Every third week of January since 1983, a person and cause have been honored. In 1983, President Reagan signed the Martin Luther King Act, which set aside the third Monday of January to honor the civil rights leader. The following year, Reagan declared the third Sunday of January as National Sanctity of Human Life Day to recognize the humanity and personhood of the unborn child.
There is an important connection between honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and honoring the sanctity of life. Dr. King was a Baptist pastor. His writings, speeches, and exhortations were filled with biblical references and quotes. He built the civil rights movement in the black churches of America. Sadly, because of today’s widespread biblical illiteracy, it is likely that many people reading King’s inspirational teaching may not know he is quoting God’s inspired words.
Many in the pro-life movement also depend on biblical teachings about God’s creation and protecting the innocent. Numerous churches observed Sanctity of Human Life Sunday this month. Far more should.
Dr. King and the pro-life movement have something else in common, too. Both rely on America’s Declaration of Independence that was signed on July 4, 1776, 250 years ago this summer. Specifically, the second paragraph of the Declaration inspired King and pro-lifers:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.1
That sentence defines America’s “creed.” Our Founders believed there were universal “truths,” one of which is that our rights come from our “Creator”—who is without question the God of the Bible. The first right listed is the right to life. Long before sonograms, our Founders knew in 1776 that if you don’t have the right to life, all the other rights are irrelevant.
Dr. King believed the Declaration was a “promissory note” that applied to everyone. He wanted the promise of our founding documents to cover black men and women, too. King wanted race to recede as a major factor in how we deal with each other.
In an August 16, 1967 speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he said, “Let us be dissatisfied until the day when nobody will shout ‘White Power!’ when nobody will shout ‘Black Power!’ but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.”2
Even more famous is this quote he often included in sermons and at rallies: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”3
In 2026 in America, there are powerful secular and Marxist-socialist movements that reject God. They attempt to push Christians out of the public square and even mock Christian prayer when tragedies occur. I think this anti-Christian bigotry is also causing many on the Left to abandon or distort Dr. King’s teachings.
If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, would he be welcomed on the political Left? If he ran for public office, would the ACLU, the LGBTQ lobby, the trans radicals, or the Socialist Party of America support him? I don’t think so—unless he surrendered his Bible-based views on race, justice, and freedom.
King once spoke about the tumultuous fight for civil rights in Montgomery, Alabama. He was up late one night when the phone rang. On the other end was “an angry voice” that said, “. . . before next week you’ll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery.”4
King was already struggling over the many threats against his life, his wife, and his children. He prayed to God and confessed his weakness and lack of courage in that moment. And God answered his prayer. King later said this:
I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me alone. At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before. Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.5
He would have to face “anything,” including the worst. Three days later, his home was bombed. King faced this horror with the “peace that surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4:7 ESV).
I am inspired when I reread Dr. King’s sermons and speeches. As Christians grapple with how much we should “risk” in the struggle to save our country, I remember this quote from Reverend King:
. . . cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.6
Our basic liberties are under attack. The radical secular Left is becoming bolder and more violent. Over the two days—Sanctity of Life Sunday and Martin Luther King Jr. Day—there was a vicious attack on a church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Christians attending Cities Church were deprived of their freedom of speech, their freedom of assembly, and their freedom to worship God.
Shockingly, left-wing public officials defended this obvious attack on religious liberty. The violent mob that attacked Cities Church had the same purpose as the bigots who attacked churches during Martin Luther King’s struggle for equal rights. They want to intimidate us into silence.
JDFI will not bow to cowardice. We will not be bound by politics. We will not bend to what is popular. We will not be silent. With your continued prayers and support, we will always do what is right. We urge more pastors to stand for what is right at this critical time in our nation’s history.
- Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, National Archives, accessed January 19, 2026, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration.
- Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go From Here?, address delivered at the Eleventh Annual Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, GA, August 16, 1967, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, accessed January 19, 2026, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here.
- Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” address delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, accessed January 19, 2026, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/i-have-dream.
- Martin Luther King Jr., Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson, chapter “The Violence of Desperate Men,” The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, accessed January 19, 2026, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/publications/autobiography-martin-luther-king-jr/chapter-8-violence-desperate-men.
- Martin Luther King Jr., Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., chap. “The Violence of Desperate Men.”
- Martin Luther King Jr., “A Proper Sense of Priorities,” February 6, 1968, quoted in Physicians for a National Health Program, accessed January 19, 2026, https://pnhp.org/news/martin-luther-king-jr-a-proper-sense-of-priorities/.
