Abstract
Rufas Burrow's most recent book, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Theology of Resistance is an important contribution to the growing field of King scholarship, especially in its comprehensive treatment of King as a theological social ethicist grounded in the tradition of Boston personalism. Burrow argues that to truly appreciate King’s theology of resistance, it is imperative to come to terms with his basic personalist ideas of God, the world, and humanity. Furthermore, he invites his readers to see how King took personalism and expanded it in his own distinctive ways by not merely echoing his personalist predecessors but taking those ideas to task in confronting a trilogy of social problems— racism, economic injustice, and militarism-in his non-violent civil rights movement from Montgomery to Memphis. Burrow, then, extends the conversation further and explores how King’s personalist theology may be strategically positioned to address pressing matters of black- against-black violence and ongoing struggles of African-Americans against racism.