King proved to be both militant and moderate. Chappell puts King's activism in the context of Reinhold Niebuhr's distinction between Gandhi's nonviolent militance and Tolstoy's non-resistence, writing "Gandhians understood their technique to be a form of practical politics by which they coerced their enemies to make concessions against their will. They understood that their technique only worked in special circumstances. Tolstoyans, by contrast, turned the other cheek without regard to practical results or political and economic particulars."

While many white liberals in the 1950's felt that a push toward desegregation was unrealistic, King and other civil rights leaders were able to create a new reality based in part on a prophetic vision of liberation based on the Old Testament. Perhaps the miracle was that the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama lists the names of only 40 martyrs, less than died in any number of terrorist incidents which have occurred since. This is a tribute to the moral force of disciplined non-violence.

As Chappell sees it, the white liberals who advocated gradualism were providing "realistic" advice based on the normal politics, while the Civil Rights movement succeeded based on an irrational faith that broke the normal rules.

What is to be made of this lesson as a guide for future action? Someone who I've heard preach against the limits of realism is Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine. Lerner, a student of Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched with King, clearly has this prophetic politics in mind. But what also comes to mind is the report by Ron Suskind that the Bush Administration has contempt for the "reality-based community." Now, supporters of the President reject this portrait, and claim his vision is idealistic yet realistic. The point remains: what criteria can one use to judge a path when even its followers admit it's not based on realistic calculation?

As I see it, the first criteria in discerning whether a faith-based approach which defies conventional realistic thinking is a correct one is evaluation the goal itself. That is, if an irrational means can achieve a rational end, it might be worthwhile, but if the end itself is irrational, like Hitler's vision of a new Europe subject to a master race, it must be rejected. Lerner's neo-pacifist path and Bush's more militaristic approach both pass this test, for while their means widely differ, their desired end state of a free, peaceful, and democratic Middle East is quite similar.