Freethought of the Day

Martin Luther King, Jr. January 15 On this date in 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr., was born. The civil rights leader, Baptist minister and founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference believed in a strict separation of church and state. Although his many speeches are peppered with references to Jesus and God and often depend for the force of their authority upon "the natural law of God," the Rev. King knew that the religious status quo tended to support segregation. In his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," dated April 16, 1963, King revealed his pique at continued criticism of the civil rights movement by clergy, pointing out that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in the country. D. 1968. “In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. . . . [H]ere we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a tail light behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice. . . . The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch-supporter of the status quo. . . Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?” —Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 1963

Moliere January 15 On this date in 1622, playwright and poet Jean Baptiste Poquelin, who adopted the stage name Moliere as an actor, was born in Paris. His father was an upholsterer/valet to the king. Jean Baptiste studied philosophy in college, started a Parisian acting troupe and toured the provinces with it for many years, acting, directing and writing. As a favorite of King Louis XIV, he produced a succession of 12 popular comedies still being performed, including "The School for Wives" (1662), "Don Juan" (1665), "Le Misanthrope" (1666), and "Tartuffe" (1667), all irreverent and increasingly irreligious. "Tartuffe," a satire on religiosity, originally featured a hypocritical priest. Although Moliere rewrote Tartuffe's profession to avoid scandal, some religious officials nevertheless called for Moliere to be burned alive as punishment for his impiety. Moliere was excommunicated in 1667. He married actress Armande Bejart, when she was 19, and they had one daughter, Esprit-Madeleine, in 1665. Becoming ill while playing the lead in his play, "The Imaginary Invalid" (1673), Moliere insisted on finishing the show, after which he died. Catholic officials refused to officiate or formally bury Moliere. It took the intervention of the King to get him interred under cover of night at a cemetery reserved for suicides. D. 1673. " . . . there is nothing, I think, so odious as the whitewashed outside of a specious zeal; as those downright imposters, those bigots whose sacrilegious and deceitful grimaces impose on others with impunity, and who trifle as they like with all that mankind holds sacred; those men who, wholly given to mercenary ends, trade upon godliness, and would purchase honour and reputation at the cost of hypocritical looks and affected groans; who, seized with strange ardour, make use of the next world to secure their fortune in this; who, with great affectation and many prayers, daily preach solitude and retirement while they themselves live at Court; who know how to reconcile their zeal with their vices; who are passionate, revengeful, faithless, full of deceit, and who, to work the destruction of a fellow-man, insolently cover their fierce resentment with the cause of Heaven." —Moliere, monolog by Cleante, Tartuffe (1667)