A Martin Luther King Jr Day lecture by the Reverend Dr. Chris Erdman, Davis Community Church, Davis, California. January 17, 2022

1. Tyranny and Resistance

Tonight, one of my goals is to introduce you to the relatively new book by Timothy Snyder, “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” I’m not going to teach the book but rather to try to inspire you to read it and use it in the months and years to come so that we can do what Christians have often found themselves doing in the past—resisting those who have consolidated power in the few and often violently enforced their version of life on the many. Many of you already have the book. Some of you have just purchased it. Others will buy it. But I don’t want you just to buy or read it; I want you to do something with it. Tyranny is on the rise again in our world, and it must be opposed. But it must be opposed wisely, creatively, and energetically. . . .