Since President Ronald Reagan signed Martin Luther King Jr. Day into law in 1983, many Americans have celebrated the federal holiday to honor the life and legacy of the civil rights leader, Baptist minister and theologian.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day volunteers often provide community service, continuing Martin Luther King’s fight to end racial discrimination and economic injustice—and, as he often said, build “beloved communities.”

King did not fully explain the meaning of this statement in his published writings, speeches, and sermons. However, scholars Rufus Burrow Jr. and Lewis V. Baldwin argue that beloved community was King's primary moral goal, guiding his opposition to what he called "American society The Three Evils”: racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.

As a Baptist minister and theologian, I believe it is important to understand the origins of the concept of Beloved Community, how King understood it, and how he worked to make it a reality.

Older origins

Although King popularized this beloved community, the phrase originated from the thoughts of 19th-century American religious philosopher Josiah Royce.

In 1913, towards the end of his long career, Royce published The Christian Question. The book is a compilation of lectures on Christianity, including the philosophy of the Church and its mission, and coined the term "Dear Community." Drawing on his reading of the biblical gospels as well as the writings of the apostle Paul, Royce believed that beloved community is a community in which individuals are transformed by God's love.

Members, in turn, express this love as devotion to one another—for example, the faithful love of church members toward the church as a whole.

While Royce often associated beloved communities with churches, he expanded the concept beyond Christianity. Royce believed that in any type of community, from clan to nation, there are individuals who not only express love and devotion to their own community but also cultivate a sense of community that includes all of humanity.

The ideal or beloved community, Royce argued, is a “universal community”—to which all human beings belong or will eventually belong.

Diversity of "Beloved"

Twentieth-century pastor, philosopher, mystic, theologian, and civil rights leader Howard Thurman revisited Royce's ideas of the beloved community and applied them to his own life and work , the most famous of which is his 1971 book The Search for Common Ground.

Thurman first used the term in an unpublished and undated article: Desegregation, Integration, and the Beloved Community. Here, he argued, beloved community cannot be achieved through sheer will or the command of force. Rather, it begins with a transformation of the “human spirit” of each individual. When everyone takes responsibility for making this happen, the seeds of a beloved community will spread outward into society.

Thurman envisioned this beloved community as one that embodied harmony—a harmony made richer by the diversity of its members. A society where people from all racial, national, religious and ethnic backgrounds are respected and their human dignity is affirmed. Thurman believed that the beloved community was achievable because of the dedication of activists he saw in the fight for racial integration.

Throughout his life, Thurman sought to build this beloved community through his racial justice activism. For example, he co-founded the Fellowship Church of All Nations, an interracial and interfaith community in San Francisco, and served as co-pastor of the church from 1943 to 1953.

Thurman's writings and activism deeply influenced King. According to Burrow, it's not entirely clear when or where King first learned about the concept of the beloved community. However, King emphasized its importance in much of his writings and political actions.

love and action

In the simplest terms, King defined Beloved Community as a community transformed by love. Like Royce, he drew his understanding of love from the New Testament. In the original Greek text, the Gospels use the word "agape," which implies God's self-giving, unconditional love for humans, and by extension, humans' self-giving, unconditional love for each other.

However, according to Baldwin, King's understanding of his beloved community can be better understood within the context of the black church tradition. King grew up at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where he learned love from his parents, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Ebenezer's pastor and leader of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) meaning. People — and Christine Williams King, Alberta.

One of the hallmarks of King's thought was his belief that beloved communities could be achieved through nonviolent direct action such as sit-ins, marches, and boycotts. In part, he was inspired by Thurman, who saw nonviolence as central to Mahatma Gandhi's resistance to the British in India. For King, nonviolence was the only viable means to free the United States of America from the evils of segregation and white supremacy.

For King, therefore, the beloved community was more than a utopian vision of the future. He envisioned it as an achievable moral goal that all humanity must work together to achieve.

“Only the rejection of hatred or killing can end the chains of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where people can live together without fear,” King wrote in 1966. “Our goal is to create a community where people are loved and loved. Community, this requires a qualitative change in our souls and a quantitative change in our lives.”

Find your beloved community today

King's ideas about the Beloved Community influenced not only people from the Christian tradition, but also people from other faiths and no faith.

For example, scholars Elizabeth A. Johnson, Bell Hooks, and Joy James reflect on the meaning of beloved community amid ongoing challenges such as global climate change, sexism, racism, and other forms of structural violence.

People around the world continue to draw insight and inspiration from King’s thoughts, especially his insistence that love is the “most enduring force” that makes the world a better place. Questions remain about whether, or how, his beloved community can come to fruition. But I think it's important to understand King's ethics and his continued impact on movements seeking to end injustice.