This is actually Part Two:
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As I have sought to make sense of my own journey of faith, and to reconcile in my own head and heart the reasons that I abandoned for a time at least my Fundamentalist roots, with sensitive and caring help from spiritual advisors I realized that in the faith of my youth, righteousness – translated as pious thought and action was given a far higher role than justice – translated as paying less attention to the condition of our own souls than we paid to the conditions of those whom the Hebrew Scriptures define as the widow, the orphan, the alien in our midst, and whom Jesus defined as the least of these.

By God’s grace I was born with a very tender heart. Having such a heart and conscience, gave me eyes to see what my spiritual mentors – including especially my father – did not want me to attend to. And this would lead to arguments and harsh feelings.

Such conflicts became particularly testy during those adolescent years when you are pushing many boundaries of your family’s expectations, and sometimes simply being a jerk, but when you also see (maybe for the first time) the disconnect between the way your parents’ profess their faith and values and live their lives. You are probably not yet going up against the powers and authorities of your community, or your country, but you are going up against the power and authority of those who are providing you food and shelter, and with whom you have to interact daily, so the tension can get very thick.

In my case, these tensions surrounded our family practices as farmers. We owned orchards, vineyards, and cotton fields, and we – like many farmers to this day – were dependent on migrant workers to pick our crops. When I was old enough to work alongside these migrants, I became aware that my father – and most all of the other farmers who I knew well, and many of whom were in our church – were ignoring child labor laws, and were paying below minimum wage, and were providing no sources of fresh water, lavatory facilities or, with a few exceptions, housing. And I knew the condition of the housing that was provided, and it was pitiful – not fit for families with small children, and some elderly family members, and so on.

So, I confronted my father about this disparity that I saw between his passionate faith, his concern that we be witnesses for the Gospel, and his treatment of those on whom our family livelihood depended. And I was told it wasn’t my business.

Adding to the disconnect was that we were a family who never missed church under normal circumstances. I had a number of “perfect attendance pins” from my Sunday School days, and if we traveled over a weekend we would always find some church in which to worship on Sundays so that we would be honoring God.

However, during the harvest season, and if we could get in line to have the trucks carrying the migrant workers to pull into our fields on a Sunday, then we could and would miss church because, as my Father put it, “If God caused the crops to be ripe on a Sunday than God must be okay with our picking the crops on Sunday and missing church as a result.”

But his smart-aleck son (that would be me) would say, “But Dad, is it okay to miss church, but mistreat the workers?” Not a productive conversation starter.

Now let me say with clarity that my father was an unforgettable character who could embarrass his children royally for many reasons, but he was not any different than any of the other “Christian” farmers in our area of Central California or most of this land. It is not a shock to me that – although it was well after we’d sold our farm and moved out of the area -- Caesar Chavez became the figurehead of the push for unionizing migrant workers and demanding simply humane conditions and wages for those on whose backs farmers had been making a profit for years.

Nor is it a shock to me that people in the churches were some of those most incensed by the actions of Chavez, and the light he shone on their failure to be fair to “the least of these.” You see, Jesus was not alone in being chased out of his home town for calling out and naming the “sins of the people.”

Jesus would have many companions through the centuries in declaring that “a prophet is rarely accepted in his own country.”

Tomorrow we honor through a national holiday, an African American Baptist preacher whose name has Reformation roots – Martin Luther King, Jr. Tragically, like the Lord he preached, his prophetic ministry led to his premature death.

King is noted for being such an incredibly gifted orator who could stir thousands, if not millions with his oratory. Without Martin Luther King, Jr., we would likely not be witnessing the inauguration of Barack Obama as our next President on Tuesday.

But, if King was a fantastic orator in the tradition of Black preachers, his content either came directly from – or was in the same genre as – the Scriptures that inspired Jesus of Nazareth.