Dr. Charles Ess, Philosophy and Religion, Drury University
The prophetic tradition may be traced in some of its features to preliterate/preagricultural religious beliefs and practices.
It is marked by:
an emphasis on direct experience of the presence of the divine -- which can be brought about through a variety of techniques ("sacred sexuality," intoxicants, dance, etc).This survives in historical religions in terms of mysticism, epiphanies (Moses -- the prophet -- encounters the burning bush; other Prophets of the Hebrew Bible such as Amos; the early Church experiences the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, etc.).Oral (vs. textual) authorities
This is further egalitarian or democratic in spirit -- in principle, the divine may be known by all, and all may tell their story.
A principle theme of the prophetic tradition, exemplified in the Exodus event, is that God acts in history on the side of the oppressed -- and those who are thereby liberated are further expected to practice justice.
These themes are central to Martin Luther King's understanding of religion as the foundation for the demand for justice -- understood as equality.
They are implicit in his appeal to the prophet Amos and the model of the early Christian church, (including their "God-intoxication" -- i.e., experiential unity with the divine), and explicit in the call for justice as the liberation of the oppressed. Finally, MLK clearly believes that his understanding of justice as equality is warranted by "the eternal God."²
Other religious styles are represented in the experience and scriptures of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others.
Within the Hebrew Bible ("Old Testament") and Christian Scriptures ("New Testament"), wisdom literature takes up a somewhat rationalistic approach to God as the Creator who follows a mathematical-like order in creation - but who is also finally beyond human comprehension. Reflecting the influence of a variety of ancient sources, including Hellenism, wisdom literature also tackles the trenchent problem of evil: how is the suffering of the innocent to be reconciled with the faith-claim that God is both the only God and a God of justice? (The Book of Job offers a classic response to this problem, as its final chapters portray a God who exceeds human comprehension, who can be known darkly in the whirlwind but not entirely understood - and whose justice, by extension, cannot be reduced to the simple equation "the good shall be rewarded and the evil always punished" so easily captured by the human mind.)
Apocalyptic beliefs enter the Hebrew Bible only once, and very late, in the Book of Daniel. Apocalyptic literature attempts to preserve the earlier prophetic insistence on God's power and justice in a world in which that power and justice are by no means evident - e.g., the Israelite experience of conquest by the Assyrians, exile under the Babylonians, and on-going persecution, especially under Antiochus Epiphanes IV in the 2nd ct. B.C.E. (It is also tightly associated with literate and agricultural cultures - in contast with oral and pre-agricultural cultures.)
Apocalyptic views salvage the prophetic belief in God's power and justice - but by shifting the focus of religious attention from the community as the primary beneficiary of God's justice in this life (the just community will be rewarded with shalom, peace and prosperity) to the individual who will receive his or her just reward in an afterlife.
Early Christianity inherited each of these traditions, and has stressed them in varying ways throughout its history. For example, first generation Christianities manifested the prophetic: believing themselves to be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit (=experiential unity with the Divine) and prior to the development of its own Scriptures (i.e., as an oral culture), these Christianities stressed radically egalitarian social arrangements: ideally, the Church as "the body of Christ" knew no distinction between Jew and Gentile [friend/enemy], slave and free, male and female (i.e., the hierarchical "pillars" of the larger society). Such beliefs were clearly counter to the larger culture - and issued in the various forms of disobedience early Christians practiced regarding larger social norms. King notes early Christian opposition to infanticide and gladiatorial contests. More dramatically, early Christians also disobeyed the occasional requirement of worshiping the Emperor as a god - and, for three centuries, Christian men refused to enter the Roman army, on the grounds that killing violated God's law and Jesus' example. The price of such disobedience was often torture and death. But it is precisely the courage and conviction of these early Christians that King appeals to in the Letter, arguing for an analogous, contemporary disobedience of the unjust laws of segregation.
After three centuries of accomodation to the Roman Empire, and after acquiring the status of the "official" religion of the Empire, however, Christianity became highly apocalyptic: individual salvation in an afterlife was offered to those who conformed to the hierarchical authorities of the Church - specifically, through the acceptance of written creeds and the practice of sacraments ostensibly warranted by written Scriptures - now organized after the patterns of Roman administration. In particular, over against the radical gender equality of the first generation Christians, 4th ct. Christianity endorsed the subordination of women in a variety of ways - perhaps most powerfully through the development of the doctrine of Original Sin by St. Augustine, which, roughly speaking, justifies woman's "natural" subordinate status by blaming her ostensible disobedience in the Garden for the entrance of sin, suffering, and death into the world. (Earlier Christians, and many of Augustine's contemporaries, had a much different reading of the Garden story - but that's a different story...)
One way of understanding Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., is to note their fervent commitment to prophetic religiosity (stressing salvation for the community of the enslaved and oppressed, not simply for individuals, in this life, not just in an afterlife, and involving the intensely emotional experience of the presence of God - the "God-intoxication" Martin Luther King, Jr., refers to). The Christianity they criticize, the Christianity of slaveholders and segregationists, is, by contrast, largely apocalyptic Christianity - i.e., one stressing individual salvation in an afterlife. (Similarly, both Medieval and modern feminists criticize an apocalyptic Christianity that seems to endorse injustice against women - though they may endorse a prophetic stance that would rather favor more egalitarian gender arrangements, following the example of the early church.)
Prophetic and apocalyptic emphases are not necessarily exclusive of one another - but the experiences and critiques of Douglass, King, and others should suggest that the danger of apocalyptic religious styles is that their focus on individual salvation in an afterlife may lead religious individuals and communities to neglect the prophetic concern for accomplishing justice in this life - a neglect which, at the extreme, can allow one's "religion" to serve simply as an ideological justification for the injustices of the status quo.