A (Brief) Introduction to the work of Dr.

Howard Thurman
Young Howard the pounding surf, my earliest companions, giving me
space. (With Head and Heart)
Born November 18, 1899, in Daytona Beach, Florida
Reared by his Grandma Nancy, who had been a slave
and was a young woman during the American Civil War
Found the protective
fold of his neighbor-
hood and nature his
“windbreak against ex-
istence.”
As a child I was ac-
customed to spending
many hours alone in my
rowboat, fishing along
the river, when there
was no sound save the lapping of the waves against the
boat. There were times when it seemed as if the earth
and the river and the sky and I were one beat of the
same pulse. It was a time of watching and waiting for
what I did not know—yet I always knew. There would
come a moment when beyond the single pulse beat
there was a sense of Presence which seemed always to
speak to me. My response to the sense of Presence al- Grades 1-7 (8) in black school in Daytona Beach
ways had the quality of personal communion. There Grades 9-graduation: Florida Baptist Academy in Jack-
was no voice. There was no image. There was no vi- sonville (one of three high schools for black students in
sion. There was God. (Disciplines of the Spirit) Florida). Valedictorian.
Nightfall…was a presence. The nights in Florida, as I
grew up, seemed to have certain dominant characteris- College Days and Marriage
tics. They were not dark; they were black. When there
was no moon, the stars hung like lanterns, so close I felt Graduated from Morehouse College in 1923 with de-
that one could reach up and pluck them from the heav- grees in economics and government. (Summer semes-
ens. The night had its own language….At such times ter at Columbia in 1922 to study philosophy). Valedic-
I could hear the night think, and feel the night feel. torian.
This comforted me…I felt embraced, enveloped, held Enrolled at Rochester Theological Seminary in 1923
secure. In some fantastic way, the night belongs to me. (Rochester allotted two spots in the freshman class to
(With Head and Heart) black students). Bachelor of Divinity in 1926. Student
Eventually I discovered that the oak tree and I had body president. Valedictorian.
a unique relationship. I could sit my back against its Married Kate Kelly, social worker, 1926 (Kate died of
trunk, and feel the same peace that would come to me tuberculosis in 1930, after a three-year illness.) One
in my bed at night. I could reach down in the quiet daughter, Olive. Traveled alone abroad in heavy grief.
places of my spirit, take out my bruises and my joys, Then…”without knowing when or how, I moved into
unfold them, and talk about them. I could talk aloud profound focus….when I returned…I was aware that
to the oak tree and know that I was understood. It, too, God was not yet done with me, that I need never fear
was part of my reality, like the woods, the night, and
A (Brief) Introduction to the work of Dr. Howard Thurman 1
 vated by the desire to “teach”: it became almost entirely
devoted to the meaning of the experience of our com-
mon quest and journey.
One afternoon a Chinese gentleman came to see me.
I had seen him in church each Sunday morning for
many weeks. Always he slipped away quietly without
speaking to anyone. Now he introduced himself, say-
ing that he was returning to China and wanted to tell
me good-bye and express his appreciation for the expe-
rience of worshipping with us each Sunday morning.
“When I close my eyes and listen with the spirit I am
in my Buddhist temple experiencing the renewing of
my own spirit.” I knew then what I had only sensed be-
fore. The barriers were crumbling. I was breaking new
ground. Yet, it would be many years before I would
fully understand the nature of the breakthrough. (With
Head and Heart)
Professor of Religion and Director of Spiritual
Life at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges. 1928-
1932
Spring semester 1929 spent at Haverford College
studying privately with the Quaker mystic Rufus Jones.
Studied mystic religion through works of Meister Eck-
the darkness, nor delude myself that the contradictions hard, Francis of Assisi, Spanish mystic Madame Guyon
of life are final.” and others.

Career Path My study at Haverford was a crucial experience, a wa-

tershed from which flowed much of the thought and en-
Pastorate, Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Oberlin, Ohio, deavor to which I was to commit the rest of my working
1926-1928) Graduate studies at Graduate School of life. These months defined my deepest religious urges
Theology at Oberlin College. and framed in meaning much of what I had learned
over the years. (With Head and Heart)
I began to explore my inner regions, and to cultivate an
inner life of prayer and meditation. The experience of Thurman is known as a practical, active mystic, an af-
religion became increasingly central to my development. firmation mystic.
This was revealed to me in the gradual change in my at-
titude toward leading my congregation in public prayer. Thurman believed that it was an individual’s personal
From the beginning of my ministry I tended to be highly and intimate encounters with God that established the
self-conscious in public prayer…But as I began to acqui- foundation (and perhaps even the mandate) for the
esce to the demands of the spirit within, I found no need demonstration of love in community -- especially in the
to differentiate human need, theirs and my own….I dis- community of religious fellowship. (Dr. Liza Rankow)
covered that at last I was able to pray in public as if I were “Mystical experience of unity—the profoundly mov-
alone in the quiet of my own room. The door between ing, if fleeting, “creative encounter” with the realiza-
their questing spirits and my own became a swinging tion that all life is one….filled with a sense of the Other.
door. At times…a sense of the love of God overwhelmed The life of the mystic is worked out in the world of men
me. At such moments we became one in the presence of and things. Each soul must learn, so the mystic thinks,
God. At the same time, my preaching became less moti- to stand up in its own right and live. [The mystic] knows

2 A (Brief) Introduction to the work of Dr. Howard Thurman

he cannot escape the fundamental problem of ethics as sway. When the service was over, I left the pulpit, but
it works itself out in his time-space relationships….Dis- the audience remained in their seats, in total silence,
cipline of some sort becomes necessary and inevitable. for several minutes. (With Head and Heart)
Affirmation mystics are concerned with working out in
a social frame of reference the realism of their sense of In 1935-1936 led the first all black American
the Other. (Adapted from A Thurman address in 1939 delegation to make a Christian youth movement
and from With Head and Heart) “pilgrimage of friendship” to India, Ceylon, and
Burma.
“The first dimension is that God must be all-inclusive,
all-comprehending, and in a profound sense univer- Met with Tagore, about whom Thurman said: “He
sal….Prayer is the method by which the individual was a poet of India who soared above the political and
makes his way to the temple of quiet within his own social patterns of exclusiveness dividing mankind. His
spirit and the activity of his spirit within its walls. It is tremendous
also the readying of the spirit for communication with spiritual insight
God. It is the total process of quieting down. Perhaps as created a mood
important as prayer itself is the “readying” of the spirit unique among
for the experience. (Adapted from Thurman’s book, the voices of
The Creative Encounter: An Interpretation of Religion the world. He
and the Social Witness.) moved deep
into the heart
Married Susie Bailey, international Christian student of his own spir-
movement leader, historian, musician, and poet in 1932. itual idiom and
came up inside Howard and Sue Thurman in India
Named Professor of Christian Theology and chair- all peoples, all
man of the Committee on Religious Life at Howard cultures, and all faiths.”
University in 1932. In 1936 became the first Dean
of Howard University’s Rankin Chapel. Met Mahatma Gandhi and had first formal exchange be-
tween an African American religious leader and Gandhi.
I spent long hours of quiet in the empty chapel, listen-
ing to the silence and gazing through the rose window …He [Gandhi] said that with a clear perception it
at sunset, until slowly it was clear to me what I would could be through the Afro-American that the unadul-
have to do. terated message of nonviolence would be delivered to
all men everywhere.
The order of the service was completely rede-
signed. [Music, poetry, art, liturgical dance, read-
ings added.) Sunday morning service at Rankin
Chapel became a watering place for a wide range
of worshippers, not only from within the university
community but also from the District of Colum-
bia. Despite the fact that the District at that time
was as segregated racially as Atlanta or Jackson, the
Sunday chapel service provided a time and a place
where race, sex, culture, material belongings and
earlier religious orientation became undifferenti-
ated in the presence of God. I provided sketches of
time for meditation, a quiet time for prayers gen-
erated in silence….using Old and New Testament
passages…I began to read aloud, the tones of the
organ weaving in and out in muted accompani-
ment. There were periods of silence here and there
to allow the inspiration of the words to hold full Ghandi and Sue Thurman

A (Brief) Introduction to the work of Dr. Howard Thurman 3

In 1944 became co-pastor of the first interracial,
interfaith, interracial, intercultural church in
America: The Church for the Fellowship of All
Peoples in San Francisco. Eleanor Roosevelt
gave the farewell address when Thurman left
Howard University.
The core of my preaching has always concerned itself
with the development of the inner resources needed for
the creation of a friendly world of friendly men….It
was important to me that individuals who were in the
thick of the struggle for social change would be able
to find renewal and fresh courage in the spiritual re-
sources of the church. There must be provided a place,
a movement, when a person would declare, “I choose!”
(With Head and Heart)
In 1947 was the first black man to be invited give the
Ingersol Lecture at Harvard Divinity School. Topic:
The Negro Spiritual.
The genius of the slave song is their unyielding affirma-
tion of life defying the judgment of the denigrating envi-
ronment which spawned them….These slave singers…
take their place alongside the great creative religious
thinkers of the human race. They made a worthless life,
the life of chattel property, a mere thing, a body, worth side throughout the Western world….My quest for an
living! They yielded with abiding enthusiasm to a view answer reminded me again and again of my need to
of life which included all the events of their experiences preserve, at all costs, the inspirations and the strength
without exhausting themselves in those experiences. To I drew from my commitment to the religion of Jesus.
them this quality of life was insistent fact because of that (With Head and Heart)
which deep within them, they discovered of God, and Living in a climate of deep insecurity, Jesus faced with
His far-flung purposes. God was not through with them so narrow a margin of civil guarantees, had to find
and He was not, nor could He be, exhausted by any some other basis upon which to establish a sense of
single experience or any series of experiences. To know well-being. He knew that the goals of religion as he un-
Him was to live a life worthy of the loftiest meaning of derstood them could never be worked out within the
life. Men in all ages and climes, slave or free, trained or then-established order. Deep from within that order he
untutored, who have sensed the same values, are their projected a dream, the logic of which would give to all
fellow-pilgrims who journey together with them in an the needful security. There would be room for all, and
increasing self-realization in the quest for the city that no man would be a threat to his brother. “The king-
hath foundations whose Builder and Maker is God. dom of God is within.” “The Spirit of the Lord is upon
(With Head and Heart) me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel
In 1949 published most famous book, Jesus and to the poor.” The basic principles of his way of life cut
the Disinherited, “which deeply influenced lead- straight through to the despair of his fellows and found
ers of the Civil Rights struggle in the 1950s.” it groundless. By inference he says, “You must abandon
your fear of each other and fear only God. You must
I had continued to struggle with the central issue, which not indulge in any deception and dishonesty, even to
was the apparent inability, the demonstrable failure of save your lives. Your words me be Yea-Nay; anything
Christianity to deal effectively with a system of social else is evil. Hatred is destructive to hated and hater
and economic injustice with which it existed side by
4 A (Brief) Introduction to the work of Dr. Howard Thurman
 alike. Love your en- to the disinherited: “Love your enemy. Take the initia-
emy, that you may tive in seeking ways by which you can have the experi-
be children of your ence of a common sharing of mutual worth and value.
Father who is in It may be hazardous, but you must do it.”
heaven.
In so great an undertaking it will become increasingly
Fear: A man’s con- clear that the contradictions of life are not ultimate.
viction that he is The disinherited will know for themselves that there is
God’s child auto- a Spirit at work in life and in the hearts of men which
matically tends to is committed to overcoming the world. It is universal,
shift the basis of his knowing no age, no race, no culture, and no condition
relationship with all of men. For the privileged and underprivileged alike, if
his fellows. He rec- the individual puts at the disposal of the Spirit the need-
ognizes at once that ful dedication and discipline, he can life effectively in the
to fear a man, what- chaos of the present the high destiny of a son of God.
ever may be that
man’s power over In 1953 moved to Boston University at invitation
him, is a basic denial of the integrity of his very life. of President Harold Case to become Dean of
It lifts that mere man to a place of pre-eminence that Marsh Chapel an d professor of Spiritual Disci-
belongs to God and to God alone. plines and Resources in the School of Theology.

Deception: …be simply, directly truthful, whatever

may be the cost in life, limb, or security. For the indi- Three Degrees of Separation
vidual who accepts this, there may be quick and speedy
judgment with attendant loss. But if the number in- Active Retirement
creases and the movement spreads, the vindication of
the truth would follow in the wake. There must always Formerly retired
be the confidence that the effect of truthfulness can be from Boston Uni-
realized in the mind of the oppressor as well as the op- versity in 1965
pressed. and returned to
San Francisco
Hate: Above and beyond all else it must be borne in where he found-
mind that hatred tends to dry up the springs of creative ed the Howard
thought in the life of the hater, so that his resource- Thurman Edu-
fulness becomes completely focused on the negative cational Trust, a
aspects of his environment. The urgent needs of the charitable foun-
personality for creative expression are starved to death. dation that sup-
…Jesus rejected hatred. It was not because he lacked ported religious,
the vitality or the strength. It was not because he lacked charitable, sci-
the incentive. Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that entific, literary,
hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, and educational
death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life; programs. Also
and hatred was the great denial. housed Thur-
man’s private li-
Love: It was upon the anvil of the Jewish community’s brary and more
relations with Rome that Jesus hammered out the vital than “800 tapes
content of his concept of live for one’s enemy….To love of meditations,
them means to recognize some deep respect and rever- prayers, sermons,
ence for their persons. But to love them does not mean lecture and dis-
to condone their way of life. The religion of Jesus says cussion covering Grandma Nancy Ambrose

A (Brief) Introduction to the work of Dr. Howard Thurman 5

over forty years of Thurman’s spiritual pilgrimage.”
Howard Thurman Listening Rooms were established
throughout the U.S. and in seventeen foreign countries.
(HTET now housed at Morehouse College in Atlanta.)
Traveled around the world. Thurman was teaching in
Nigeria when John Kennedy was assassinated and, at
the request of the American Ambassador to Nigeria,
gave the eulogy at the memorial service for Kennedy
in Lagos.
Died after a long illness on April 10, 1981, at his home
in San Francisco.
Selected as one of twelve outstanding preachers in
America by Life magazine in 1953. Dr. Martin Luther Dr. William H. Hinson
King, Jr. listed him, along with Winston Churchill and
Albert Einstein, as one of the “ten greatest men of the “…articulated the vision of spiritual discipline that
twentieth century.” later informed the intellectual and moral basis of the
black freedom movement in the South.” “…always
Spoke at more than 200 American and Canadian in-
preferring quiet pastoral counsel and intellectual guid-
stitutions, including University of Chicago, Yale, Princ-
ance to political visibility.”
eton, Harvard. Received honorary doctorates from
eleven colleges and universities “For the quiet counsel and reflection he offered to
Martin Luther King, Jr., Vernon Johns, James Farmer,
“…arguably the most thoroughgoing integrationist
Whitney Young, Vernon Jordan, Jesse Jackson, Otis
of his generation, a pastor who brought the integra-
Moss, and a host of other passing through the “dark
tion ideal right into the institutional heart of black and
night of the soul” in the thick of social struggle. Thur-
white society: the church worship service.”
man was widely recognized as the pastoral leader of the
Civil Rights movement.”
Thurman’s work: Emphasis on character, civility, and
community…public language filled with hope and
possibility…Thurman’s intellectual vision of human
community and American democratic renewal….the
ground of a hopeful future. Thurman’s steady insis-
tence on the search for common ground between di-
verse cultures finds creative resonance at this critical
impasse of American history. (Fluker and Tumber)

Arthur Ashe: Days of Grace: A Memoir

Influence of Howard Thurman: pages 320-238

Howard Thurman’s Voice of Hope

The most natural thing in the world for man, then,
would be to keep open the lines of communication be-
tween him and the Source of his life, out of which he
comes and into which (it is my faith) he goes.

6 A (Brief) Introduction to the work of Dr. Howard Thurman

The important thing, however, is the fact that beyond bership in the hu-
the zero point of endurance there are vast possibili- man frailty; they
ties…this simple fact of revitalizing human endurance may be certain
opens a great vista for living…it is often at such a point words that were
that the spirit in humans and the spirit of God blend spoken into a still-
into one creative illumination. ness within us, the
sound thereof sing-
The assumption is that we individuals are ever in im- ing forever through
mediate candidacy to get an “assist” from God—that all the corridors of
we are not alone in our quest. Through prayer, medita- our being as land-
tion and singleness of mind our lives may be invaded by marks; yes, each
strength, insight, and courage sufficient for our needs. one of us has his
Thus we need not seek refuge in excuses but can live own. No commu-
our lives with ever-increasing vigor and experience… nication between
and with an ever--deepening sense of fulfillment. (From people is possible
Meditations of the Heart and other collections of Thur- if there is not some
man’s prayers and meditation.) mutual recogni-
Certain landmarks…represent discoveries sometimes tion of the land-
symbolizing the moment when we became aware of the marks…To know a man is to know somewhat, of his
purpose of our lives; they may establish for us our mem- landmarks. For these are the points of referral that stand
out beyond and above all the traffic of his life, advising
and tutoring him in his journey through
life and beyond. In the language of re-
How Good to Center Down!
ligion, these are the places where the
How good it is to center down! Eternal has been caught and held for a
To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! swirling moment in time and years.
The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic;
Our spirits resound with clashings, with noisy silences, There seems to be a vast stirring of en-
While something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and ergy, malignant and unstructured, that
the resting lull. catapults to the surface all kinds of dis-
With full intensity we seek, ere the quiet passes, a fresh sense of order in harmonies, conflicts, and disorders…
our living; The stirring of energy in myriad forms
A direction, a strong sure purpose that will structure our confusion and of unstructured malevolencies may
bring meaning to our chaos. well be the spirit of Life, of God at
We look at ourselves in this waiting moment—the kinds of people we are.
work on behalf of new life and perhaps
The questions persist: what are we doing with our lives?—what are the
a new creation on this planet. We
motives that order our days?
What is the end of our doings? Where are we trying to go? must find our place in the areas of the
Where do we put the emphasis and where are our values focused? new vitalities, the place where the old
For what end do we make sacrifices? Where is my treasure and what do I is breaking up and the new is being
love most in life? born. What a moment to be alive and,
What do I hate most in life and to what am I true? more importantly, to be aware! Of
Over and over the questions beat in upon the waiting moment. course, this we cannot do unless we are
As we listen, floating up through all the jangling echoes of our turbulence, able to gather unto ourselves the wise
there is a sound of another kind— caution of Fenelon, “Accustom your-
A deeper note which only the stillness of the heart makes clear. self to remain at peace in the depth
It moves directly to the core of our being. Our questions are answered.
of your heart, in spite of your restless
Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round
imagination.” God grant this for each
With the peace of the Eternal in our step.
How good it is to center down! of us. (Howard Thurman’s book For
the Inward Journey)

A (Brief) Introduction to the work of Dr. Howard Thurman 7

 Resources
The Sound of the Genuine: The Papers of How-
ard Thurman (first of three volumes, edited by
Walter Fluker and Cath-
erine Tumber) will be
published in the spring of
2009 by The University of
South Carolina Press.
Howard Thurman’s Great
Hope by Kai Jackson Issa
(a children’s picture book)
A Strange Freedom: The
Best of Howard Thurman
on Religious Experience and Public Life (Fluke
and Tumber, editors)
For an annotated bibliography of the works of
Howard Thurman: www.howardthurmanfilm.
com/thurmanbooks.html
Documentary Howard Thurman film close to
completion: www.howardthurmanfilm.com
www.fellowshipsf.org

8 A (Brief) Introduction to the work of Dr. Howard Thurman