Letter from Birmingham Jail I am in Birmingham because

Thus in "Letter from Birmingham Jail" does Martin Luther King justify his leadership of nonviolent civil disobedience as a radical response to the injustice of segregation laws. King elaborates his case with reference to the moral philosophy of Western culture but chiefly to Judeo-Christian tradition and thought. He specifically cites the moral philosophy of Socrates, Augustine, the Old Testament prophets, Niebuhr, and John Bunyan, as well as the egalitarian secular value systems of Lincoln and Jefferson to support his call for absolute social equality and absolute rejection of laws that allow inequalities to exist. King advances the idea that church institutions had done little to advance the cause of racial justice: "In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities." He rejects out of hand the position of the eight white clergymen in Birmingham who criticized him for demonstrations there and prompted his writing the Letter in the first place. Instead, he asserts a direct connection between the affirmative obligations of rel