About Martin Luther king jr. s upbringing. This took place in atlanta where Martin Luther king jr. And his father were both pastors. This class is an hour. Who is Martin Luther king . When we look at Martin Luther king, there is one side of him that is a famous individual. He is the 1964 winner of the nobel peace prize. Hes the person really was the most influential leader of a great social movement. He is the only american who was honored with a National Holiday in his name. So there is that uniqueness that practically everybody in the world knows the name Martin Luther king. But the question is that id like to address, right in this setting, is who really was Martin Luther king . Because one of the advantages of using a setting like this is that we can really practice history the way it should be. It shouldnt be about names and dates that you remember, it should be about the study of the things that survive from the past. Thats why a site, a historical site is so important. That is why the king papers project, when Coretta Scott king named me to edit his papers she understood that in the long run what would survive were the papers that Martin Luther king produced during his lifetime. So, all of that is part of what i would call the legacy of Martin Luther king. If we want to get close to who he really was, thats the best window that we really have into the past. So Martin Luther king produced a lot of papers. One of the things that has kept me busy for the last 30 years is bringing together hundreds of thousands of documents. As any great person, you have so many materials to work with. And all of these are important windows. And thats why i feel that my life is well served by doing this. Is that it provides what we will what will be the lasting memory of Martin Luther king. But when we look at who he really was, we have to kind of go back beyond the myth. We have to go back beyond the kind of person who is honored by the National Holiday. Because the importance of coming to a site like this is that you begin to see evidence from michael king, the person who existed before Martin Luther king, the reverend Martin Luther king jr. , that was the person who was born just up the street a block up the street at 501 auburn avenue. That was the person that i hope, as you say that birth home, you kind of had in your mind what kind of an influence would that Historical Building have on the making of Martin Luther king. And fortunately, we not only have the birth home but we have a few documents. Not as many as when he becomes famous, thousands and thousands of letters that we have, documents that people who wrote to him all of those things are part of the papers of Martin Luther king. But when we look at when he was growing up, his formative years we dont have a lot to work it. Basically, what we have is a few documents and a lot of memories. Some of the memories are not as reliable as the other memories. But just think of a document that most of you have, its called your birth certificate. We have that for Martin Luther king. It tells us some important things about him. It tells us he was born on january 15, 1929. We know that the birth took place in that second floor bedroom in that home. We know something about the other names that are on that birth certificate. Who would be on that . The father and the mother. So we know that at that time, the person who becomes Martin Luther king sr. , at that time, hes mike king, he also is living in that house. And alberta king is loving there. But Something Else that you begin to understand as you look at the other major document from that period, which is the autobiography of Martin Luther king which is a document that he writes when he is at the theological seminary. He writes his own auto bbiograp call sketch. It is 14 pages. He does it for a class. We learn a number of things from that document. The third document that is important is that the more is the memoir. It is probably in his attorney generalal terms, historians kind of refer to that, its still a primary document because he was a witness but its long after the fact so it becomes less valuable in some ways but also its personal so its valuable in other ways. So lets just look at these documents. One of the thins that we find is how was he born . One of the things that the birth certificate indicates is that there was a midwife and a doctor. The doctor also lived on auburn avenue. So what does that tell us about Martin Luther king . That this neighborhood was diverse. A doctor could live in this neighborhood, but there were also working class people in this neighborhood. But also the fact that there was a midwife at the birth, which indicates that were still his family was somewhat privileged, at least there was a doctor also attending. But we can see from that that Martin Luther kings early upbringing was kind of a mixture of the i guess what i would call the striving for middle class status, and the people who were predominant in this neighborhood, that is, workingclass families. We can also see from this document that, at the time, his father is a preacher. Where . Right here. We can see that there is another person in his household. Who is that . That is, at the time of his birth, both of the grandparents, who are still alive. His grandfather is also the minister of ebenezer church. The things that we can find by looking at both the birth certificate, the autobiography of religious development, at data king, we can see that this was these were the forces that shaped him. Growing up in this home, a middleclass victorian home, two story, six bedrooms. That was unusual. It gave him a certain amount of privilege. We can also see that he is connected to the past. What does he say in the other autobiography . Your first to his saintly grandmother he refers to his saintly grandmother who grew up telling him stories. He grows up with a great attachment. Why . Because his grandmother sees him as her favorite grandson. Thats probably because hes the oldest, one who comes along first. She tells him all the stories. Thats part of what he gets. But the great influence on his life is going to be his father. What happens to his grandfather . He dies before Martin Luther king gets to know him. He dies when he is only about 2 years old. And who replaces him here at ebenezer . His father. How does that happen . In daddy kings memoir we can tell a little bit about that story. The fact that his motherinlaw is the widow of the person that almost founded this church gave him a great advantage. Actually, at the time, the reverend michael king was skeptical about becoming the minister of ebenezer. Why would that be . Part of it was that he wanted to have his own church. If he had come to this church, he would have gotten the position because he was a soninlaw, or was this something he had earned on his own . He was skeptical about that. From his point of view, this was something that he would always be in the shadow of his fatherinlaw. So it took him a while before he makes that decision to come and be pastor here. What happens after that . Well, reverend williams was a very successful person in his own times. When martin comes to atlanta in the years after world war i, he comes from a very humble background. His father had been a sharecropper. He sees rural property. He grows up trying to make it in the rural south not that far from atlanta. He is the type of person that is very ambitious, however. And thats what leads hum into the ministry. He wants to have a better life than plowing the fields. He teaches himself the rudiments of preaching. He only has about what we would call a thirdgrade education at that point. Barely literate but he learns enough to read bible verses, memorizes lots of them, decides in the years after world war i coming to atlanta. His sister, woody, is a border. The bedroom closest to the street is where they put borders. Shes living there. So he comes to visit her and who does he see on the porch in alberta, the daughter of reverend williams and he decides almost from the first tomb ime sees her, shes going to be my wife. He also decides im going to aspire to be a minister like reverend williams. So he comes there and he knows that a half literate i i ten it will preacher who just arrived in atlanta is not going to mary the daughter of a successful preacher. This is despite the fact that reverend williams comes from an almost identical background. He had come, 20 years earlier, by the time reverend king comes, already successful. He is at this porch and decides some day shes going to mary me. But i know i have to get educated first. I have to go he goes to Grammar School. Studies, finally gets out of Grammar School and then decides now i need to go to Morehouse College. The jump from Grammar School to Morehouse College is a little bit of a jump. But he goes and the president is john hope. With a little bit of encouragement, because reverend williams saw what was happening, saw that this guy would have the same drive and ambition he had, so he puts in a good word with president hope. If they had had s. A. T. Scores during that time he would have never gotten in. But fortunately, he could say this person doesnt have very much of an education but he will work as hard as he can to get through. So, at the time, when Martin Luther king moves into the williams home, it is because he is a student. He gets married in the 1920s to alberta. After a long courtship. It takes about five years. But he decides hes going to go and get into morehouse. He gets in. Kind of on probation that he is going to work really hard. So his three children are all the first two children christine, is born in 1927. Hes just hes still an undergraduate at morehouse. Martin michael jr. , this is not martin yet. Michael jr. Is born in 1929. He is still finishing up. And when a. D. Williams is born in 1930, hes also finishing up his ministerial studies at morehouse. So all of this is taking place as hes trying to gain his own stature. And once reverend williams dies in 1931 and he becomes the preacher the pastor of this church, what we see is that he has this drive. He wants to not only achieve what reverend williams has achieved but he wants to achieve even more. He wants to go out and create his own legacy. He comes to the ministry during the depression at a time when it is very difficult to bring in new members, especially members who could provide donations to help the church along. So he brings the church through the 30s by providing services to the people, food, help with housing, the church became a social Service Agency as well as a place for religious guidance, the kinds of things that we would later refer to as the social gospel. So this is the environment that martin grows up in. But again, at that point, hes still michael king. How does he become martin king . That happens as part of that drive by his father to achieve respectability. And he changes his name he later explains he changes his name because his father had had a brother named martin, another brother named luther. But he understood the symbolism of Martin Luther. He had just been to germany, berlin, in 1934, for the World Congress of gap gaptists. Baptists. This is the first time, 100 years after the founding of modern baptists. And they have a world conference. Here is reverend king, one of perhaps a dozen black ministers who make it to berlin in 1934 to attend this meeting. He comes back, and by that time, this is the symbol of what he has achieved. He makes the decision, im going to change my name. And of course that changes his son, because hes a junior. He becomes reverend Martin Luther king senior and Martin Luther king jr. Now im giving you this background because i think that this helps to explain why this place is so important. Why the birth home a block up the street is such an important place. This is where literally, Martin Luther king jr. Achieves his identity. This is the place where he has his early experiences. And this is the important thing that comes through in that wonderful document, the autobiography of religious development. That is something that he writes during his first year at chose close crozier theological seminary. To write a handwritten paper. I would love to show you it, just to see the way in which he kind of sketches out his life. He says, i was born in 1929 on the eve of the great depression, which spread its disastrous arms throughout the nation. That is how he comes to his anticapitalist view of the world. Thats all in the first paragraph. Have you ever read a document that reveals so much more than that . Just from its beginning . Those of you in this class understand that beginning, because it is the beginning of the autobiography. Because it seemed like that was the Perfect Place to begin Martin Luther kings story. What i like to emphasize is that, in so many other ways, that influenced the person who we honor today. Because, he also talks about the influence of his father. He doesnt spend as much time with his mother. He says shes behind the scenes, taking care of those essential things that you need in life. He talks about his grandmother, who he seems to have this special attachment too. She is described as a saintly grandmother, who told him these wonderful stories about the origins of the family. What else does he look at . I think what it does is it allows us to understand the most important decision he makes during the first 20 years of his life. And that is the decision to become a minister. Because what is you might assume that because his grandfather is a minister, his father is a minister, well of course hes going to become a minister. Actually, for exactly those reasons, he decided, no, i am not going to become a minister. Thats not what im going to do. Why was that . Well, partly, it was just youthful rebelliousness and not wanting to follow the lead of parents. But i think it had a deeper root and it comes through in the autobiography and that is his early religious doubts. Were in ebenezer church. We were just in the basement of this church where they had sunday school. What happens in sunday school that shapes him . Well, he begins to learn things in sunday school. Maybe some of you have the same experience. As you get older, you begin to doubt some of those things. In this sanctuary, an incident happens when he was, i think we have dated it at about 7 years old when it happens, but there is a religious revival that takes place here. A visiting minister, one of the ways in which ministers bullet their congregations is they would invite a revivalist to come in. Usually, its some spellbinding person who can get to the emotions of people. What happens in a service at a certain point . People are asked to come forward you just saw that earlier. And testify about accepting jesus as their savior. Well, what does Martin Luther king experience during that . He sees hes sitting in the church. Just manual this. Imagine this. Hes the preachers son. His sister, his older sister comes up. He is sitting there. Ok, do i go up or do i not go up . He decides to come forward. With her. And later he says, you know, he felt bad about that. Why . Because he was not doing that out of inner conviction. He was doing that to keep up with his sister. So that becomes one of the shaping things that he talks about in the autobiography. Then what happens later . He gets to about 13, he says. Hes in the basement in the sunday school class. And he starts to question the bodily resurrection of jesus. Say that doesnt sound right. And he questions whether to take that literally or just figuratively. Figuratively. A 13yearold is not supposed to be doing that. Martin luther king starts to question and he said, these doubts began to come forth unrelentingly once he began to question. So of course hes not going to make the decision to follow his father into the ministry as long as he has these doubts. So, the theme of the autobiography is that struggle to overcome these doubts. So in the process of that 14page document, you can trace the beginnings of his consciousness as a religious person because he has to overcome these doubts or else he cant make that decision to become a minister. How does he overcome that . Well, it happens at Morehouse College. He goes to Morehouse College. And he takes the only course at morehouse for which he gets an a. Should give hope to some of you. You can achieve great things without a wonderful gpa. [ laughter ] but what happens is he takes the thats his only class on religion that he takes at morehouse and its taught by a professor named George Kelsey. I had the privilege of meeting George Kelsey. He was a wonderful, welleducated person who i could see how a young martin would see him as a role model. Because, from his own father, he gets this kind of religion that is kind of what i would call the oldtime religion. Its a lot of emotion but not too much emphasis on theology and reason and things like that. So from George Kelsey, what he gets is that you have to get behind the myths of the bible. A lot of the stories, you have to understand what is their deeper meaning. George kelsey is a welleducated person who had studied the bible, understood a lot of the Historical Context performing what we would call a historical criticism of the bible. Seeing it as a historical document. Something that you could go back and question why did they write this the way that they did . What you find from that is that here he is doing this when probably most of us are not really questing the way that he did. I think that what is really striking is that hes doing this at 13, 14, 15 years old, at a time when most of us kind of accept things without too much deeper thought about it. So he goes through this period of questioning. And he goes to kelseys course and he teaches him the rudiments of how do you look at the bible as a tis torquhistorical docum something that he is really drawn to. Later, he goes off to seminary, he finds that going to this very liberal and what i mean by liberal is that within the spectrum of seminaries, there are those that teach the bible as the word of god, dont question even a single word, to the other extreme of saying that this is something that you could question just like any other historical document. In fact one of the things youll remember from reading taylor branchs account, spend the first year breaking down all the beliefs you think you had before you Start Building up those beliefs that can withstand criticism. So by the time he leaves high school, and of course he enters morehouse early, just 15 years old. Still a very young person. He gets there and begins to see from kelseys class, which he takes while hes there, a way of reconciling the admiration he has for his father. That comes through in his autobiography. He admires his fathers commitment. His fathers commitment to change society, to bring justice. And his father has the basis of the social gospel, but he also has a more fundamentalist view of the bible. So, what young martin wants to do is to take that commitment that he sees in his father. And combine it with the erudition, the intellectualism of George Kelsey and of course benjamin mayes, who is the great influence. Benjamin mayes and George Kelsey, these are highly educated ministers, passionate in their religious beliefs, but also intellectuals. So, i think that what we get from understanding the importance of being here is that this is where it all happened. I mean, within two blocks of here the important events of Martin Luther kings life occurred. That this is what shaped him into the person that we know. And we can trace that through his own writings, through the writings of daddy king, from other documents that we have from this period and one of the things that is very much a central part of the papers of Martin Luther king that weve edited is that so many of those papers are religious papers. He had to work things out in terms of his religious beliefs. And that that was the fundamental basis of Martin Luther king. So just to conclude, i would saw that if we look closely at those papers, what we find is that he is defining his mission as a minister. One of the early papers that he does at the seminary in his first year there, hes asked by a professor, what are you going to whats find to guide your ministry . And he said im going to deal with slums, unemployment, economic insecurity. Civil rights is not on the list. What is he doing 20 years later . This is 1948, what is he doing in 1968 . What kinds of issues is he dealing with in the Poor Peoples Campaigns. Slums, unemployment, economic insecurity. So what i would suggest to you is that when we look at the Martin Luther king who had his formative experiences right here at ebenezer and at the home up the street is that we can see that this is the essential Martin Luther king. This is the inner Martin Luther king. A lot of the other things that we think we know about him are what u would call the external Martin Luther king. Sometimes i even call it the king myth. Because when we look at it from the point of view of the person who emerged from this experience, we see that he was shaped in a way that was not fundamentally changed when he went to montgomery and rosa parks turned a social gospel preacher into a civil rights leader. And i think most of us would agree that for the next ten years he did a pretty good job as a civil rights leader. I mean, all those changes that took place from the montgomery bus boycott to the passage of the civil rights act, he could have said i didnt ask for this job, i was kind of asked to take this job of being a civil rights leader but i did a pretty good job. Please let me go home and rest. Ive kind of accomplished, the Voting Rights action is the last major piece of legislation. But if you see his life in this sweep of the direct line from the experiences that occurred on this block and in this neighborhood to 1968, what you see is that he would reach that crucial time of 1965 and say my work is not done. Thats not my mission. My mission was much deeper than that. That explains why the person who helped pass the Voting Rights act ends up a year later in chicago, working in one of the poorest areas of chicago. And later than that, launching the Poor Peoples Campaign and ending up in memphis. So were here. And i think that one of the things that would be so good one of the things that is so good about being here is not simply just being in this building but we also have some of the withins at least one of the great witnesses of Martin Luther kings life, reverend c. T. Vivian who is someone who shared that kind of social gospel notion of christianity and someone who knew Martin Luther king during the main years of his life. We are very privileged to be in this wonderful setting and have one of the witnesses, one of the persons whose memory is very much alive. I hate to refer to you as a historical artifact [ laughter ] youre not finished yet. Youre not finished making history. Thank you so much. I want to open it up for any questions you might have. This is the place to ask. Please. Did dr. King sorry. Did dr. Kings experiences growing up in the church, being a preacher, influence his leadership style in the movement . The question is what did his experience in church have on his leadership style and the movement. Theres lots of ways of answering that question but one of the documents we have is when he takes his first pulpit. Here he was always under the eye of his father. Sometimes he would come back in the summer and serve as the minister, give his father time to take a vacation, things like that. But when he went to dexter Avenue Baptist Church and took the pastorship of that church his father gave him some advice based on his knowledge of how you run a church. Remember, the Baptist Church is somewhat unique in the sense they can hire, but they can also fire a minister, okay . There is this balance. And so, reverend king, who knew this, told his son, you have to have a firm hand. So we have this document where martin is talking about hes giving one of his first sermons to a new congregation and said that in the church, Authority Comes from the pulpit to the pew, not from the pew to the pulpit. Why was that . Because the minister represented an understanding of the word of god. If you dont accept that authority, get another minister. Now, there was that aspect of Martin Luther king were some of the young people didnt really get along that well with that idea, that in the civil rights world Authority Comes from the pulpit to the pews. There was that sense in a group like snick of well, were a Grassroots Organization and some of the power of that organization has to come from the grassroots up to the leaders. So that was a decision but it did really affect the way in which he viewed his role in the movement. Yes . At what point in your life did you decide, that i guess, studying mlk and his legacy was the right path for you . The question had to do with at what point in my life . In some ways i think i was almost destined to do it. I was at the march on washington. I met mrs. King when i was doing research for my book on snick. John hope franklin, the great historian of his time recommended me to her. But having said all that, theres just the serendipity of i was because at that time, i really believed more in the snick view of bottom up. One of the things about my first book in struggle is that it is a story of the movement from the grassroots up. Its not from kings perspective. So that was that was my thrust. So ive always wondered why she entrusted me with that mission. Because she knew that. She knew that i had written a book and i suspect that she had read it. But i think she understood that even though i came to it with that perspective i would come with a sympathy for the movement but also i would learn over time. I remember the first paper i gave about after becoming editor of Martin Luther kings paper, it was at a conference at the capital. And on Martin Luther king, it was one of the first conferences after the National Holiday. So im invited to give this very public speech thats now in all the papers given at the conference were published. Who is in the front row . Mrs. King, but also bob moses, the main organizers from snick. So here i am, im a snick person but im giving a talk now as the editor of Martin Luther kings papers. So i gave this talk and the conclusion of it was that the movement would have happened even if Martin Luther king had not been born. And i firmly believe that. I looked out and heres Coretta Scott king and shes kind of frowning. And im thinking maybe im not going to be lasting long in this job. But what that did is it forced me to also rethink my own attitudes. Because every time i applied for a grant to do the king papers, i had to say why is this important . Why is it important . If the movement would have happened even if king had never been born, why is it important . What did king provide to the movement . One way of understanding the last 30 years of my life is answering that question. I have to answer that question every day, every year. Each year, i hope my answer becomes more sophisticated, that i understand that there was something essential. And what i think was essential was that he was a visionary. That there were a lot of people who were good at mobilizing people. There were organizers. There were people like bob moses who were essential to the movement and there were people who were even in montgomery. Is Joann Robinson less important in terms of mobilizing that than Martin Luther king . I think she is more important in mobilizing that. I think the montgomery bus boycott Martin Luther king did not become the leader of the bus boycott until the afternoon of the first day of the boycott which was 100 successful, just about. How did that happen . How did you have a successful boycott without Martin Luther king . He is selected to lead. Isnt it wonderful, as a leader, that someone says weve already got a successful movement going. We just want you to open koot going. We want you to make it to the second day, the third day . This is the bottom of the of movements, but if you ask yourself, you get to the 200th day of the boycott, and things arent changing. Who is going to provide the inspiration about what are the visionary goals . Because if you think about it, most movements dont make sense. How can you have a strike, or any kind of movement, a boycott . You put yourself through suffering. 381 days of people having to walk to work. Some of them having to, you know, find ways of getting there. These are maids. These are people who they cant just say okay im going to drive to work today. So from the point from that point of view, you could look at it and say rationally, by that 200th day theyre saying, they might say, maybe i should ride on the bus. At least i get a ride and its raining outside. Its cold. And that makes perfect sense. But what if youre listening to the Montgomery Improvement Association rallies that night and Martin Luther king is saying, no, this is not about getting a better seat on a bus. This is about something thats going to affect your sense of dignity as a person. This is something that is about the sermon on the mount, this is something about the declaration of independence. In other words this is about certain kinds of transcendent values that even when you have to walk to work in the rain, you dont want to go back and sit on that bus. I think that is kind of the way i would balance it now. Of understanding that each of them had their roles. It was a complex movement. And lots of different people were in it who played, perhaps, the most Important Role they would play during their lifetime. Because thats what makes a great movement. And Martin Luther king played his role. And thats what led him to be the great leader that we know. So maybe one final question . Okay. You mentioned to us before in class that Martin Luther king believed that communism did what christianity ought to do. Is there any indication he continued to hold that belief sort of throughout his later years or its interesting. The question about whether that sermon, that Martin Luther kings communisms challenge to christianity. He gives that before the montgomery bus boycott. C. T. Were you familiar with that . I read it. Because in a situation where were in a capitalistic country, right . But we have to find where one starts and this is why the religion works so well with it, right . Because were talking about where are your values . Are they really from the politics of your nation or are they from the deeper spirit of your nation, right . So the Ministry Works perfectly here because the two are tied together there. And you can have one without the other but you cant but it takes both of them to keep a capitalistic country going. One of the things i would also just add to reverend vivians statement is that part of the idea that king had about the social gospel is that he said, i didnt need to retail karl marx to know that we should care about the poor and do justice to those who are less fortunate. That comes from the sermon on the mount that any christian should know that. Part of what he was trying to get across was that if christianity if christians understood the message that goes back even before jesus, back to amos, isaiah, the great prophets, what was the message that they were bringing to the jewish people . What the message was, that you have an obligation, a religious obligation to do this. God demands it of you. And if you fail in that demand, that is going to bring bad things to the jewish people. Well, maybe by looking at it in that perspective, Martin Luther king would conclude that communism answers the right question but with the wrong answer. That the right question is, how do we build a just society . But what it the difference would be that a communist would say, by any means necessary, you know, the means justify the the ends justify the means. He is saying that the means that you used to get to that end, that determines what you get in the end. If you use force to get to the end, you have to maintain yourself using force. Because whoever is on the other side is not going to suddenly give up. So you have people who are going to be trying to overturn the revolution and you have a counterrevolution and maybe another revolution and the cycle of violence just goes on. His view was the only way you overcome that cycle is to understand that the means have to be humane, have to be consistent with your moral principles. And in that way you build the possibility of a reconciled society, what he would call the blood community, that you would have a society and he would point to the differences between, say, countries that achieved their independence nonviolently, predominantly, and those who had to go through revolutionary violence. He said, look at the end result. You dont find in india today, indians still fighting over the same things they were fighting over 100 years ago. They can understand that they can be reconciled with their former colonizers. Now thats an interesting kind of way of looking at things. And i think that he understood now one of the things about that sermon is that ive looked at that sermon very carefully and a lot of the basic ideas come up from a sermon that his father gave more than a decade earlier. And that he gives this sermon in 1953 but he also gives a very similar sermon in 1963. So you have 20 years from his father to the son, where they are basically making the very same argument and thats not that surprising because they go back to the same biblical sources, the prophets. And they basically say that this is the you know, one of the things that i think becomes clear after reading Martin Luther king is that it helps us to understand a lot of the current debates that are going on about the role of religion where theres a lot of emphasis on whether leviticus has these passages against homosexuality, all of these things that are part of the bible. People have to decide, what am i going to emphasize as the essential teachings of my religion . If you just do a search on doing justice to the poor, the idea that that is an essential characteristic of any christian, you find that there are hundreds of mentions it certainly is the most commonly mentioned theme. And yet, what happens in some churches . You focus on the one passage and you miss the hundred other mentions of doing justice to those less fortunate. So what do you take as the basic message that you should come i think, so Martin Luther king, he would come to it with that notion that first of all, religion is about changing the world, as well as changing the soul. He talked about that in the terms of the dual mission of christianity. Some ministers would say, that it doesnt matter what is happening in that world, all we should be concerned about is your soul. And there are others who say youve got to deal with both. Why . Because he says in one of these early papers its a dual process. You have to be concerned about the soul as well as the society in which the soul exists. And unless youre concerned about both sides of that equation you cant really service the needs of your congregation. Last it. Congress returns september 5th and plans to take up several key issues this fall. Funding for the federal government ends september 30th so Congress Must pass federal spending bills to keep the government open. Also, Congress Must increase the debt ceiling to avoid a default on u. S. Debt. Other items on the agenda are rewriting the tax code and continuing work in the senate on health care legislation. Watch live gavel to gavel coverage of the house on cspan. Follow the senate on cspan 2. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. In 1979, cspan was created as a Public Service by americas Cable Television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Next Grace College professor Jared Burkholder talks about the differences between pacifist groups during the american