Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of nonviolence took new form today at a church in New York City. Mike Martin, in a service at Middle Collegiate Church, pounded a Remington rifle into a farming tool.
Inspired by the prophetic promise to “beat swords into plowshares,” Martin transformed a Remington rifle into a two-sided gardening tool called a mattock. Deeply disturbed by the shootings in Newtown and Aurora, Martin learned blacksmithing so he could transform symbols of violence into symbols that give life.
It was a Remington rifle, wielded by James Earle Ray, that killed Dr. King in 1968, and now one is transformed into a mattock, with Isaiah 6:8 carved on the handle.
For more, including pictures and a video of the transformation, go here.