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Richard Lischer
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The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America

by Richard Lischer (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 25 ratings
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Today it seems extraordinary that a nation the size of the United States could have been so profoundly affected by the minister of a little Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama. But at a turning point in American history, Martin Luther King, Jr., had an incalculable effect on the fabric of daily life and the laws of the nation. As no other preacher in living memory and no politician since Lincoln, he transposed the themes of love, suffering, deliverance, and justice from the sacred shelter of the pulpit into the arena of public policy. He was the last great religious reformer in America. How the man who always saw himself as "fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher" crafted his strategic vision and moved a nation to renewal is the subject of this remarkable new book.
The Preacher King investigates Martin Luther King Jr.'s, religious development from a precocious "PK" ("preacher's kid") in segregated Atlanta to the most influential American preacher and orator of the twentieth century. To give the most accurate and intimate portrait possible, author Richard Lischer draws almost exclusively on King's unpublished sermons and speeches, as well as tape recordings, personal interviews, and even police surveillance reports. In King's published works, Lischer shows, King and his editors modified and polished his sermons in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. By returning to the raw sources, Lischer recaptures King's real, African-American, preaching voice and, consequently, something of the real King himself. He shows how as the son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of preachers, King early on absorbed the poetic cadences, the traditions, and the power of the pulpit. He traces King's coming of age from his rebellious teenage years (King once wrote that at thirteen he shocked his Sunday School class by "denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus") to his arrival in Montgomery, where he took on the role of "Brother Pastor" to his flock during the year of ministry before he burst into national prominence. Lischer shows that King was as profoundly influenced by his fellow African-American preachers as he was by Gandhi and the philosophers, and tracks King's themes of brotherhood and justice from the set pieces of his weekly sermons to his electrifying mass meeting speeches, demonstrations, and civil addresses. Lischer also reveals a later phase of King's development that few of his biographers or critics have addressed: the prophetic rage with which he condemned American religious and political hypocrisy. During the last three years of his life, Lischer shows, King accused his country of genocide, warned of long hot summers in the ghettos, and called for a radical redistribution of wealth.
More than any other book, The Preacher King captures the crucial aspect of the identity of Martin Luther King, Jr. Human, complex, and passionate, here is a preacher who never gave up trying to shape a congregation of people that would be capable of redeeming the moral and political character of the nation.
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  1. ISBN-10
    019511132X
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0195111323
  3. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  4. Publication date
    February 6, 1997
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    7.9 x 5.52 x 0.86 inches
  7. Print length
    368 pages
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"This helpful book adds a new dimension to our understanding of Martin Luther King, Jr."--Choice

"Thorough [and] textured."--Kirkus Reviews

"Illuminating."--Publishers Weekly

"Sparkling...addresses not only King's sermons but also preaching history."--Booklist

Book Description

The first book to recapture the true preaching voice of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press (February 6, 1997)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 019511132X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195111323
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1290L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.9 x 5.52 x 0.86 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 25 ratings

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Richard Lischer

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
25 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

G. Fisher
5.0 out of 5 stars Lischer beautifully captures preaching styles in the African-American community
Reviewed in the United States on June 8, 2015
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A very perceptive reflection on preaching by Martin Luther King, Jr. The book shows how Dr King's preaching reflects both liberal protestant ways of thinking and the experience of the African-American community, and how his preaching changed over the course of his ministry. Lischer beautifully captures preaching styles in the African-American community, and shows how some readers have misunderstood Dr King's use of material borrowed from other preachers and adapted from earlier sermons of his own. Overall, a helpful and engagingly written account of the work by a master of preaching.
2 people found this helpful
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Michael Mil-town
5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful!
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2014
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"The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America " by Richard Lischer is very insightful and a great read. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a master of words. Richard Lischer expressed the life and preaching of MLK using elegant keen dictum as the pages flow from one to the next.
2 people found this helpful
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Man On A Mission
3.0 out of 5 stars Struggle!
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2013
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The best way to describe this book for me is a struggle. At times Lischer gives me the sense that he is celebrating Black preaching, but comments that he makes in the book almost bringing preaching down to more of a performance to a certain degree for me, undermines the power of Black preaching and undermines the power of King's words. Although I do not believe that this is Lischer's intention, this for me is what I experienced as an African-American reading the book. I also did not like the moments in the book when the closing or ending of the Black preachers sermon and Kings style in particular was sexualized by Lischer comparing it to a sexual climax that even supposedly "moves sister's to shed their sexual inhibitions". This is problematic for me because as an African-American too often sexualization or over-sexualization of Black culture and Black bodies has often led to a devaluation of our worth as human beings. Again, I do not believe that this is Lischers intention and believe that the language that he uses to celebrate Dr. Kings preaching and the culture that influenced it is an attempt to celebrate Kings legacy. Yet, the way that he does it at certain points in the book uses language in description that is unnecessary. I believe that most Black preachers preach naturally out of their culture and for the most part the way that this comes out would be more subconscious as opposed to some type of scientific exercise in preaching where the preacher prepares for some type of performance.
4 people found this helpful
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Hotcakes Dennis
5.0 out of 5 stars Martin Luther King
Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2013
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Having been a teenager at the time of the Civil Rights movement I haven't been able to appreciate the efforts nor the persona of the movement leaders. The one that stands out is Martin Luther King! This book has provided me with indepth knowledge of the man, his leadership, his achievements and his failures.
3 people found this helpful
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Loretta Kretchko
2.0 out of 5 stars The preacher
Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2013
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I thought that his was going to be more a biography . This book is good for those studying preaching . A technical tool on MLK 's speeches
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J. Graves
5.0 out of 5 stars Preacher King Review
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2009
Richard Lischer, scholar and professor at Duke Divinity, supplies both the student of history and local pastor a wonderful gift with his work, The Preacher King: Martin Luther King Jr.and the Word that Moved America. Combining history, theology, New Testament scholarship, politics, and narrative criticism as very few can--Lischer paints a detailed yet complete picture of the life and legacy of one of America's great religious leaders.

I suggest Richard Lischer's Preacher King for two reasons. First, Lischer has the rare ability to capture the tension and ethos of 1960's America. The Civil Right Era has become a source of nostalgia for some. Lischer refuses to buy into this hype-machine by closely immersing himself back into the world of those who marched in Selma, Montgomery, and Memphis. "Despite the enforced intimacy of the races, a rigid caste system, buttressed by dozens of local statutes, forbade blacks and whites to acknowledge the life they in fact held in common. A local statute went so far as to bar whites and blacks from playing cards, dice, checkers, or dominoes together. Restrooms and drinking fountains were clearly marked. By law, a white person and a Negro could not share a taxi. The segregation of restaurants and public transportation was carried out with a routine cruelty that left the black citizens of Montgomery, like those of most southern cities, humiliated and burning with resentment." You will find an absence of over-sentimentalized anecdotes and conversations: Lischer understands all too well how the stakes were during this tumultuous period in American history.

Second, Lischer paints a nuanced portrait of Dr. King as the Civil Right's Moses-figure. Lischer pays close attention to Dr. King's ethos, rhetorical skill, knowledge of the teachings of Jesus, historical context, intellectual heroes, as well as his intense personal connection to the African-American church. Unlike some depictions, Lischer avoids the pitfalls of depicting King a secular humanitarian or as a mere social insurrectionist with an axe to grind. Rather, Lischer clearly demonstrates the manner in which Dr. King sees his own life as a holy improvisation, living out the dangerous love of Jesus in marches, prisons, restaurant sit-ins, and church bombings. With racism (Pharaoh) pressing in, Jim Crow government laws forming insurmountable walls on all sides (Red Sea), King (Moses) led his people to the other side. Dr. King prepared the people for what God was going to do next (Canaan) though he himself, like Moses, would not experience the land "flowing with milk and honey." Lischer presents Dr. King for what he was: a young black Baptist preacher-prophet who named, exposed, and in his death, unmasked the systemic powers of darkness. This book will prepare you to re-imagine the God who liberates (all) his people from oppression and domination.
10 people found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars Not for everyone
Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2014
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this can be boring reading and comes across more as a doctoral dissertation than an accounting of his speeches
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