Yet, he asserted, a loving Christian God would forgive Western civilization and America if they would renounce these practices. Drawing examples from the socio-political arena, he lamented that Western civilization had “trampled over one billion six hundred million of your colored brothers in Africa and Asia,” while America had deviated from its promises of equality in the Declaration of Independence by straying into the “far country of segregation and discrimination” (King, Measure, 16). Influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr ’s philosophy in his book Moral Man and Immoral Society, King declared that “our sin is even greater” in “our collective lives” (King, Measure, 13). King preached the social gospel by issuing a challenge to America’s moral conscience and encouraging the nation to act in the interest of all of its citizens. King believed the sermon’s title to be “one of the most important questions confronting any generation,” proposing that man is many things: “a biological being,” “a being of spirit” who is “made in the image of God,” and “sinner in need of God’s divine grace” (King, Measure, 1 3 8 1 0). The earliest available manuscript version of this sermon dates back to July 1954, although records indicate that he may have delivered earlier versions.
King first developed the theme of “What Is Man?” during his seminary days.
The press and King arranged for proceeds to be shared evenly, after the former had recovered its costs of publication. With King’s consent, the sermons were published by the Christian Education Press in a short book entitled The Measure of a Man.
In response to demands made by conference attendees, Sheeder requested that King allow publication of the addresses. Sheeder, executive secretary of the Board of Christian Education and Publication, found the speeches to be “among the finest of our entire program” (Sheeder, 11 September 1958). In August 1958 Martin Luther King, Jr., preached two sermons, “What Is Man?” and “The Dimensions of a Complete Life,” at the first National Conference on Christian Education of the United Church of Christ at Purdue University.