THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 16, 1996 TAG: 9601160266
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Regent University commemorated the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 67th birthday Monday with a lively academic debate that included religion, political issues such as abortion and ethnic separatism, and the words of King himself.
The event began with Ben Kinchlow, co-host of Pat Robertson's ``The 700 Club,'' reading excerpts of King's ``Letter From Birmingham Jail.'' King wrote the essay, in response to critics, in 1963 after he was jailed for participating in sit-ins at segregated lunch counters.
That opened a free-wheeling discussion that often went beyond King to touch on the importance of following God's law and its interpretation in current political debates.
The l 1/2-hour lecture drew more than 300 people to Regent's Robertson Hall. The Christian graduate school, founded by Robertson, has generally not held commemorations of King's birthday, but Regent has begun a full-scale effort to reach out beyond white evangelicals.
In his letter, King wrote, ``One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws . . . To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.''
Speakers lauded King's example of turning to God-given ``natural law'' when manmade laws proved immoral. Joe Tucker, a Regent law professor, said of King: ``This is someone not trying to preach anarchy or lawlessness, but trying to preach fidelity to higher law.''
The event was also unusual among King celebrations for the vigorous give-and-take it provoked.
In a video hookup, Notre Dame law professor Charles Rice said King's vision didn't quite match that of St. Thomas Aquinas: While King espoused ``an obligation to disobey all unjust laws,'' Rice said, Aquinas said man ``might be obliged to obey unjust laws to avoid greater evil.'' For instance, Rice said, a black man's family could have been lynched if he had refused to sit in the back of a bus.
Yet at Regent, the Rev. Paul ``Chaim'' Schenck responded: ``Somebody at some time must challenge that unjust law in order for that law to be changed.'' Schenck is chief of operations for the American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm founded by Robertson.
Others used King's philosophy to touch on different political issues.
Some drew analogies to say it was permissible to trespass at abortion clinics. Tucker said King's embrace of humanity was truer to Christian ideals than the push for ethnic identity.
``We have million man marches,'' he said. ``Many groups are promoting ethnic separatism, group engineering, collective guilt . . . These things are very different from what Martin Luther King was trying to promote.''
A speaker chided Tucker, saying blacks were only doing what other ethnic groups in America have done without opposition. But Tucker, who is black, responded, to a burst of applause: ``In Christianity, there is no white and no black. There is no man or woman.'' by CNB