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I agree with /u/LimbicLogic's argument. But I would go on to say that a Christian existentialist wouldn't necessarily disagree with the phrase "Existence precedes essence." But they wouldn't take it to entail a claim about objective reality.

They would take it as a claim about our subjective experience as an individual. An individual doesn't experience his essence. An individual experiences his unique existence — his actuality, not his ideal. In terms of the experience of life, existence does precede essence.

Are you familiar with Aristotle's concept of Essence? This is the idea Sartre is conversing with when he asserts, "Existence precedes essence." My essence is a description of me which I do not experience, per se, but which nevertheless defines me. Take the root word of the term "defines" here: fin, as in "end." We could as well replace it with the terms "delimits" or "demarcates." Aristotle's phrase for "the essence" is τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι ("the what it was to be"). In other words, "essence" is a term of circumscription which could suggest to us that the story about me has been written. We are defined; the process of definition is complete. No more is to be discovered. No more is to contributed. "Essence" is, in terms of Existentialism, a symbol of Necessity.

And this isn't what we experience. It isn't necessarily incorrect, but it is a top-down view which we have to formulate by theory or belief, because we do not live on the top. That is not the perspective we share. We don't experience ourselves primarily as having been predefined. We experience ourselves as definers. The only story we know is a living story, and we're in the middle of it.

"We wake," William Desmond says, "to the mystery of being impelled towards an end we know not, from a beginning we comprehend not, in a milieu whose lords we are not" (Being and the Between, p. 6). We find ourselves having "already begun, before we begin to know that we are [...] and that we are in the middle of things" (BB 5-6). We do not find ourselves at the end of the story. We find ourselves with a blank page and a pen in hand.

That Necessity surrounds us, gives to each of us a starting point on which we had no say, and writes us into certain limits, is both clear and a key point in Existentialism. This Necessity provides a source of frustration, as well as familiarity. But there is nothing to be done about it.

What does remain to be seen, however, is what will be done with all this apparent Liberty. We have the blank page and the pen. We see choices before us. Always choices. Paths of paths.

What we experience is a freedom in our lives which is both a source of distress and of Possibility.

In the words of Kierkegaard, "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." There is the freedom (Possibility) we find in the world outside ourselves which means we cannot control or anticipate what will happen to us (or to our interests). And there is the freedom we find within ourselves which stumps us with overchoice indecision, moral ambiguity, indeterminable consequences, and frustrated failures. Possibility is like the wilderness — it both frightens us with the prospect of peril and attracts us with the prospects of adventure, of gain, and of hope. Possibility provides no prior proof — it is the residence of those who believe, having not seen. It is the wind beneath Karl Jaspers' "leap of faith." And it is the spectre behind the fear of death which drives us rabidly toward Ernest Becker's immortality project.

As an individual, with what am I to be most concerned: that in this Story which I cannot write, or that in this Story which is left for me to contribute?

"God calls man to perform the creative act and realize his vocation, and He is expecting an answer to His call." (Berdyaev, 'The Ethics of Creativeness' from The Destiny of Man)

So what is the imago Dei — "image of God"? Among Christian existentialists, you will find that the salient meaning of this symbol is that each individual has been given a calling to create, which mirrors God's own ability to create. Do we have limits (Essence)? Without question. But the main arc of a man's story is not his blessings and disasters, or the limitations over which he has no say, but his response — his loves, his hates, his developments, his devolutions — his Existence.

I will try to contribute to the reading group; thank you for the invitation.

I would be happy to share my thoughts on Kierkegaard’s pseudonymity. For starters, you might be interested in this post and this one. By the way, I would caution against identifying the signed works as ‘theological’, since the pseudonymous works also treat theological issues (on which this might be an especially significant read).

Here is the desktop version of your link

I highly recommend Letters to a Birmingham Jail. It is a collection of responses from current Christian leaders to King and the issues he raises. Most of the contributors are evangelicals, but what they have to say cuts across denominational lines.