xxi, 254 pages ; 24 cm

"In this book, Michael G. Long offers a three-fold thesis to understanding King's understanding of the state. First, King adopted a theologically-based dialectical attitude towards the state. Second, King's theological understanding of the state remained constant in most of its fundamental elements but developed in substantive content and expression throughout his life. Third, his view of the state has its roots in the African-American tradition he experienced through his family, church, and Morehouse professors, as well as in European-American religious and republic traditions

King's political thought was the result of a hardworking bricoleur, i.e., in the words of Stanley Hauerwas, "a strong moralist engaging in a kind of selective retrieval and reconfiguration of available moral languages for his own use.""

"King initially learned about the state not by reading Thomas Jefferson, Walter Rauschenbusch, Jacques Maritain, Karl Marx, or even Reinhold Niebuhr, but through his personal encounters with his Christian family, especially Daddy King, and with his Morehouse professors, especially the clergy-scholar Benjamin E. Mays. The ultimate root of King's understanding of the state, Long concludes, is not in civic republicanism, theological liberalism, Marxism, Niebuhrian realism, or in any other such school, but in the religious tradition he experienced at home and at college."--Jacket

Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-242) and index

Black church, white state (1929-1944) -- Morehouse and more democracy (1944-1948) -- An emerging theology of the state (1948-1951) -- Encountering realism, countering realism (1951-1955) -- Against us, but for us (1954-1963) -- Against a minimalist state, but for a social-democratic state (1964-1965) -- Against a separate Black state, but for a revolutionized state (1966-1968)