Editor’s Note: Howard Thurman was born on November 18, 1899, and died on April 10, 1981. Good Faith Media celebrates the 125th birthday of this central figure in the fight for justice and inclusion. In myriad ways, Thurman’s work and witness are written all over our own, and for that, we are thankful.
In the introduction to his book, “American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice,” Albert J. Raboteau describes a conversation he had one day in a bookstore. While browsing the shelves, two clerks who worked in the store asked him, “What good does religion do in politics?” Raboteau refers his inquirers to the examples of Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin Luther King, Jr.
He then says that, taken together, Hamer and King are “exemplars of …the values of citizenship that we ought to try to emulate.” Raboteau points out that each of them was “inspired and motivated by the religious institutions and values of African American social Christianity.”
The same could be said of Howard Washington Thurman. I think Raboteau would agree with me, as he features Thurman as one of seven twentieth-century American prophets.
Many recognize the names of Martin Luther King, Jr. and, perhaps, even Fannie Lou Hamer. Sadly, the same cannot be said about Howard Washington Thurman. Yet, it could be credibly argued that had there been no Howard Thurman, we might not know about King or Hamer.
Thurman was the architect of the philosophy of nonviolent resistance that gave the mid-twentieth-century movement for civil rights in the United States its moral power and authority.
Vincent Harding notes that there may be some question surrounding the legend that King used to carry a copy of Thurman’s “Jesus and the Disinherited” with him during his travels. However, there is no question about the many points of correspondence and resonance between King’s and Thurman’s understandings of the life, message, and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.
Thurman’s interpretation of the “religion of Jesus” centered love, self-worth, affirmation and reconciliation. It was rooted in a radical notion of inherent human worth and dignity, ideas he learned under the tutelage of his mother, Alice Thurman, and, more especially, his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose.
In her chapter in “Anchored in the Current: Discovering Howard Thurman As Educator, Activist, Guide, and Prophet,” scholar Shively T.J. Smith traces the influence and impact of the black women who were integral in Thurman’s life using the image of a “clothesline.”
She suggests this image represents key threads in Thurman’s theological worldview: wholeness, kinship, and flourishing — threads that ultimately connected Thurman’s head, heart, and interpretive practice.
Smith proposes that Thurman’s interpretation of Jesus is best understood contextually.
For her, Thurman’s readings of Jesus’ convictions, teachings and praxis ultimately gave him an understanding of the Christian faith that, in the final analysis, connects the human and the divine in ways that facilitated an encounter with God that made it possible to make meaning out of both human experience and relationships.
Smith writes, “Thurman’s clothesline ties the most authentic part of our being — our feelings, our thoughts, our desires, and the ways we make sense of the world and ourselves — to God, who we can never fully interpret and understand.” She concludes that God’s “clothesline” is a sufficient and sturdy support for both “the workings” of our minds and the “journeying” of our spirits.
In this season in the life of our nation, caustic-partisan rhetoric is the order of the day. Much of what we hear in the secular marketplace of ideas and sacred pulpits is marred by a xenophobia and divisiveness that has created an “us versus them” dualism.
As all this has resulted in deep chasms in our communities, churches, and even some families, we again need Howard Thurman’s work and witness. We need his words to remind us that love can and will have the final say.
We need his “clothesline” so that we can remember that God’s best for us includes the wholeness, kinship and flourishing of all creation.
We need his witness to peace and nonviolent resistance as the antidote to the culture of violence so prevalent today.
Thurman’s message of love, self-worth, affirmation and reconciliation is the much-needed corrective to the fear, deception, hatred, and anger that, even in the 21st century, is still haunting and hounding humanity.
We still need Howard Washington Thurman.
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The following works are good starting places for anyone interested in learning more about Thurman’s life and work.
Harding, Vincent. Foreword to Jesus and the Disinherited. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.
Raboteau, Albert J. American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.
Smith, Shivley.T.J. “Thurman-eutics: Howard Thurman’s ‘Clothesline’ for the Interpretation of the Life of the Mind and Journey of the Spirit”. In Anchored in the Current: Discovering Howard Thurman as Educator, Activist, Guide, and Prophet, ed. Gregory C. Ellison, II. Louisville: Westminster Press, 2020.
Dr. Xavier L. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Practice of Preaching and Black Church Studies at United Theological Seminary. An interdisciplinary theologian, his teaching, research and writing interests converge at the intersection of clergy leadership, black religion, social justice, and preaching.
