King identifies himself as an extremist for love, and as we will see in the below paragraph, an extremist for justice as well. .
Martin Luther King is able to give undisputable evidence that the clergymen, will have to accept as truth. For no clergymen will disagree with King's statement that Jesus was an extremist for love, and even if they do, King, in his letter to the clergymen includes a piece of evidence from the bible where Jesus says, "love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray to them that despitefully use you, and persecute you"(7). Jesus" statement is an extremist way to deal with one's enemies, so extreme and so accepted among the clergymen that they have devoted their entire lives to this way of living. So when the clergymen "speak of our [King's] action in Birmingham as extreme"(6) they will now have to consider that an extreme action is not necessarily a bad or evil thing. To reinforce that past great men have been extremists, King gives various quotes of people that the clergymen most likely respect, such as the American president/patriot Abraham Lincoln: " This nation cannot survive half slave and half free -(7); and the English author/religious leader John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience"(7). King includes both Bunyan's and Lincoln's quotes because they represent people who are extremists for justice; King also chooses these quotes because they are appropriate for the present condition that, not only King is in (that is jail) but also because of the condition that the city of Birmingham is in (half slave and half free). The clergymen, after reading Jesus", Lincoln's, and Bunyan's quotes will begin to relate and compare them with the present state that King and more importantly the city of Birmingham are in; for the comparison is easily seen, since King's and Birmingham's present situation, is not that far off from not only the message of the quotes, but the physical context that the quotes portray as well.
