Though in 1965 King lamented that “his dream had turned into a nightmare,” he still emphasized the need to “still keep the faith.” By 1967, his speeches and sermons sounded like the prophet Amos, pointing out the injustices of poverty and economic inequality. He declared that “the curse of poverty has no justification in our country” and that “it is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism—it is a crime in this wealthy nation for people to work for starvation wages.” He chastised “any religion that [professed] to be concerned with the souls of men and that is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that cripple them” as “a dry as dust religion.”