Russell Moore has marked Martin Luther King Day in the US with a withering attack on white supremacy, calling it "cruelly cunning" and saying that America has a long way to go before achieving racial justice.
Writing on his website, the evangelical theologian outlines why the message of King resonated with so many in a time of "so much racial tension, injustice, and strife".
Moore, who is president of the Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, adds: "White supremacy is, like all iniquity from the Garden insurrection on, cruelly cunning.
"Those with power were able to keep certain questions from being asked by keeping poor and working-class white people sure that they were superior to someone: to the descendants of the slaves around them. The idea of the special dignity of the white 'race' gave something of a feeling of aristocracy to those who were otherwise far from privilege, while fueling the fallen human passions of wrath, jealousy, and pride."
He continues: "The white supremacists believed they could deny human dignity to those they deemed lesser. They had no right to do so. They believed themselves to be gods and not creatures, able to decree whatever they willed with no thought to natural rights, or to nature's God.
"The signs pointed out that those who made unjust laws, and who unleashed the water-hoses and pit-bull dogs, were only human, and, as such, would face judgement...As we remember Martin Luther King's legacy, let's remind ourselves of how far we have to go as Americans to see the promise of racial justice realised. Let's remember how far we have to go as Christians to see gospel unity in our own congregations."
Moore praises King as a "gifted orator" whose "calls for justice and equity were often poetic and deeply historic". But he adds that "a great deal of the power behind King's message came from the way that he was pressing a claim onto consciences."
Moore writes: "King's words...were intentionally resonant with the cadence of the King James Bible, because he was speaking a word of judgment to a Bible Belt who knew that Bible. He wanted to confront consciences with what they said they believed...King knew that his argument wouldn't resonate with Christian consciences unless it appealed to the Christ-haunted imagination. That's why so much of his language evoked a distinctly biblical view of justice."
Moore has been embroiled in a row with fellow evangelicals after he appeared to criticise those who backed Donald Trump in last November's presidential election. In December, he apologised to those who were offended by his comments, which included the assertion that it was "illogical" for evangelicals to vote for Trump.
