In the editing of the King Papers Clayborne Carson and his associates at The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change have demonstrated exemplary scholarship, industry, and integrity under extraordinary difficulties. The first volume contained a fine biographical and analytical Introduction as well as a full complement of editorial aids. The annotations were all one could hope for. This second volume maintains the high standards set in the first. Volume 1 was especially rich in term papers from Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary, which illuminated King's moving struggle to find God and a Christian world view. In particular, it revealed a young man determined to substitute a religious faith grounded in science and reason for what he perceived as the naive orthodoxy of the black Baptists among whom he grew up. Yet he showed considerable uneasiness with the theological liberalism he was embracing and a tendency to veer back toward the faith of his ancestors and neighbors. Both volumes make clear the centrality of religion to King's political career. Accordingly, I shall here focus on his theological grounding and its indispensability to an understanding of the strength and weakness it imparted to his politics. The early striving apparent in Volume 1 accompanied a youthful struggle to define himself within a strong and loving family ruled by a stern father. King, the son and grandson of Baptist preachers who combined religious fervor with a commitment to social justice, seemed predestined to become a Baptist preacher. But to realize himself, he had to wage difficult and interrelated struggles with his father, his faith, himself. Volume 2 largely chronicles his career as a theology student and the development of the religious views, but it also includes valuable information on the National