Some elected officials would see Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as an opportunity to promote unity across our differences, to bring people together. Then I guess there is another approach, the one taken by newly elected Alabama Governor Robert Bentley in his speech at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church yesterday (my emph.):
"There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit," Bentley said. ''But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister."
Bentley added, ''Now I will have to say that, if we don't have the same daddy, we're not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister…"
For what it's worth, Dr. King lamented, famously, "We've learned to fly the air as birds, we've learned to swim the seas as fish, yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters."
[UPDATE: Kudos to Governor Bentley for apologizing.]
