HOWARD THURMAN'S SEMINAL and seemingly timeless book Jesus and the Disinherited, published in 1949, should be required reading in every seminary—maybe even in every church.
Thurman served as a moral anchor of the civil rights movement. His career spanned the breadth of the movement, from his tenure as a professor of religion at Morehouse College and his service as dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University to pastoring the nation’s first multiracial, interfaith church, The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, and becoming the first black dean of Boston University’s chapel. A visionary religious leader and thinker, he was a guide and inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, Marian Wright Edelman, Bayard Rustin, Jesse Jackson, and many others in the struggle for civil rights, justice, and freedom.
Thurman has also had a profound impact on my own faith journey, particularly in inspiring and sustaining my commitment to faith-rooted activism.
Jesus and the Disinherited was way ahead of its time, particularly in the way that it challenged conventional understandings of Christology by centering Jesus in his contextual identity as a poor Jewish man—a member of an oppressed and marginalized group whose back was against the wall. By extension, Jesus is in direct solidarity with every marginalized and disinherited group in human history. In many ways Jim Wallis’ new book, Christ in Crisis, previewed in this issue, is a contemporary and desperately needed invitation, like Thurman’s, to reclaim the Jesus of Nazareth whose life and teachings are meant to turn the world and its oppressive structures upside down.
In Disinherited, Thurman argues that neither fear, nor hate, nor hypocrisy—which he refers to as the three hounds of hell that track the disinherited—can ever have dominion because of Christ’s victory over death and injustice on the cross. These words offer an oasis of hope in the midst of these perilous times as the 2020 election increasingly becomes a referendum on hate, fear, and hypocrisy. Thurman offers a balm to help heal the wounded soul of our nation.
Thurman has profoundly shaped my understanding of the connection between contemplation and action and the importance of the inner life. Contemplation does not come easily or naturally to most activists. We are resistant to the inner life, in part because we are so absorbed with crises in the outer life. I often give my favorite collection of Thurman’s devotions, titled Meditations of the Heart, as a graduation gift. The book speaks to the need for an inner life that helps to sustain and anchor our sense of calling, including in sustaining prophetic witness.
I ended my first book, Mobilizing Hope, with my favorite poem by Thurman, “How Good to Center Down!” He wrote: “How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences, While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.” Amid our frenetic and workaholic culture and the overload of information and demands on our time and attention, we could all be reminded of the urgent need to “center down.”
Rev. Adam Russell Taylor is president of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community. Follow him on Bluesky @revadamtaylor.
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