Jan. 20, 2025, marks not only the beginning of a new presidential administration but also the day when we remember the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The conjunction of these two events, represented by two very different persons, invites us to a deep reflection on the state of our country and the challenges that face people of faith and goodwill.
King declared that the mission of the civil rights movement was “to redeem the soul of America.” This vision grounded his struggles against the interlocking evils of racial injustice, economic exploitation and expansive militarism. Retrieving this mission provides a valuable orientation as we address the contemporary challenge of pursuing justice in a polarized society.
The ‘soul’ of a nation
When we tell King’s story and the history of the civil rights movement, we too often describe them as quests to overturn the segregation laws and the visible practices of racial humiliation that stained only the Southern states. King’s memory becomes a comfortable story of obvious good guys and bad guys; moreover, it is a story where the good guys won. And because that struggle was triumphant, it means that we have already dealt with America’s wounds. With such a narrative, some public figures can argue that those who continue to advocate the need for policies advancing diversity and inclusion are the real agents of racial division.
But this narrative seriously misrepresents King’s mission. One of King’s associates, the minister and author C.T. Vivian, recalls that King wrote the words “to redeem the soul of America” on the window of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s headquarters. Dr. King, he noted, “viewed the mission of the S.C.L.C. as the transformation of a society, not simply social change.”
The exact origins of the phrase are difficult to trace. But regardless of its inspiration, King’s intent is clear. From the beginning, King saw the civil rights movement as engaged in far more than promoting legislative changes or challenging social practices. Such laws and practices were merely the external signs of much deeper realities that needed to be addressed for genuine social transformation.
King believed that a nation is not simply a collection of individuals but a moral and spiritual entity in itself. King’s guiding insight was that communities have “souls,” that is, deeply held values and beliefs that motivate their collective social practices. His call to redeem or save the soul of America came from realizing that the externally obvious forms of injustice stemmed from something unseen and intangible, yet real. Visible injustices were expressions of a nation’s collective values and beliefs—its “soul.”
King thus believed it is possible for external laws and customs to change. But without a “soul” change—that is, a moral and ethical transformation, what in other places he called a “revolution of values”—the nation’s underlying convictions and beliefs would find expression in new laws and social policies.
King was convinced that without “soul work” and a “revolution of values,” white supremacy and anti-Black racism would simply mutate and take different forms. Social justice requires the spiritual transformation of the nation’s consciousness.
The election of Donald Trump and America’s ‘soul’
What does the re-election of Donald J. Trump reveal about the “soul of America”? I can imagine some readers of this essay getting nervous, so let me ensure they are nervous for the right reasons. I am not re-litigating the election. The result is clear; he is the nation’s president. I phrased the question quite specifically. The deepest challenge for the nation and people of goodwill is not Donald Trump himself. But rather what his election reveals about us. The challenge that faces the country going forward is what his election reveals about us collectively and who we are as a nation.
What makes this such a fraught moment is not simply that the new president won his office by only a slender margin and with less than the majority voting, receiving only 49.8 percent of votes. What makes this moment feel existentially precarious is that the differences between the major candidates were not merely over policy proposals, such as the kind and degree of tax cuts, but over radically conflicting understandings of America, its identity and what it stands for.
We cannot but acknowledge that the reelected president has made white racial grievance and white fears of a changing country central to his message from the day he descended the escalator of Trump Tower in 2015. This has been a consistent throughline of his public persona. But as a country, we have never mastered the skills of how to talk publicly about race.
Mr. Trump has tapped into deep American fears, especially a fear of the “stranger.” These resentments and anxieties over a changing America are so deep that tens of millions were willing to overlook or disregard his criminal convictions and manifold legal charges, his denigration of the judicial system, his adjudicated abuse of women, the litany of racial and gender insults that would get him fired from most corporations, his refusal to accept his 2020 election loss and his dangerous efforts to overturn the will of the voters, as well as the cruelty of his separating children from their parents in the name of national security. The reality is that none of these was disqualifying for tens of millions of Americans.
Instead, his denigration of immigrants as “vermin”; his hostility toward judges, prosecutors and journalists who disagree with him; his praise of his “beautiful white skin”; his repeated characterizations of urban areas as “hotbeds of violence” that threaten white suburbs—these are what many found attractive: “He talks the way I do.” “He says what I want to say.” “He says out loud what I’m thinking.” “He puts into words what I feel.”
Mr. Trump expresses the part of the American soul that wants everyone to think like us, act like us, pray like us, talk like us, love like us and look like us—that is, if the “us” are white conservative Christians, and especially conservative Christian men.
The closeness of the election reveals a nation deeply divided. Not simply over policy differences, but over fundamentally divergent visions of who the nation is or should be. We’re torn between, on the one hand, our never-realized aspirations to liberty and justice for all, and on the other, the realities of white supremacy, anti-Black racism and patriarchy that are embedded in our national D.N.A.
King articulated this as the “deep ambivalence in America’s soul.” In a little-studied speech he delivered in 1967 called “The Three Evils of Society,” he noted:
Ever since the birth of our nation, white America has had a Schizophrenic personality on the question of race; she has been torn between selves. A self in which she proudly professes the great principle of democracy and a self in which she madly practices the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality…[causes] America to take a step backward simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice.
This is why the presidential election was so contested, and its outcome experienced so viscerally. It is why many greet today’s change of administrations with joy and even glee, while millions of others are responding with anger, anxiety and fear. Because Mr. Trump is not the problem. Mr. Trump is “us.” Our ugly, brutal, violent, infantile “us.” He is the face of our unresolved racism and “tech-bro” misogyny. He represents the narcissistic belief that America is entitled in a way that no other nation is. He is the external manifestation of the deeper spiritual distortions that underlie our fractures and divisions.
Today’s inauguration is not simply about the triumph of a political party or a different set of policies. Today calls forth the questions: Who are we? And what does America stand for?
The ‘soul’ of white Christianity and U.S. Catholicism
If King were alive today, I believe he would argue that we need to redeem not only the soul of America but also the soul of American organized religion, including American Catholicism. We cannot escape the fact that white American Christians—including a majority of white Catholics—supported Mr. Trump despite his denigration of immigrants and repeated assertions of what former House Speaker Paul Ryan (hardly a liberal) called “textbook” racism. We also cannot escape the fact that despite what Mr. Trump represents, Catholic bishops and clergy, with few exceptions, kept a conspicuous silence or even expressed overt support.
White Christians have offered many reasons for their support, including Mr. Trump’s so-called “pro-life” advocacy (ignoring how his resumption of capital punishment and family separation policies are contrary to the dignity of life). But in his classic “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail,” King would point to and criticize two other reasons.
The first is a desire to remain “nonpartisan,” which leads to silence in the face of social evil. King denounces this attitude as betraying a strange “un-Biblical” dualism between body and soul, the sacred and secular. Silence over social injustice is also contrary to the values of Catholic social teaching, which hold that respect for truth, the pursuit of justice and welcoming the immigrant are not partisan values but Gospel imperatives.
King would then highlight the deepest reason for supporting such an ethically compromised individual: a faulty, limited and idolatrous concept of God. He writes, reflecting on the beautiful churches in which white Southern Christians worshipped: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God?” The devastating conclusion is that many Christians are complacent with and supportive of injustice because their “god” is not “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” nor is their savior the one “who hung on the cross at Golgotha.” In other words, King would declare that large swaths of white Christianity are in functional idolatry, worshipping a false god, a white male idol. This makes them complacent in the face of white supremacist patriarchy.
This means that the church itself needs “soul work,” a radical conversion, a fundamental change of hearts and attitudes if it is to have a positive role in addressing the nation’s polarizing divisions. This conversion requires a deeper commitment from U.S. Catholics to the common good and the virtue of solidarity, which Pope John Paul II described as the conviction that “we are all really responsible for all” (“Sollicitudo Rei Socialis,” No. 38). It requires Catholics and people of good will to accept, to quote Pope Francis, that we cannot “turn a blind eye to racism in any form and claim to respect the sacredness of every human life.” It means that Catholics must side with those who respect truth and defend the immigrant, rather than abstaining from political conflict out of a misguided desire for superficial harmony.
In short, Catholics cannot redeem the soul of America if we do not reclaim the soul of Catholicism, which is nothing less than a broad and inclusive love for all, including those considered “stranger.” We need a spiritual revival marked by a commitment to the radical love of Jesus who sought out the abandoned and defended the marginalized. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI: “We need men and women whose lives are eloquent, and who know how to proclaim the Gospel with clarity and courage, with transparency and action, and with the joyful passion of charity.”
What makes America great?
During his visit to the United States in 2015, Pope Francis addressed a joint session of Congress. He invoked King’s ministry as he reflected upon what truly makes America “great.” The pope’s message is a rebuke to those who espouse an exclusionary view of who is American and an exalted sense of American exceptionalism:
A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to “dream” of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.
The pontiff then concluded, quite simply: “God bless America.”
May that reminder and blessing accompany us as we answer the call to redeem the soul of America and of U.S. Catholicism. King warned us that this task demands what he called a “long and bitter—but beautiful—struggle for a new world.”
King was a realist who still never gave into despair. He repeatedly warned that there would be “difficult days ahead.” There will be times when we feel our dreams are destined for futility, and our hope is an act of desperation. Fighting for justice and speaking the truth are never easy and seldom popular.
Perhaps King’s greatest gift to us is the reminder that when we do the work of justice, we work with what he called “cosmic companionship.” We can take courage and hope from a sermon that he often preached: “God is able.”
[Our God is able.] Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better men [and women.] This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world.
