Disciplines of the Spirit by Howard Thurman

The striking similarity between the social position of Jesus in Palestine and that of the vast majority of American Negroes is obvious to anyone who tarries long over the facts. Here, he turned to the example of Jesus, who lived similarly as one of the world’s disinherited: How then, might “a man and his black skin” face the “timeless issues of the human spirit together”? As he understood it, Life could not have meaning unless every single life had meaning, including his own. In one formative moment, a seminary advisor encouraged him to set aside theological reflections on racial justice in order to focus on “the timeless issues of the human spirit.” Reflecting on this incident years later, Thurman wrote: “I … wondered what kind of response I could make to this man who did not know that a man and his black skin must face the ‘timeless issues of the human spirit’ together” ( With Head and Heart, 60). In an academic and political environment that was deeply committed to a Modernism that promoted universal ideals at the expense of the particular, Thurman insisted that the universal always plays out in the particular lives of individual men and women. What strikes me most about Thurman’s theology was his focus on the intersection between the universal and the particular. Surely a thinker who influenced such influential people at such an influential moment of history is worthy of our attention! There is perhaps no greater indication of his importance than the fact that when the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were gathering in places like Montgomery and Selma, they brought Thurman’s writings on nonviolence with them. While his theological legacy has been somewhat muted in the decades after his death, during his life he was a major force in the American, and indeed, global Church. Today, I’d like to begin with Howard Thurman (1899-1981).

And so, in honour of Black History Month, I’d like to share three more of them with you between now and Ash Wednesday. Over the past few months, I’ve had the blessing of being exposed to more Black theological voices. I don’t mean this in a self-congratulatory way but I genuinely loved getting out of the way to give space for these largely under-appreciated, brilliant theological voices to shine out - with the side benefit of making our theology a little bit less WEIRD. One of my favorite projects last year was the week in which I posted daily posts celebrating, in my small way from my small platform, the voices of African American theologians.

Disciplines of the Spirit by Howard Thurman