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In "Letter from Birmingham Jail," how do Martin Luther King's and the clergymen's writing styles differ?
Quick answer:
Martin Luther King's writing style in "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is more passionate, personal, and urgent compared to the formal, dry, and impersonal style of the clergymen in "A Call for Unity." While the clergymen focus on abstract legal principles and generalities, King's letter is more direct and sermon-like, addressing the immediate realities and injustices faced by the civil rights movement. His use of first-person narration and vivid language underscores his emotional investment and active involvement in the struggle for equality.
King's writing style is a good deal more passionate, less abstract than that of the Southern clergymen he's criticizing. To a large extent, this is because they have different purposes in writing their respective letters, with different audiences in mind. As the clergymen are completely detached from the civil rights struggle, they tend to speak in terms of general principles such as the inherent wrongness of unlawful resistance. For them, justice exists purely in the abstract, and can only be secured by exclusively legal means.
As someone actively and passionately involved in the civil rights struggle, King can't afford to deal in such generalities. His written style is thus more urgent, dealing as it does with the specifics, the practicalities of the resistance strategy he's chosen to adopt. King's been in the thick of the long, bitter struggle for equality, and invites the Southern clergymen as Christians to put themselves...
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in his shoes and at least try to understand where he's coming from. In such a struggle, there is no time for the kind of abstract legal principles endorsed by the clergymen. Justice is about the here and now, about the rights of real people in real situations. Thus King uses an appropriately terse, impassioned tone in responding to what he sees as wrongheaded criticisms of the civil rights movement and its overall strategy.
I assume that when you say "the clergymen" you are talking about those who signed the letter called "A Call for Unity" which was the letter to which King is responding in his letter.
If this is the case, the clergymen write their letter in a much more formal, dry, and impersonal style whereas King writes his in a style that is both less formal and more (at times) like a sermon. King's letter is by far the more passionate.
The clergymen's letter reads like a legal argument in a way. It has no emotion in the writing. It talks about things like "increased forbearance" and it talks about how responsible citizens have "undertaken to work" on fixing the problems of the community. It sounds very antiseptic, albeit very educated.
By contrast, King's letter is personal and emotional. He uses the first person a lot. He uses plain language much of the time, saying things like "I am in Birmingham because injustice is here." Later on, he starts to let his rhetoric flow as if the letter were a sermon. He uses colorful language, saying things like
As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us.
In these ways, King's letter comes across as much, much, more passionate and personal than the rather blandly written letter of the clergymen.