							           MARTIN LUTHER KING III OPENS DC INTERFAITH MEETING
                                  By Frank Kaufmann
                             December 2, 2012, Washington DC

Reverend Martin Luther King III gave the keynote address, “Vedanta and Interfaith
Teachings,” to inaugurate the World Congress of Religions taking place this weekend
at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, in Washington DC.

The World Congress of Religions 2012 conference is sponsored by the Institute of
World Religions of the Washington Kali Temple, and the Council for a Parliament of
the of the World's Religions, to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Swami
Vivekananda, the person most responsible to introduce the Indian philosophies of
Vedanta and yoga to the western world.

The conference weaves together a rich net of current interfaith elements. The
Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions was founded in Chicago on the
centennial of the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions.

It was at the original 1893 conference that Swami Vivekananda first introduced
Hinduism in his historic speech to open the Parliament. The Chicago Parliament of
the World's Religions was the first attempt in modern times to create a global
dialogue of faiths. It was part of the “World Columbian Exposition,” an early world's
fair that included conferences and expositions on such life work as labor, medicine,
temperance, commerce, finance, history, art, philosophy, and science. The religion
section was chaired by clergyman John Henry Barrows, and it was there that Swami
Vivekananda represented India, and offered his inspiring speech at the opening
session.

It was Vivekananda's impulses toward the unity to be found in all religions that had
the additional effect of unifying Hinduism across its many and diverse branches, and
subsequently, by extension spawned an inner sense of a wider patriotism across all of
India. Independent India's first governor general said, “Vivekananda saved Hinduism,
saved India,” and Mahatma Gandhi, India's great non-violent liberator of India from
British rule said Vivekananda's influence influenced his “love for his country a
thousand fold.” The same Gandhi after whom America's great liberator, Martin Luther
King Jr. forged his mighty thoughts and deeds in non-violent victory over America's
greatest curse.

Fitting is it then that the inaugural and keynote address for this important world
congress honoring the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda was offered by
Reverend Martin Luther King III. Participants heard a humble, carefully built address
from King, and enjoyed afterward a private photo session and reception.

King, though absent the fiery Baptist style of his father, speaks with no less passion and
devotion to the cause and vision of non-violence as sufficient to give rise to social
transformation and human liberation. King's stood fast by this radical activist posture
throughout his address, unfolding and defending a philosophy that is challenged by
many, and fully ignored and violated by most.

The vision of non-violence and the extreme risk and challenges under which both
Gandhi's and King's freedom fighters lived and walked awakens in the hearer the
highest part of ourselves, and confronts us with a true gage and study of our courage
inventory. One cannot hear even the description of commitment to non-violence
without having your own claims as good called out onto the test ground and
examination. For King, even in quiet ways to stand before the world leaders at the
conference, and be the one placing hearers in this uncomfortable zone requires
more than coming to his views as a theorist. His devotion to non-violence as a his
personally chosen way, was his offering to the peace-seekers gathered here in DC
this weekend.

That this must be a life lived, and more than a theory expounded was made most
evident in the autobiographical dimensions of the King speech Friday, in which he
spoke (honorably and without cheaply pulling at heartstrings) of the murders of his
family members, and the path to forgiveness he battled to attain. Indeed it is in the
God-given ability to forgive that the path to non-violence is rooted. And here too,
our own qualities and integrity were laid bare within us as he spoke.

The clarity of King, and his genuine integration into the hard course he calls for was
seen as strongly or better in the session for questions and answers. There King made
himself truly vulnerable to real challenges to non-violence, “is it right to revolt violently
against slavery, against tyranny,” and other questions with hard, living examples, of
the evils that surround us. King fielded the questions with humility, openness, and
nothing rote. He allowed the questions to be hard, and responded in ways that
showed that the path of non-violence must be chosen every moment, and to do so
requires hard work in all ways, intellectually and philosophically, but more importantly
requires constantly burnishing of the steel of courage.