Justin Rose’s new book is part of a broader growing interest in the study of Martin Luther King Jr. among contemporary political theorists and philosophers and is an important contribution to our understanding of King’s political thought. Rose focuses on what he calls King’s theory of service, which turns out to touch on many of the major themes in King’s thought, such as integration and nonviolence. King’s theory, on Rose’s account, is extremely demanding, requiring much more than the “apolitical and voluntary action” (p. 4) that has come to be associated with the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday as a “Day of Service.” In offering this interpretation of King, Rose joins other scholars in decrying the safe, sanitized, “deradicalized mythos of King” (p. 4) that has come to dominate popular portrayals of him and even some academic accounts.

Much of Rose’s reading is framed by a series of sermons that King gave titled “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life.” On Rose’s reading, King argued that “a fully three-dimensional life requires love of oneself (length) be complemented by serving others (breadth) and searching for God (height)” (p. 17). The first dimension, if not tempered by the other two, becomes the basis for a drive, in King’s words, “to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade” (p. 2). This is the “drum major instinct” of the book’s title, and it must transformed so that our conception of individual greatness is measured by the second dimension: the ways and extent to which we serve others. Service to others, however, does not mean merely giving to the less fortunate. Rather, King’s political theory of service requires that service be directed at transforming oneself, transforming others, and, crucially, combating structural injustice (p. 22). It is this far-reaching and deeply political understanding of service, directed at the roots of inequality, that places King in the “black radical tradition” (p. 8).

As an interpretation of King, Rose’s account brings together many themes in his thought in a compelling and often attractive way. Yet Rose’s ambition for the book is to provide not only an account of King’s theory of political service but also “a resource for those engaged in contemporary struggles for justice” (p. 99). That is, his goal is not merely interpretation and explication; he wants to suggest that King has something to teach us about political service and, more generally, about theory and activism around racism and structural injustice. These latter ambitions, however, are never fully realized: achieving them would require both a more critical approach to King’s thought and a greater effort to place him in dialogue with our contemporary condition, as well as scholars and activists reflecting on it. Throughout, Rose does not so much defend or criticize King’s theory (as he interprets it), but simply presents that theory. The book’s normative aspirations and its contributions to contemporary thought are largely implicit and gestured at, rather than developed and argued for. And yet making the case that King’s thought should inform and inspire contemporary reflection and activism around racial justice (and structural injustice more generally) depends on establishing that King was importantly right about certain things—and that his diagnoses and prescriptions carry over from his time to ours.

This is an issue when it comes to aspects of King’s thought that seem problematic and hence liable to criticism, or at least in need of defense. For example, as Rose shows, King argued that better-off African Americans have a duty to their less well-off kin to engage in political activism for fundamental change. King wrote, “There must be a climate of social pressure in the Negro community that scorns the Negro who will not pick up his citizenship rights and add his strength enthusiastically and voluntarily to the accumulation of power for himself and his people” (p. 54). Rose immediately adds, “Perhaps no sentence better captures the goal of King’s use of the American dream…. King was trying to create a climate of social pressure that forced his fellow Americans, especially black Americans, to take up their responsibility to serve their nation by collectively transforming themselves, others, and structures of injustice” (pp. 54–55). This raises important issues. How are African Americans to force each other to engage in political activism? What forms may such coercion take? Who may exert it? To what extent? Is this call for social pressure that “scorns” those who are not sufficiently active compatible with King’s generally liberal commitments? These questions have been explored and debated by contemporary scholars (Tommie Shelby comes immediately to mind), and the account of King offered here would have been greatly enriched by engaging this more recent literature. Yet the sentence by Rose quoted earlier is the end of the discussion. Rose’s endorsement of King’s position is implied, but only implied—and its implications and applications are not developed.

This issue of how King is to inform and inspire contemporary thought and action is raised in an even more fundamental way by Rose’s treatment of the Christian premises of King’s thought. Rose quite rightly emphasizes the Christian framework in which King operated, as well as “the centrality of God to King’s theory of political service” (p. 59). Hence, in his discussion on the relation between hope and activism, Rose not only argues that activism requires hope but he also shows definitively that, for King, faith in God provided that hope. Rose then uses the reflections of Ta-Nehisi Coates as a foil to King, because, he argues, Coates’s lack of faith in God undermines the hope necessary for activism. Whereas King never lost his faith that God was on the side of those fighting for justice, Coates writes that he has “no sense that any just God [is] on my side” (p. 73). Coates’s “rejection of a Christian God” means that he has “no God to hold me up” (p. 76).

Rose sees Coates’s atheism and hopelessness as obstacles to activism, and perhaps they are. Yet Rose never explains what the source of the hope necessary for activism should be for people who do not share King’s Christian faith or even his theism. What are people to do if they do not agree that “humans possess a telos to seek God” (p. 62)? Rose is aware of this problem, but he does not fully grapple with it, seemingly content instead to merely suggest that such sources of hope can be “psychological, emotional, or spiritual” (p. 76). In the concluding paragraph of this discussion, he writes, “The objective of this chapter is not to suggest that all contemporary black Americans need to believe in a Christian God. Rather, in addition to exploring the linkage between hope and agency in King’s theory of political service, the goal has been to highlight the dangers of not having sufficient resources to sustain contemporary black Americans in the long and arduous battle against structural injustice” (p. 76). But if contemporary activists “need to generate a sense of hope that exercising collective political agency can make a difference” (p. 76) and King’s faith in God is not available to them, where else should they look? We are only left to wonder. Rose says nothing to help us resist the conclusion that, in the absence of faith in a just God, Coates’s pessimism is justified.

This problem goes beyond the issues of hope, agency, and activism. The fundamental questions raised by Rose’s book are whether and how King’s theory of political service can inform activism today. King lived, thought, and wrote at a time when he could easily take for granted the notion that the United States was a predominantly Christian nation, and indeed this shared Christianity provided a basis for common ground, even with those who disagreed with him. Yet today King’s appeals to Christianity would seem to be far more parochial and unappealing to those of other faiths or of no faith at all. In this sense, King’s thought is not an obvious source of inspiration for political activism in our more diverse society. In short, is King’s theory of political service so grounded in his Christian worldview that it cannot form the basis for activism in our more pluralistic society? If not, which aspects of his thought can be decoupled from their Christian foundations so as to ground a shared commitment to collective action across sectional lines?

Rose has provided a detailed, well-researched, and nuanced portrait of King’s theory of political service, one that brings together many aspects of his thought into one coherent and often attractive whole. In this review I have focused on the issues where I think more needs to be said, and I am eager to see how Rose addresses the questions that I have raised—both in his response here (all 500 words of it!) and, I hope, in his future work.