Does there need to be an Atheist/Theist dialogue?

[laconicsax]

132. It isn't that complicated

In a general sense, those who believe in a god create it in their own image, give it their own opinions and when it comes to the Bible, no amount of study will never reveal anything about its morals and lessons that the reader doesn't already agree with or is open to believing because it's rationalization and justification of and for their a priori beliefs.

It's been said elsewhere that the Bible can be interpreted to say whatever the interpreter wants. That sentiment alone is pretty suggestive of the notion that the Bible is used to reinforce, rationalize, and justify existing beliefs and attitudes. If it were the other way around, people with very disparate backgrounds would independently reach the same (or similar) conclusions about what the Bible says. Instead of black churches (like King's) supporting a view of equality and justice and Southern Baptist churches supporting outright racism and division, you'd see both uniting around a single view irrespective of the background of their congregations.

Instead of a complete reversal on the subject of slavery over the last couple hundred years, slavery would either be seen as unacceptable in the 19th century or acceptable today. Attitudes vary and change with time, but the Bible hasn't. With each new attitude, a new interpretation can be found to support it. Christianity didn't begin fracturing into numerous contradictory sects before the New Testament was even fully assembled and now there are some 43,000 different denominations because there's a unifying quality to Christianity that can overcome population differences. On the contrary, this continual fracturing demonstrates my point--that the religion is tailored to an increasingly disparate number of individual and collective views rather than those views emerging from the religion.

The lesson to take away is that God will never reveal anything to you (or any other believer) that disgusts or horrifies you, and you'll never find a passage in the Bible that you find both reprehensible and must be taken literally.

To try and answer your two questions, what seems most likely is that King's community shared similar attitudes towards equal rights and found passages in the Bible which supported that position. The religion was ancillary. To argue otherwise is to argue that had it not been for Christianity and the Bible, King wouldn't have thought to support civil rights, let alone champion them. He wasn't born with a certain set of views, but was raised with them and was likely taught that they were supported by the Bible. No one is an island.