FOR membership

Eagle flies over the Hood Canal (photos: Robert Whitlock)

Earlier this month, I had the great opportunity to attend and speak at the 50th annual Seabeck conference -- a gathering of FOR members in the Pacific Northwest in early July each year. It was an honor to be one of the three national speakers at this "golden anniversary" event, with some 200 peace and justice activists present.

When he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was a member of the National Council of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Long-time FOR member Pamela Blockey-O'Brien told me that during a phone conversation last week. After her call I was inspired to revisit King's essay, "My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence," printed in Peace is the Way, the Fellowship magazine anthology edited by Walter Wink.

Hello blog readers, and thank you for visiting us on this very special holiday. Martin Luther King Day is more than a day off, and it's more than a day on, too! This is a day for every resident of the United States to contemplate how much this man and this movement did to save our souls (either spiritually or metaphorically, as you prefer) and how we can work to continue their campaign for justice through nonviolence.

You might not know that Dr King was a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. I am going to write more later today about how FOR staffers Bayard Rustin and Glen Smiley helped King to create the foundation of his strategies on nonviolent resistance and how FOR's work with Thich Nhat Hanh later informed King's views on Vietnam. For now I give you this, Dr. King's 1958 membership application to FOR: