In the culmination of Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I have a dream speech’, he recites words “I have a dream that Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain, And the glory of the Lord will be revealed”.
These words rarely make popular quotations from this immensely powerful and history-altering speech, yet at the time they would have rung with familiar meaning to anyone in the Western world listening. They come from the old testament book of Isaiah, in a prophetic passage widely taken by Christians to foresee the coming of Jesus, and are preceded by the words that open Mark’s gospel with the introduction of John the Baptist: A voice of one calling: “In the wilderness prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God”.
King, a preacher and deeply learned theologian, understood this as representing poetically the great message of the Old Testament prophets, that the redemption of the world looks like the equality civil rights is demanding, that the low are lifted up and the high are brought down. The song of Hannah in the book of Samuel says “The Lord makes poor and rich; He humbles, He also exalts. He raises the poor from the dust, He lifts the needy from the garbage heap”. Part of the power of King’s speech was and remains its…
