“With Moral Courage, You Can Do Anything”: Dr. Lawrence E. Carter, Sr. Delivers a Stirring Talk on Nonviolence

November 12, 2024

• Campus News

"I feel that I'm standing before you at the right time in history," said Dr. Lawrence E. Carter, Sr., addressing SUA students, faculty, and staff who had gathered for the University Talk on Peace, Nonviolence, and Human Rights, "because we've got some very serious things to consider."

A preeminent scholar on the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Carter is a professor of religion, the founding dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College, and a member of the SUA Board of Trustees. On Oct. 10, he delivered a lecture on King's philosophy and its relevance to current global challenges, followed by commentary from Dr. Andrea Bartoli, president of the Sant'Egidio Foundation for Peace and Dialogue, executive adviser to the Soka Institute for Global Solutions, and also an SUA trustee.

Carter's opening remarks highlighted the fractured and violent state of the world today, and his talk - which he described as "a little lecturing, a little preaching, and a little reading" - repeatedly stressed the urgency of taking nonviolent action and viewing peace not as a static end goal, but as a means to actively work toward a more just world.

"'There is no path to peace,'" he said, quoting Mahatma Gandhi. "'Peace is the path.'" He elaborated by paraphrasing both King and Gandhi on why nonviolence is essential to the struggle for world peace. "You cannot have what you want unless you make a decision to incarnate it," he said. "You cannot have what you are not willing to be."

In addition to King and Gandhi, Carter's insights drew on the work of Daisaku Ikeda, Nelson Mandela, Francis of Assisi, and philosopher Jürgen Habermas. He drew connections between the written work and lived examples of these great thinkers and activists, emphasizing the humanistic values they shared in common, like courage, forgiveness, and love.

"We need a revolution of values," he said, paraphrasing King again. "Because the foundation of thinking is not reason. The foundation of thinking is values. Show me what a person values and I'll figure out how they think." Human-centered values, Carter argued, are essential on both a personal and societal level.

"'The end we seek in a society at peace with itself is a society that can live with its conscience,'" he said, quoting King before elaborating on this concept in his own words. "Peace is an ethical norm. Like courage, love, freedom, and will - those are ethical norms. Why? Because they make the practice of all virtue possible. Some say that courage is the greatest ethical norm, because with moral courage, you can do anything. But if you don't have courage, you can't even love."

He went on to connect these philosophical underpinnings to a wide range of real-world issues, such as the climate crisis, the current U.S. presidential election, discrimination against trans and nonbinary people, and the way militarism morally and economically drains American society. He put special emphasis on the issue of voter rights.

"Nearly 100 laws have been passed by state legislatures in states that have a history of racial discrimination," he said. "The suppression of the Black vote is violence against participatory democracy. So we must start with a philosophy of nonviolence to properly define peaceful societies."

This kind of societal transformation, Carter said, begins from within each individual, which is a process that SUA students engage in on a daily basis.

"You're not manifesting an education unless you're working on yourself," he said. "I don't just see you as a human being sitting before me. I see you, each one of you, as human evolvings and human revealings, because you are fast becoming who you really are."

In his commentary after the lecture, Bartoli underscored this call for individual and collective transformation, praising Carter's vision for a more just society.

"When I hear you speaking, I don't hear you only," Bartoli said. "I hear you as the voice of an America that could be."

Bartoli's commentary was followed by thoughtful and discerning questions from students in the audience. Before the event concluded, a first-year student asked Carter what King, Gandhi, and Ikeda meant to him.

"They've given us a blueprint and a compass for how to live," Carter said. "With great similarities: they all emphasized respecting everyone's humanity irrespective of religion, race, nationality, language, culture…They're all moral cosmopolitans and their lives are the message. They live what they preached."

The lecture exemplified the kind of substantive dialogue that regularly takes place at SUA, where students can hear directly from some of the world's leading voices on pressing global issues. Carter urged students to make the most of their education to make a positive impact on the world.

"We must be creatively innovative in speaking for peace," he said. And as a starting point for this important endeavor, said Carter, "there's no better place than Soka University of America."