I thank Andrew Valls for his thoughtful engagement with my book. His principal critique is that my book never quite realizes the aim of developing and arguing for what I claim are normative contributions that King’s theory of service can make to contemporary activists in the struggle for structural justice. Specifically, Valls highlights my discussion of King’s call for social pressure to be exerted on those unwilling to discharge their responsibility to engage in collective action, as well as my discussion of the need for contemporary activists to identify sources robust enough to sustain their struggle in the face of existential violence. In both instances, Valls suggests that the underdevelopment of my arguments makes a less compelling case that King’s “diagnoses and prescriptions carry over from his time to ours.”

Valls is correct to point out that, in both discussions, I stop short of fleshing out the particulars and then prescribing a course of action for contemporary activists. In the epilogue, I fully acknowledge that my book is not intended to be a “how-to” manual. Instead its purpose is to construct King’s theory of political service and to distill the larger lessons that are applicable for our contemporary moment. These larger lessons are what are meant to carry over from King’s time to our own, and not the particulars. Throughout the book, I show how, even during King’s relatively short tenure in the civil rights movement, the particulars evolved, were context dependent, and were constantly subject to democratic contestation. However, what is constant is King’s insistence that individuals have a responsibility to work collectively to transform structures of injustice. And when members of society fail to discharge their responsibility, King claims that they should be subject to a climate of social pressure and scorn. In several chapters, I deliberately discuss how King himself was subject to an intense climate of social pressure within the black community. The particulars of this social pressure—whether via protest, heated conversation, blog posts, or Twitter—will always be in flux, but the duty to discharge one’s responsibility shall remain the same.

Like the particulars of social pressure, I did not feel the need to prescribe specific sources of hope to contemporary activists. Again, the larger lesson should not be lost, which is that in a struggle for justice where existential violence is a reality, one needs to be fortified by sources robust enough to push on in the face of (at times) certain death. These sources can be in the form of drawing on the spirit and memory of ancestors, embracing a democratic faith, or practicing a theistic religion or mode of spirituality. That King happened to be a Christian is largely irrelevant to this greater lesson—especially considering that the civil rights movement was a pluralistic one.

In sum, it is my hope that readers will not get bogged down in the particulars and thereby lose sight of the larger lessons embedded within King’s theory of political service.