We all know Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as the leading civil rights activist in America in the 1960s—a man who offered a prophetic voice to the major domestic issue of his time. But he should also be seen as one whose thought, as reflected in a significant body of public writings, reveals a man who can be rightly regarded as one of the leading Christian thinkers of twentieth-century America as well as a prophet whose message can and should be appropriated by Mormons of various perspectives. He gleaned from the best philosophical and religious thinkers of his day a new way to think about major issues and a strategy for dealing with not only racial oppression but other issues as well; thus, we should make much more use of his thinking in church life today

William D. Russell