Josiah Royce first used the term “The Beloved Community” to describe a condition of reconciliation. Royce also founded the Fellowship of Reconciliation, of which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a member. King popularized the term. The Beloved Community was not meant to be a vision of a heaven in the clouds, but a practical possibility humanity could create, on earth, as a spiritual goal. In Beloved Community, love and justice rule, people of all identities are equal and included, and conflict is solved by nonviolent means of reconciliation.
