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Theology. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. received his doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University in 1955, after receiving a Bachelor of Arts from Morehouse College in 1948 and a Bachelor of Divinity from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951. King's dissertation was entitled "A Comparison of the Conception of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman." Tillich and Wieman were prominent American religious philosophers who advocated faith over concepts of a personal, humanist God. King preferred the latter approach. According to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project, while at Boston University, King also paid particular attention to Mahatma Gandhi's strategies of non-violent civil disobedience. The Papers Project notes rather frankly that King wasn't much of a scholar -- several passages of his dissertation were lifted from other studies. But he was already establishing himself as a strong preacher in churches outside of the university.
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