by Clayborne Carson

Although Martin Luther King, Jr., was probably leaning toward a career in the ministry by the end of his junior year at Morehouse, making the final decision was difficult. According to King, "It came neither by some miraculous vision nor by some blinding light experience on the road of life.

"Moreover, it was a response to an inner urge that gradually came upon me. This urge expressed itself in a desire to serve God and humanity, and the feeling that my talent and my commitment could best be expressed through ministry."

King applied to Crozer Theological Seminary, a small Baptist institution in Chester, Pennsylvania. Although disappointed that his son would not immediately become co-pastor at Ebenezer, the elder King reluctantly agreed to support his son's higher education. He did in fact admire his son's qualities as a preacher and said that "his voice, his delivery, the structure and design of his sermons all set him apart from anyone I've ever heard in my life."

When King entered Crozer in the fall of 1948, he was only 19 years old - younger than most of his classmates. As one of 11 black students in a student body of more than 90, King was self-consciously aware that he represented his race and was determined to do well in his studies.

In a letter to his mother during his first term, King mentioned social distractions with a Temple University student he was dating and another "fine chick" in Philadelphia. Yet, he insisted that he never went "anywhere much but in these books" and did not think about girls because he was "[too] busy studying."

The Crozer environment encouraged King's increasing intellectual seriousness. In a paper written in late 1950, King maintained that his basic religious and social views were decisively shaped not by his academic training but by his formative experiences. His father's "noble" example, he said, and the influences of his childhood had led him to enter the ministry.

Despite periods of doubt and a continuing strong dislike of religious emotionalism, King considered his early years and his intense, daily involvement in church life as the bedrock of his religious faith. "At present, I still feel the [effects] of the noble moral and ethical ideas that I grew up under. They have been real and precious to me, and even in moments of theological doubts I could never turn away from them. Even though I have never had an abrupt conversion experience, religion has been real to me and closely knitted to life. In fact the two cannot be separated; religion for me is life."