Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park

For the two weeks of January 7 and January 14, the Adult Forum will focus on a 2023 biography of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and explore his legacy. The biography by Chicago author Jonathan Eig, is King: A Life. In roughly 550 pages, it covers a wide range of significant personal details of King’s life and mission. It focuses heavily on King’s personal struggles and challenges, what it meant for him to challenge structural racism in America in the 1950s and 1960s, and the influence of his own father’s legacy as a pastor who deliberately changed his own name from Michael to Martin Luther after a 1932 visit to Germany in which he learned a great deal about Martin Luther’s commitment to truth in the face of persecution, and then renaming his young son accordingly. Join us, with Jim Schwab leading the discussion, on a journey to explore the meaning of commitment in the face of personal threats and deeply embedded social inequity, and how King himself changed under the influence of such challenges.