An event at Washington National Cathedral in the US later this month is to gather young people together to ask what Martin Luther King's platform would be for the next US President.

On the third Monday of every January, the United States marks Martin Luther King Day. The national holiday celebrates the birth and life of the civil rights activist and Baptist minister, whose Christian convictions about justice and the Gospel led him to a path of non-violence and peacemaking.

The new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA celebrated the life of the Rev Dr Martin Luther King in her first official service in the Diocese of New York this week - at St Ann's Church in the Bronx, on 15 January 2007. She stressed the difficult call to radical non-violence as a key Christian vocation arising from his legacy.

“We seem to be at a curious juncture in America in the area of race”, says a United Methodist Church bishop who makes it a practice to write a letter in honour of Martin Luther King Jr each year, drawing attention to ways in which his vision has been fulfilled or frustrated during the previous 12 months.