3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

~ he explained as a combination of ideas. "Satya," he wrote, "is truth which equals
love, and agraha is force ; `satyagraha,' thereforo, means truth-force or love fot~ce."~
Promoted by the Fellowship of Reconciliation,~ was an essential element of
nonviolence .
Ideologically, King was receptive to the concept of nonviolence, yet far from fully
committed to it at this stage in his life. His theological acumen was formidable ; like most
seminary students, he had wrestled with weighty, unanswerable questions about God and
human nature and good and evil, and knew something about nonviolent theory from his
studies at both Crozer and Boston University. Perhaps the most potent intellectual influence
on King was that of theologian Reinhold Niehbur, who emphasized that those who were
oppressed could not be free if they relied on moral persuasion while eschewing power and
pressure . Niehbur also criticized Gandhian nonviolence on the grounds that it was often
impractical, impossible, and exclusive ; he emphasized that both nonviolence and violence
involved coercion, and so one was not necessarily "more moral" than the other.°
As the Montgomery protest unfolded, King worked through his strategy of social
change . "I had come to see early," he later wrote, "that the Christian doctrine of love
operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons
°See Seshachari, Gandhi and the American Scene , 127, 130 . Clayborne Carson
downplays the extent of King's intellectual engagement with Niehbur; however, he also
concedes that King had not only written about Niehbur in graduate school but also
corresponded with him in 1933 . Sa Carson, ed ., The Kin~aoers 2: 139-140,141-131, 222.
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