[openbook booknumber=”0800614410″]

[rating:5/5]

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s book Strength to Love is a book that contains several of MLK’s key sermons printed and bound all in one place. It was a free gift that I received at the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards of 2002. Yes, I am only now getting around to reading it. This is one book that I should not have put off reading.

I am not normally a very religious person. There is a lot about religion that I find disgusting, hypocritical and at times down right hateful towards various people based on things as flimsy as gender, color, sexual orientation and lifestyle choice. I say flimsy because at the same time religion (any religion) tends to say that we are all equal before God and that it is our soul that He values above everything else. This book gave me new faith.

Most of the sermons – such as A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart, On Being a Good Neighbor, Love in Action, and Loving Your Enemies – talk about that exact problem with religion and with humanity. MLK’s urgings to love everyone regardless of personal differences and to stand up for what you believe in regardless of what other people think about it were very inspiring and moving. These sermons gave me hope, realizing that people (religious people) once thought like this and believed in it very strongly. They also helped strike home how very little of this type of rhetoric is heard anymore in the religious community.