Love That Disobeys: The Witness of Martin Luther King and Oscar Romero

This paper brings into conversation the witness of Martin Luther King Jr. and Óscar Romero through the lens of the ethics of care. Although they lived in different contexts, the struggle against racial segregation in the United States and the political violence of El Salvador, both leaders understood Christian love as a public and demanding commitment to justice. Drawing on feminist ethics of care and liberation theology, the paper argues that their ministries can be read as examples of a subversive ethics of care: a form of love that resists injustice and refuses neutrality in the face of suffering. King’s vision of agape and Romero’s pastoral defense of the poor both show that care is not simply compassion or charity, but a practice of prophetic responsibility. By placing these two figures in dialogue, the paper highlights how nonviolent resistance can be understood as a form of organized love that protects human dignity and challenges systems that produce exclusion and violence.