Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin almost stole the show with a political shot at President Barack Obama, telling her fans, “You too know that we must not fundamentally transform America as some would want. We must restore America and restore her honor!”

But there was only one African-American preacher present whose last name was spelled K-I-N-G. There was only one orator who could infuriate pundits simply by standing with Beck on the 47th anniversary of her martyred uncle’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Tears of rage? Tears of joy? The Rev. Alveda King knew she would cause both by linking the Rev. Martin Luther King’s classic cadences with the religious and cultural issues that loomed over what Beck insisted was a nonpolitical rally. Once a Democrat in the Georgia Legislature, the evangelical minister now leads African-American outreach programs for the Catholic group Priests For Life.

First, she reminded listeners that her “Uncle Martin” had compared America’s promise of equal protection to a check marked “insufficient funds.” But when, she asked, will “we know that the check Uncle Martin spoke of is good?”

“We will know when prayer is once again welcome in the public squares of America and in our schools. We will know when our children are no longer in mortal peril on our streets and in our classrooms, and in the wombs of our mothers,” she said.

“We will know when righteousness rolls down like waters, and justice like a mighty stream. Yes, I too have a dream … that America will repent of the sin of racism and return to honor. I have a dream that white privilege will become human privilege and that people of every ethnic blend will receive everyone as brothers and sisters in the love of God. I have a dream that America will pray, and God will forgive us our sins and revive our land.”

Critics were not kind.

Chatting with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, columnist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post dismissed Alveda King as a “convenient figurehead or puppet. … She’s a fundamentalist, very conservative Christian. … She’s estranged from the rest of the King family, and from the keepers of his legacy.”

And in a Washington Post essay before the rally, Martin Luther King III anticipated the coming efforts to embrace the causes now identified with the first family of civil rights. His father’s dream, he stressed, “rejected hateful rhetoric and all forms of bigotry or discrimination, whether directed at race, faith, nationality, sexual orientation or political beliefs. … Throughout his life he advocated compassion for the poor, nonviolence, respect for the dignity of all people and peace for humanity.”

For Alveda King, these debates are signs of painful divisions — many of them theological — inside the Civil Rights Movement, black churches and the extended King family. While the late Coretta Scott King supported abortion rights and gay rights, other members of the family have fiercely questioned whether the views of her husband would have evolved in that direction.

One debate, for example, focuses on the significance of the decision by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to accept the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood in 1966. Alveda King and other opponents of abortion note that this was six years before Roe v. Wade and only three years after a Planned Parenthood pamphlet warned that, “An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.”

America’s ongoing battles over abortion, insisted Alveda King, are one of many symptoms that her uncle’s work remains unfinished.

“Our material gains seem to be going the way of our moral losses,” she said, in her Aug. 28 sermon. “We are still suffering from the great evil divide of racism. Our children are suffering in failing school systems. Our sons and daughters are being incarcerated at astronomical rates. Sickness, disease and poverty of the spirit, soul and body are plaguing our communities. The procreative foundation of marriage is being threatened, and the wombs of our mothers have become places where the blood of our children is shed in a ‘womb war’ that threatens the fabric of our society. …

“Yet, we are not without hope. Faith, hope and love are not dead in America. Hallelujah.”

The problem was that she didn’t hear much in the way of traditional prayer, in terms of clergy offering words of praise and petition to God. Instead, the prayers sounded like lectures or mini-sermons aimed at the masses on the National Mall.

“Did I think the official prayers were disasters? No,” said Tickle, author of, among many relevant works, “Prayer Is a Place: America’s Religious Landscape Observed.”

“I just thought that they lacked the majesty of a psalm before the throne of God, substituting instead … the mundane and plebian commentary of a human being to other human beings about an established lists of errors and of desirable aims, with a little advice to God thrown in. … I’m not sure why preachers think they have to do that.”

The clergy in the rites surrounding the inauguration, of course, faced the challenge of praying in a political minefield. On one side were the atheists and secularists whose lawsuits failed to keep religious language out of the proceedings. On the other side were religious activists — liberals and conservatives — poised to judge whether the prayers made the grade, politically and doctrinally.

Pity the poor shepherd who has to please his own flock, as well as the New York Times editorial page.

Most of the early analysis focused on the decision to invite the Rev. Rick Warren — an evangelical leader who rejects Obama’s support for abortion and gay rights — to offer the invocation. Warren opened by blending a theme from his own bestseller, “The Purpose Driven Life,” with snippets of Jewish and Muslim prayers.

“Almighty God, our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see exists because of you alone. It all comes from you. It all belongs to you. It all exists for your glory. History is your story,” he said. “Scripture tells us, ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is One.’ And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made.”

The prayer also included words of thanksgiving for the election of an African-American president, an appeal for economic justice and concern for the environment. The California megachurch pastor then dared to close with clear references to Jesus — in Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish and English — and the Lord’s Prayer.

The benediction was by the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a strong voice from the Civil Rights Movement. He began with the poetic final lines of the “Negro National Anthem,” the classic “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and then ended with an edgy poem based on the work of blues singer Big Bill Broonzy.

“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning,” he concluded, “we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say, ‘Amen.’ “

In between, Lowery offered sharp shots of political commentary, including a pronouncement that America has recently “sown the seeds of greed,” blown by the “wind of greed and corruption” that have caused the nation to “reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption.” Thus, he asked God to “help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance.”

None of this, stressed Tickle, was all that unusual. Prayers written for use in these kinds of giant civic events are almost always “rather didactic” and “content driven.” As a rule, they also tend to be long.

On this historic inauguration day, anyone seeking the most fervent expressions of faith, hope and love needed to hear the voices in the crowd, not the leaders in the pulpit.

“The real prayers were written by the people on that mall and across the nation, with their bodies, with their voices, with their cries and with their tears,” said Tickle. “That was the religious experience that really mattered on that day.”

It was late 1956. Years later, King quoted that hellish voice: “Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we are going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.”

King ended up in the kitchen, meditating on the mystery of evil and worrying about his family. He began praying out loud, voicing his feelings of weakness, frustration and fear. Soon, he fell into a waking dream in which God gave him comfort and courage. He glimpsed the future.

The next day, King told reporters: “I had a vision.”

This became a touchstone event and shaped one of his signature themes. But the wording had changed by the time King reached the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963. By then the voice of the Civil Rights Movement was crying out: “I have a dream.”

Four decades later, this speech may be the only exposure that millions ofbyoung Americans have ever had to King’s preaching and writing, said Drew Hansen, author of “The Dream,” a new book that offers an in-depth analysis of the history and content of the speech.

This is sadly limited view of a complex man and his times, said the 30-year-old Seattle lawyer. But many who watch or read this speech may be inspired to learn more. After all, that is what happened to Hansen during a Yale Law School class on civil rights. He dug deeper and what he found was both inspiring and sobering.

“It’s easy to focus on this speech and King’s victories and all those barriers that fell back in the days when things were so bad,” said Hansen, an evangelical Christian who graduated from Harvard and also studied theology at Oxford University.

“Focusing on this speech alone is certainly a lot easier than meditating on all of the barriers that remain. … But still, this is a wonderful place to start as we give King the homage that is his due as a preacher, public philosopher, field general and prophet.”

It is crucial to grasp the context. Hansen noted that King traveled about 275,000 miles and delivered at least 350 speeches during the year of the March on Washington. Witnesses said he worked on the text up to the last minute, literally marking out passages and scribbling in others as he sat waiting to speak.

Hansen’s book includes material from rough drafts prepared by aides as well as a side-by-side comparison of the text as King wrote it and then delivered it. This includes detailed descriptions of the preacher’s vocal inflections and use of dramatic pauses and repeated sentence constructions that let his listeners to respond to his words like skilled jazz musicians.

“King knew how to read his audience,” said Hansen. “That had been part of his training since he was a little boy in his daddy’s church. This address was a case of a talented preacher getting caught up in a call-and-response experience, not just with the audience in front of him, but with the whole nation. ”That’s why these words touched people then and they touch people now.”

It was supposed to have been a political speech. Yet nearly every significant metaphor in it can be traced to a biblical source, noted Hansen. Growing up in black Baptist churches, King had been baptized in the words, grammar and imagery of the King James Bible. This provided a solid foundation as he spoke to African Americans and, ironically, to white Protestants in the Deep South. King knew that the Bible had authority —authority to inspire and to judge.

This is what King turned to as he faced the nation. The entire “I have a dream” section of the speech was not in his written text.

“He wrote a political address,” said Hansen. “It’s not that other people wrote a political address for him. King’s own draft was nothing like a sermon. But the speech he actually delivered was not dominated by that kind of political language. He left lots of that out and everything he added was rooted in biblical images and themes. That changed everything.”