King: ‘A Three-Headed Monster Attacking America’
Alveda King is a pastoral associate and the director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life and Gospel of Life Ministries. She is also a voice for the Silent No More Awareness campaign, in which she shares her testimony of two abortions and God’s healing and forgiveness. She is the niece of the great civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr.
Charisma News: The Defense of Marriage Summits have become a necessity considering how hot the topic has become in this country recently. Are you surprised at how intense this issue has become?
King: I’m very grateful that defense of marriage has become such a hot topic. It should be surprising in America that people are not defending marriage more, the traditional marriage; the marriage that is ordained by God, one man and one woman. People say if you look in the Old Testament, men had several wives. That was not God’s intent. He made a beautiful design for the family. But Satan came in and began to get some things tangled up. It took a very powerful and loving God to send his only begotten son to shed his blood and to correct that. In the shedding of the blood of Christ, marriage was restored to God’s original intent.
Charisma News: Do you see a lot of non-unity and disharmony in the body of Christ right now concerning the bigger issues that the country is facing?
King: We think about America now and people have been ambivalent for so long. People say abortion is wrong, that we shouldn’t kill babies. Well, that’s somebody else’s problem, a woman needs to decide that on her own. That’s not my problem. Now we see that marriage—natural, pro-creative, traditional marriage—is declining. It’s destroying the family and children are suffering. As long as people can pray and be at home and have their little nuclear family together, they’ll say it’s not my family, and that’s OK.
But now, I believe America is waking up. I think the water is boiling so rapidly now that people are realizing that their families are interwoven with this. People now are having to wake up when you have a president—and this is not a political statement—who supports homosexual marriage. It changes the whole atmosphere of people’s lives. We have a responsibility. People now say, “Maybe this is going too far.”
Charisma News: What was your initial reaction in May when the president announced his support for same-sex marriage?
King: I always knew that President Obama, when he was Sen. Obama, supported homosexual marriage and that agenda. He masked that and tried to pretend that he didn’t. But those of us who studied his history instead of who he was it became very clear that he supported that and the abortion agenda. I was not surprised when he did it. I was surprised that it took him so long to do it.
Charisma News: Bishop Harry Jackson and others in the black pastoral community have voiced their opinions that the present administration has ignored their concerns. Do you share that opinion?
King: I’m part of an organization called the National Black Pro-Life Coalition. We have a book called Life at All Cost. In the book we say we are pro-life and pro-family. We have an open letter in that book that we wrote to President Obama expressing our concerns for the natural, traditional pro-creative marriage, expressing our concerns for babies in the womb, expressing our concerns for the high number of youth who are being incarcerated. We did not get an answer.
Charisma News: What happened with Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., was a tragedy. Have you heard about the efforts of local pastors and other officials for racial reconciliation in that city?
King:I am always in full support of racial reconciliation. I have supported Trayvon’s family since they lost him. I said something that some feel to be very radical in that Trayvon was a late-term abortion. Everybody said, “Wait a minute, what are you talking about?” He was a young man, with dreams and hopes. He was shot down and killed while he was just trying to get some candy and tea. That shows how young he was. He was out getting candy—not drugs, not dope. I said that now, all of his dreams have been aborted. People say, “Oh, I get that now.” I was one of the early voices to say let’s support his family. Thank goodness they are asking people not to be violent and reactive. They simply want justice. Let’s give justice, but let’s do it in love. I certainly support the effort of those pastors.
Charisma News: You are one of the leaders of the pro-life movement in this country. What are some of the things you have been doing lately for the cause?
King: In the pro-life cause, I mentioned the book Life at All Cost. I and the other contributors are going around the country promoting the message of that book. Life must be supported; natural pro-creative traditional marriage must be supported. We must support our young people because we don’t want them to continue to be incarcerated. The gospel of Jesus Christ is very important in that message as well as evangelism and discipleship.
We say to a mother, “Please don’t kill the baby in your womb. Have the baby, raise the baby; commit to understanding God’s plan and pattern for having a family.” We say to the father and mother, “Re-evaluate where you are. Don’t have any more children until you are ready to do that.” We really believe firmly that life is from conception until natural death and everything in between. Because of that, I am working to promote this message and I speak on this front.
I say that there is a three-headed monster that’s attacking America. Think about this. First there is racism. The racist or the narrow viewpoint rather than the global family viewpoint would say my skin color is this, my ethnicity is this or that. So, therefore I will not procreate unless I procreate with someone who is exactly like me. That’s a racist, fearful thing that if I don’t make somebody that’s the same ethnic group, I won’t exist anymore. The second one is abortion and birth control drugs. I’m going to take birth control and I’ll never get pregnant again. So, there will be no natural conception. If there is, I will abort the baby. And then you have two men or two women who say we’ll marry each other so we can’t procreate. We’ll just borrow somebody else’s children. We really do have to treasure life and natural, traditional procreative marriage.
Charisma News: The pro-life movement is something that is very personal to you. God’s forgiveness and grace is amazing, isn’t it?
King: God has healed me. I personally had secret abortions even though my grandfather—Dr. Martin Luther King—during his lifetime was pro-life. He convinced my mother not to have a DNC for a mysterious female ailment. Abortion was illegal in 1950. My uncle, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was pro-life. My daddy was pro-life. He named me. My grandfather said he saw me in a dream three years before I was born. My father named me Al, after him; and veda, or vita, which in Italian is life. Celeste, my middle name, was to get me close to heaven. I grew up in a pro-life family. I hid my abortions and later I confessed them. My family embraced me, God forgave me and so I am very pro-life.
Charisma News: As we move closer to the election in November, what are some of the things you see that God is doing in this country?
King: One of my favorite Scriptures says that where sin abounds, grace abounds much more (Rom. 5:20). When things are really terrible and I get discouraged—and that does happen from time to time because I hear things and see such tragedies—I realize there is hope. My uncle was at his kitchen table at midnight one night and holding his head saying, “Lord, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t take it. If you don’t help me, I can’t do it.” He said he heard the voice of Jesus say, “Martin Luther, stand up for truth, stand up for justice, and lo I will never leave you until the end of the earth.” I’m like that.
When I begin to feel despair, I begin to see and look for God’s grace abounding. When you do that, you will find that people who love God and love humanity will come together. You’ll see people across ethnic and denominational lines come together. When I began to tell people about a loving God who gave his only begotten son, there are people of other religions that begin to look at me and say maybe; let me look at that. In the midst of all of the ugly things that are happening, I believe that we should seek first the kingdom of God and all of his righteousness, and all of these things will be added. Aslong as God is love, and He always will be, as long as we can love each other, there is hope.
Charisma News: There are many recent movements that have called the nation’s citizens to prayer and repentance. Are you personally involved in any of these movements?
King: I am involved in America for Jesus and the 40 Days for Life campaigns. I’m involved in several prayer movements and, even when I can’t physically be there, I’ll call in, Skype or send a video in. I belong to a church in Atlanta, Believers Bible Christian Church, that has a prayer net seven days a week. We’re praying for the people of this world, invoking 2 Chronicles 7:14. I am praying to God to ask Him to forgive, remember and heal the land.
