King Funeral's Political Turn

Just before a meeting last night, a group of us were idly chatting when one person mentioned Jimmy Carter's presentation at the six-hour funeral for Coretta Scott King. He had, he told us, been completely turned off by what Carter said. I had to confess that except for an excerpt from Joseph Lowery's talk, heard on the radio while driving from appointment to appointment, I knew nothing of what Carter or anyone else had said at the funeral.

So, last night, I pored over a number of different accounts, avoiding, for now, any editorializing pieces on the subject. I wanted to form my own opinions.

A few thoughts...

(1) The tone of what was a marathon event seemed, at times, to have been enitrely too political. The accounts of the King funeral made me think of the funeral of the late Senator Paul Wellstone, whose life was tragically ended by a plane crash. Wellstone's family and friends, you'll remember, seemed intent on being overtly political, sticking it to their political opponents and giving a lift to the man about to take the late senator's place on the ballot in Minnesota, former Vice President Walter Mondale. (Mr. Mondale was defeated by Norm Coleman.)

In a way, as repulsed as I was by turning that funeral into a political pep rally, that transformation was more justifiable than what Lowery, Carter, and others chose to do to King funeral. Wellstone, after all, was a partisan figure. Mrs. King, although she certainly engaged the political process, was a prophetic figure. Like her husband, she spoke truth as she saw it to power, in the Name of Jesus Christ. Even King's daughter, in her eulogy, expressed thanks to her mother for her witness for Christ as an advocate for justice.

(2) I admire Jimmy Carter. But I feel that Mrs. King became a convenient prop for him to make a political statement during the funeral. The same thing appears true of Mr. Lowery.

(3) I have an old-fashioned notion that funerals aren't about politics or even about the deceased. They're occasions on which those who have been left behind can worship God, thank Him for the ways in which God worked in the lives of those who have passed away, and more than anything, be reminded that while death comes to all, we can have new and everlasting life through the God revealed to the whole world in Jesus Christ. That function of funerals seemed to have gotten lost by just about everybody associated with Mrs. King's funeral.

Had I been the pastor loci, the presiding clergy, for Mrs. King's funeral, I hope that I would have insisted that several principles be respected:

(1) A longer funeral doesn't connote greater honor.

(2) Fewer speakers.

(3) Less folderol.

(4) Jesus and the Good News of His transforming love, not human triumphalism or self-aggrandizement of various stripes, would have to be at center stage. Absent this element, whatever little performance takes place, a funeral as Christians understand a funeral, that is, as one kind of worship, doesn't take place and shouldn't be allowed to bear the label.