The Beloved Community

A Shared Vision for Humanity

We Envision

These truths are made self-evident: 

All People Are Created Equal

  • etheye
    Our children are born into belief systems, values and conditioning from their elders for living the essential truths of consciousness, interconnected as one humanity, living within a just. equitable, sustainable culture.

True democratic equality is at the heart of our knowing that the least among us are endowed with the ability to live a fulfilled life.

Government Is Of and For The People

  • When the resources needed for a fulfilling life are made available and accessible to all the people, then we will have a government of and for the people.

A true government of and for the people enables all people to be valued, to have a quality education, healthy food, clean water, safe shelter, health care, and mobility both physically and economically. Communities operating close to purpose understand how to enable all to have what is needed to live cooperatively. Cooperative communities understand how to delegate the responsible use of resources from The Commons. We move from punitive to restorative justice processes.  It insists on processes that hold truth and justice at its core.

humanrights

Equality In Democracy

  • When all people can be heard as equals, whether in agreement or dissent then we begin to have an open dialog for true  democracy.

A true democracy establishes communal conversation with all voices heard discussing needs, resources, and developmental processes. Working together to assess community needs and implementing effective communal solutions. As a representative in government or community, there is assumed responsibility that includes due diligence and comprehending the decisions made affect the lives of many. Embracing transparency and open collaboration with all people is required by representatives.  It is a high priority to value people over goods and services and without this understanding, we are not serving all people. Rather, our systems create division, separation, categorization, and ultimately oppression.


We hold a vision…

that someday we will live in a world

Where we will no longer need to fight for social justice and human rights.

…Where we will no longer need our voices heard in mass protests that speak of the injustices of the world created by separation thinking. Rather, communal consciousness values all people. The removal and displacement of people from cities will not be a unconscionable thought, nor in terms of profit gained.

…Where we will no longer need to be involved in a struggle for all people to have access to resources that are essential for human life, such as water, health care, shelter and food.

We hold a vision…
that someday we will live in a world

Where we will no longer need to fight for social justice and human rights.

Where we will no longer need our voices heard in mass protests that speak of the injustices of the world created by separation thinking. Rather, communal consciousness values all people. The removal and displacement of people from cities will not be a unconscionable thought, nor in terms of profit gained.

Where we will no longer need to be involved in a struggle for all people to have access to resources that are essential for human life, such as water, health care, shelter and food.

We hold a Vision that these honorable fights, raising our voices and struggles will be a thing of the past only to be told in our history books…

for we hold a vision that caring for one another as a collective and living unity consciousness principles within all of society will be prevalent in our government and communities as a new global meme.

We not only have the courage to voice what needs to be heard and transformed, we have the courage to envision a whole new world.

Let us take the steps for transformation as a community to become a reality at the deepest level. Allowing our passion for social change to merge voice and contemporary skills for taking the leap into cocreating, from the Essence of our Being, a new way of life.

[ Invocation for Humanity ]
[ Vision for The Beloved Community ]
[ Peace Ambassador Training ]

Envisioning The Beloved Community

Imagine The World Guided by Our True Nature

Living in a Culture of Peace

Imagine people breaking free all over the world from fear and pain stuck in the human psyche lead by emotional and mental conditioning and patterning of domination and control to Freely Being the Expansion of our True Nature and Living the Full Expression of Purpose.

Imagine the transformation of daily indignities, devaluing and even persecution of our fellow beings to Living in Joy and Honoring each other.

Imagine witnessing the transformation of critical mass emerging from the collective systemic current world order and mind frame of separation to Living the Profoundness of Unity Consciousness integrated with Mindful Intentions and Actions Permeating the World.

Imagine the Prevention of all Social Ill Manifestations of the World.

Imagine the Absence of Warfare.

Imagine Consciousness permeating our families, neighborhoods, work place, communities and throughout the world…Living in the Beloved Communities.

Imagine the beneficial Awakening for Maintaining the Glory of our Environment.

Imagine Consciousness proclaimed throughout the Voices of our Religious and World Leaders as One Collective Conscious Humanity.

Imagine Consciousness Prevailing throughout the Hearts and Souls of our Parents.

Imagine people of all ages Awakening from the sense of smallness, judgment and lack of worth to knowing the Essence of their Being within themselves and SMILING.

Imagine Consciousness Shining through the Eyes of all our Children.

Imagine Unity Consciousness Echoing throughout the Continents and the dialogue being discussed for new evolutionary solutions.

Cass Charrette

[ Invocation for Humanity ]
[ Vision for Humanity ]
[ Peace Ambassador Training ]

The King Philosophy

mlk-BelovedCommunity

Content from The King Center

TRIPLE EVILS 

The Triple Evils of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle. They are interrelated, all-inclusive, and stand as barriers to our living in the Beloved Community. When we work to remedy one evil, we affect all evils. To work against the Triple Evils, you must develop a nonviolent frame of mind as described in the “Six Principles of Nonviolence” and use the Kingian model for social action outlined in the “Six Steps for Nonviolent Social Change.”

Some contemporary examples of the Triple Evils are listed next to each item:

Poverty – unemployment, homelessness, hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, infant mortality, slums…

“There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty … The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.”

Racism – prejudice, apartheid, ethnic conflict, anti-Semitism, sexism, colonialism, homophobia, ageism, discrimination against disabled groups, stereotypes…

“Racism is a philosophy based on a contempt for life. It is the arrogant assertion that one race is the center of value and object of devotion, before which other races must kneel in submission. It is the absurd dogma that one race is responsible for all the progress of history and alone can assure the progress of the future. Racism is total estrangement. It separates not only bodies, but minds and spirits. Inevitably it descends to inflicting spiritual and physical homicide upon the out-group.”

Militarism – war, imperialism, domestic violence, rape, terrorism, human trafficking, media violence, drugs, child abuse, violent crime…

“A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war- ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Source: “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Boston: Beacon Press, 1967. 


SIX PRINCIPLES OF NONVIOLENCE

Fundamental tenets of Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence described in his first book, Stride Toward Freedom. The six principles include:

  1. PRINCIPLE ONE: Nonviolence is a way of life for courageous people.
    It is active nonviolent resistance to evil. It is aggressive spiritually, mentally and emotionally.
  2. PRINCIPLE TWO: Nonviolence seeks to win friendship and understanding.
    The end result of nonviolence is redemption and reconciliation. The purpose of nonviolence is the creation of the Beloved Community.
  3. PRINCIPLE THREE: Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice not people.
    Nonviolence recognizes that evildoers are also victims and are not evil people. The nonviolent resister seeks to defeat evil not people.
  4. PRINCIPLE FOUR: Nonviolence holds that suffering can educate and transform.
    Nonviolence accepts suffering without retaliation. Unearned suffering is redemptive and has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities.
  5. PRINCIPLE FIVE: Nonviolence chooses love instead of hate.
    Nonviolence resists violence of the spirit as well as the body. Nonviolent love is spontaneous, unmotivated, unselfish and creative.
  6. PRINCIPLE SIX: Nonviolence believes that the universe is on the side of justice.
    The nonviolent resister has deep faith that justice will eventually win. Nonviolence believes that God is a God of justice.

SIX STEPS OF NONVIOLENT SOCIAL CHANGE

The Six Steps for Nonviolent Social Change are based on Dr. King’s nonviolent campaigns and teachings that emphasize love in action. Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence, as reviewed in the Six Principles of Nonviolence, guide these steps for social and interpersonal change.

  1. INFORMATION GATHERING: To understand and articulate an issue, problem or injustice facing a person, community, or institution you must do research. You must investigate and gather all vital information from all sides of the argument or issue so as to increase your understanding of the problem. You must become an expert on your opponent’s position.
  2. EDUCATION: It is essential to inform others, including your opposition, about your issue. This minimizes misunderstandings and gains you support and sympathy.
  3. PERSONAL COMMITMENT: Daily check and affirm your faith in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence. Eliminate hidden motives and prepare yourself to accept suffering, if necessary, in your work for justice.
  4. DISCUSSION/NEGOTIATION: Using grace, humor and intelligence, confront the other party with a list of injustices and a plan for addressing and resolving these injustices. Look for what is positive in every action and statement the opposition makes. Do not seek to humiliate the opponent but to call forth the good in the opponent.
  5. DIRECT ACTION: These are actions taken when the opponent is unwilling to enter into, or remain in, discussion/negotiation. These actions impose a “creative tension” into the conflict, supplying moral pressure on your opponent to work with you in resolving the injustice.
  6. RECONCILIATION: Nonviolence seeks friendship and understanding with the opponent. Nonviolence does not seek to defeat the opponent. Nonviolence is directed against evil systems, forces, oppressive policies, unjust acts, but not against persons. Through reasoned compromise, both sides resolve the injustice with a plan of action. Each act of reconciliation is one step close to the ‘Beloved Community.’

Based on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in Why We Can’t Wait, Penguin Books, 1963.

We often view the Six Steps as a phases or cycles of a campaign rather than steps because each of them embodies a cluster or series of activities related to each of the other five elements.


THE BELOVED COMMUNITY

“The Beloved Community” is a term that was first coined in the early days of the 20th Century by the philosopher-theologian Josiah Royce, who founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation. However, it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., also a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who popularized the term and invested it with a deeper meaning which has captured the imagination of people of goodwill all over the world.

For Dr. King, The Beloved Community was not a lofty utopian goal to be confused with the rapturous image of the Peaceable Kingdom, in which lions and lambs coexist in idyllic harmony. Rather, The Beloved Community was for him a realistic, achievable goal that could be attained by a critical mass of people committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill.

As early as 1956, Dr. King spoke of The Beloved Community as the end goal of nonviolent boycotts. As he said in a speech at a victory rally following the announcement of a favorable U.S. Supreme Court Decision desegregating the seats on Montgomery’s busses, “the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.”

An ardent student of the teachings of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dr. King was much impressed with the Mahatma’s befriending of his adversaries, most of whom professed profound admiration for Gandhi’s courage and intellect. Dr. King believed that the age-old tradition of hating one’s opponents was not only immoral, but bad strategy which perpetuated the cycle of revenge and retaliation. Only nonviolence, he believed, had the power to break the cycle of retributive violence and create lasting peace through reconciliation.

In a 1957 speech, Birth of A New Nation, Dr. King said, “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation. The aftermath of violence is emptiness and bitterness.” A year later, in his first book Stride Toward Freedom, Dr. King reiterated the importance of nonviolence in attaining The Beloved Community. In other words, our ultimate goal is integration, which is genuine inter-group and inter-personal living. Only through nonviolence can this goal be attained, for the aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of the Beloved Community.

In his 1959 Sermon on Gandhi, Dr. King elaborated on the after-effects of choosing nonviolence over violence: “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, so that when the battle’s over, a new relationship comes into being between the oppressed and the oppressor.” In the same sermon, he contrasted violent versus nonviolent resistance to oppression. “The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of non-violence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.”

The core value of the quest for Dr. King’s Beloved Community was agape love. Dr. King distinguished between three kinds of love:  eros, “a sort of aesthetic or romantic love”; philia, “affection between friends” and agape, which he described as “understanding, redeeming goodwill for all,” an “overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless and creative”…”the love of God operating in the human heart.” He said that “Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people…It begins by loving others for their sakes” and “makes no distinction between a friend and enemy; it is directed toward both…Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community.”

In his 1963 sermon, Loving Your Enemies, published in his book, Strength to Love, Dr. King addressed the role of unconditional love in struggling for the beloved Community. ‘With every ounce of our energy we must continue to rid this nation of the incubus of segregation. But we shall not in the process relinquish our privilege and our obligation to love. While abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only way to create the beloved community.”

One expression of agape love in Dr. King’s Beloved Community is justice, not for any one oppressed group, but for all people. As Dr. King often said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He felt that justice could not be parceled out to individuals or groups, but was the birthright of every human being in the Beloved Community. I have fought too long hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concerns,” he said. “Justice is indivisible.”

In a July 13, 1966 article in Christian Century Magazine, Dr. King affirmed the ultimate goal inherent in the quest for the Beloved Community: “I do not think of political power as an end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective that we seek in life. And I think that end of that objective is a truly brotherly society, the creation of the beloved community”

In keeping with Dr. King’s teachings, The King Center embraces the conviction that the Beloved Community can be achieved through an unshakable commitment to nonviolence. We urge you to study Dr. King’s six principles and six steps of nonviolence, and make them a way life in your personal relationships, as well as a method for resolving social, economic and political conflicts, reconciling adversaries and advancing social change in your community, nation and world.

Invocation For Humanity

James O’Dea

You were born for such a time as this. I ask you to look at your world….and face this moment in time consciously and with all the discernment and clarity within your power, with intellect, with heart, with Spiritual intelligence. Decipher the hour, the moment, in this evolutionary time that calls you to be a witness. Indeed you are called…otherwise you wouldn’t be here now in this defining epic of earth’s story and in the human story itself.

I know that you must feel challenged. Heroic efforts are being raised everywhere to bear witness to ecological destruction, disease, poverty, genocide, violence and hostile aggression.

The scale of humanitarian challenges can seem overwhelming. I ask you not to be disillusioned for we know that this is the time for an awakened consciousness, a heightened focus and clarity about the nature of our challenges. There is a fundamental difference in an awakened consciousness that regards transformation on all levels, from the individual to the collective.

We know that this evolving transformation touches something very deep, something so essential that it affects both heart and mind. This transformation may be preceded and followed by steadfast effort, the summoning of will and the continuum of practice, but it has its own mystery. It can bring a subtle shift which reveals an entirely new perspective or it can bring a jolt, a flash of insight for which has the power to re-organize our lives or it can provide the impetus of a great leap of faith.

More than anything transformation requires courage. The courage to face the truth that your own being has great depth. Yes, that within you, consciousness can flow from separate little islands of thought and conditioned responses to oceanic senses of connectivity and coherence.

If you were looking for confirmation of interconntiveness and expanded human capacity, the evidence is there. If you were looking for evidence of transformative love, the evidence is there. If you were looking at the role that consciousness plays in healing, physically, psychologically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, the evidence is there.

If you have decided to face the stark reality of the world as it is in the moment knowing fully that the very basis of international law and civility has been eroded, that fear, hatred and disillusionment are on the rise, that humanity is fueling bitterness, resentment and violence, then you must also have the courage to face in the midst of disillusion, dysfunctional hierarchy, dying powers, wars over beliefs and resources in the midst of systemic breakdown and the collapse of unsustainable behaviors and world views, there is something stirring that offers the possibility of personal, social and global transformation.

This stirring in consciousness imperils the understanding that once we see the damage being done to the whole, we can no longer aggressively pursue the limited self interest of the individual parts. When the parts are at war with each other then the whole suffers. This is truth in the health of an individual, as it is in a family and within society. As we now see in the earth in its entirety.

We see a new bread of economist, psychologists, scientist and spiritual activist who not only appreciate this truth they have begun to embody it in a new science of healing, a new interdependence movement that lays out the vision and practice of economic and ecological sustainability. We see that consciousness itself is an almost limitless resource of creativity and compassion.

We have begun to see that an education that starves the inner life of children, fails to nurture emotional intelligence and does not nurture the Soul. [Education such as this] simply will not serve us for the mighty task ahead. It takes courage to heal, to speak on behalf of the whole, to be a voice and its full expression for the earth and for all human life.

For our consciousness knows that peace is our inheritance and that our responsibility is to reveal our interdependence. It takes courage for science and spirituality to dialogue and illuminate new possibilities for human kind. It takes courage to reach towards a vision that turns enemies into allies and disillusionment into hope. But you were born for such a time as this.

[ Vision for Humanity ]
[ Vision for The Beloved Community ]

[ Peace Ambassador Training ]