Although all sins in some ways are equal before God, there is something particularly evil and destructive about the dehumanizing effects of racism. Martin Luther King Jr. has by in large been secularized in popular culture as a nice man who wanted us all to get along, but this is an unfortunate caricature of a man whose core foundational trust was in self-sacrificial love and non-violent resistance. MLK Jr.'s message of racial reconciliation, and a refusal to deem another human being as his enemy, is central to the gospel of Jesus.