"I Ain't Gonna Study War No More"

by Martin Luther King, Jr.
The following is transcribed from the end of a sermon delivered in 1967.

I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anyone make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.

God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment and it seems that I can hear God saying to America "You are too arrogant. If you don't change your ways I will rise up and break the backbone of your power. And I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I am God."

Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated when you tell the truth and take a stand. Sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means losing a job. It means being abused and scorned. It may mean having a seven- or eight-year-old child asking you "Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much."

I've long since learned that to be a follower of Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. My Bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it. Bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace. Let us go out this morning with that determination.

And I have not lost faith. I am not in despair because I know that there is a moral order. I haven't lost faith because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.

I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right... "No lie can live forever."

We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right... "Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again."

We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right... "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future."

We shall overcome because the Bible is right... "You shall reap what you sow."

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to go out and transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

With this faith, we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together and every man will sit under his own pine and fig tree and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it.

With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual... "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we're free at last."

With this faith we'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now. "Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and nations will not rise up against nations... neither shall they study war anymore." And I don't know about you, but I ain't gonna study war no more.