LEWISTON – If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive, he’d still be fighting.

Modern society’s outright lies – with countries giving lip service to justice while torturing people – would sadden the man who taught love and dignity, the Rev. Lawrence Edward Carter Sr. told a Bates College crowd Monday.

“Dr. King would be passionately calling for values,” said Carter, a Morehouse College professor of religion. “He’d ask us to be the dream.”

Not that it would be easy. For King, it never was.

“It was a whole way of life for him,” said Carter, the first dean of the Martin Luther King International Chapel at Morehouse College in Atlanta. King, an alumnus of Morehouse, practiced pacifism, deliberate lawbreaking and unconditional love. Carter called it “creative dissent.”

It took courage and patience, traits that are needed as much today as ever, Carter said. He quoted the slain leader as saying, “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now.”

“If there is one message I want you to remember,” Carter said, “it’s this: ‘Tomorrow is today.'”

The keynote speech was part of Bates’ four days of events tied to the King holiday. This year’s theme was “Modernizing King: Old Roots, New Struggles.” Events included receptions, workshops, a movie and a dramatic reading. The school library unveiled a semester-long exhibit on Benjamin Mays, a Bates graduate and mentor to both King and Carter.

Mays helped lead King on certain paths, including skepticism of governments, Carter said.

“Mays stands behind King like a giant who has yet to be recognized,” Carter said. He believed that countries ought to be held to the same standards as people, to follow talk with actions.

“Mays said, ‘We are what we do,'” said Carter. A country is only as just as its actions. It can’t preach brotherhood and segregate its people, he said.

In King, the ideas took on other subtleties.

“He wanted a harmony of the means and the ends,” Carter said. “His aim was always to persuade, not coerce.”

The aim was always to find a way for people to coexist and cooperate. King sounded particularly current in his last writings, talking about his world view in language that seems to mirror modern talk of a global community.

He talked of a “world house,” Carter said.

He imagined everyone of every race and religion living in a house, too close together to be truly independent.

In such close quarters, people would have to show one another respect.

“King respected everybody’s humanity,” Carter said. “He didn’t have enemies. He had misguided friends.”