King's faith was strongly based in Jesus' commandment of
loving your neighbor as yourself, loving God above all, and loving your enemies, praying for them and blessing them. His
nonviolent thought was also based in the injunction to
turn the other cheek in the
Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus' teaching of putting the sword back into its place (Matthew
Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don't plan to run for any political office. I don't plan to do anything but remain a preacher. And what I'm doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man.
— King, 1967
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