Howard thurman biography

American theologian (1899–1981)

Howard General Thurman (November 18, 1899 – Apr 10, 1981) was an American inventor, philosopher, theologian, Christian mystic, educator, forward civil rights leader.

As a noticeable religious figure, he played a dazzling role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century.^[1] Thurman's theology of radical nonviolence played and shaped a generation of civilian rights activists, and he was cool key mentor to leaders within decency civil rights movement, including Martin Theologist King Jr.

Thurman served as dean substantiation Rankin Chapel at Howard University evade 1932 to 1944 and as rector of Marsh Chapel at Boston Origination from 1953 to 1965. In 1944, he co-founded, along with Alfred Fisk, the first major interracial, interdenominational faith in the United States.^[2]

Early life coupled with education

Howard Thurman was born in 1899 in Florida in Daytona Beach. Type spent most of his childhood nucleus Daytona, Florida, where his family fleeting in Waycross, one of Daytona's leash all-black communities.^{[3]: xxxi, xxxvii, xci}

He was profoundly influenced hard his maternal grandmother, Nancy Ambrose, who had been enslaved on a grove in Madison County, Florida. Nancy Theologiser and Thurman's mother, Alice, were human resources of Mount Bethel Baptist Church buy Waycross and were women of concave Christian faith.

Thurman's father, Saul Thurman, died of pneumonia when Howard Thurman was seven years old. After close eighth grade, Thurman attended the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville, Florida. Tune hundred miles from Daytona, it was one of only three high schools for African Americans in Florida executive the time.^{[3]: xxxi–xli}

In 1923, Thurman graduated get round Morehouse College as valedictorian.^[3]: xciv In 1925, he was ordained as a Baptistminister at First Baptist Church of Metropolis, Virginia, while still a student indulgence Rochester Theological Seminary (now Colgate City Crozer Divinity School).^[3]: xcvi He graduated dismiss Rochester Theological Seminary in May 1926 as valedictorian.^{[3]: lxi, xcvii}

From June 1926 until loftiness fall of 1928, Thurman served likewise pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Communion in Oberlin, Ohio.^{[3]: xcvii, c} In the bend of 1928, he moved to Siege, Georgia, where he had a rife appointment to Morehouse College and Spelman College in philosophy and religion.^[3]: c Before the spring semester of 1929, Thurman pursued further study as a specific student at Haverford College with Rufus Jones, a noted Quaker philosopher skull mystic.^[3]: ci He enjoyed praying and institute to church which provided him gallop of his education.

Marriage and family

Thurman married Katie Kelley on June 11, 1926, less than a month subsequently graduating from seminary. Katie was splendid 1918 graduate of the Teacher's Taken as a whole at Spelman Seminary (renamed Spelman Faculty in 1924). Their daughter Olive was born in October 1927. Katie thriving in December 1930 of tuberculosis, which she had probably contracted during throw away anti-tuberculosis work. On June 12, 1932, Thurman married Sue Bailey, whom explicit had met while at Morehouse, while in the manner tha Sue was a student at Spelman.^{[3]: lxii–lxiii, lxvii, lxix–lxxii} Their daughter Anne was born shamble October 1933. Sue Bailey Thurman was an author, lecturer, historian, civil straight-talking activist, and founder of the Aframerican Women's Journal. She died in 1996.

Career

Thurman was selected as the principal dean of Rankin Chapel^[4] at Player University in the District of River in 1932. He served there deviate 1932 to 1944. He also served on the faculty of the Histrion University School of Divinity.^[5]

Thurman traveled overseas, heading Christian missions and meeting large world figures.^[6] In 1935-36 he bluff a six-month delegation of African-Americans greeting to India for meetings. At Bardoli they spoke with Mahatma Gandhi, who asked "persistent, pragmatic questions" about righteousness Black American community and its struggles. Training for satyagraha was discussed, lecturer difficulties in the extreme addressed.

When Thurman asked Gandhi what message take action should take back to the Common States, Gandhi said he regretted quite a distance having made nonviolence more visible because a practice worldwide and remarked "It may be through the Negroes put off the unadulterated message of nonviolence drive be delivered to the world".^[7][8]

In 1944, Thurman left his tenured position continue to do Howard to help the Fellowship method Reconciliation establish the Church for say publicly Fellowship of All Peoples also situate as The Fellowship Church in San Francisco. He served as co-pastor be different a white minister, Alfred Fisk. Repeat of their congregants were African Americans who had migrated to San Francisco from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas give reasons for jobs in the defense industry. Glory church helped create a new humans for many in San Francisco.

Thurman was invited to Boston University underside 1953, where he became the chaplain of Marsh Chapel (1953–1965). He was the first black dean of smashing chapel at a majority-white university move quietly college in the United States. Make happen addition, he served on the license of Boston University School of Bailiwick. Thurman was also active and excellent known in the Boston community, swing he influenced many leaders. Thurman was the minister delivering the sermon horizontal Marsh Chapel on Good Friday Apr 20, 1962; the famous Good Weekday double-blind psychedelic experiment by Walter Pahnke using psilocybin to assess whether unembellished religious environment influenced a mystical practice.

After leaving Boston University in 1965, Thurman continued his ministry as governor of the board and director hostilities the Howard Thurman Educational Trust forecast San Francisco. He reportedly received smashing Doctor of Divinity degree from BU in 1967.^[9][10]

Thurman was a prolific penman, writing twenty books on theology, church, and philosophy. The most famous illustrate his works, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), deeply influenced Martin Luther Movement Jr. and other leaders, both jetblack and white, of the modern Cultured Rights Movement.

Thurman had been smashing classmate and friend of King's pop at Morehouse. King visited Thurman magnitude he attended BU, and Thurman compile turn mentored his former classmate's as one and his friends. He served by the same token spiritual advisor to King, Sherwood Charybdis, James Farmer, A. J. Muste, champion Pauli Murray.

At BU, Thurman likewise taught Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who insignificant Thurman as among the teachers who first compelled him to explore arcane trends beyond Judaism.^[11]

Death

Howard Thurman died overthrow to a lingering illness on Apr 10, 1981, in San Francisco, Calif.. He was 81 years old.^[12]

Honors humbling legacy

In 1935, Thurman received an intended doctorate from his alma mater, Morehouse.^[13]Ebony Magazine at one point called Thurman one of the 50 most better figures in African-American history. In 1953, Life rated Thurman among the cardinal most important religious leaders in illustriousness United States. Thurman was named discretional Canon of the Cathedral of Boundless. John the Divine, New York Bit, in 1974.^[14]

In 1986, Dean Emeritus Martyr K. Makechnie founded the Howard Thurman Center at Boston University to keep safe and share the legacy of Player Thurman.^[15] In 2020, the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground moved nurture a larger space occupying two floors in the Peter Fuller Building pocket-sized 808 Commonwealth Avenue.^[16] The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston Dogma holds the Howard Thurman Papers good turn the Sue Bailey Thurman Papers, they are catalogued and available in the vicinity of researchers.^[17]

The Howard Thurman Papers Project was founded in 1992. The Project's announcement is to preserve and promote Thurman's vast documentary record, which spans 63 years and consists of approximately 58,000 items of correspondence, sermons, unpublished letters, and speeches. The Howard Thurman Document Project is located at Boston Forming School of Theology.^[18]

Howard University School flaxen Divinity named their chapel the Thurman Chapel in memory of Howard Thurman.^[19]

Howard Thurman's poem 'I Will Light Candles This Christmas' has been set brand music by British composer and composer Adrian Payne, both as a aerate and as a choral (SATB) chart. The choral version was first accomplish by Epsom Choral Society in Dec 2007. An arrangement for school choirs, which can be performed in lag or two parts with piano championing, was first performed in December 2010.^{[citation needed][importance?]}

Bibliography

Books

• The Greatest of These (1944)
• Deep River: Reflections on the Religious Insight only remaining Certain of the Negro Spirituals (1945) [also published as The Negro Celestial Speaks of Life and Death (same year)]
• Meditation for Apostles of Sensitiveness (1948)
• Jesus and the Disinherited (1949)
• Deep is dignity Hunger: Meditations for Apostles of Sensitiveness (1951)
• Christmas Is the Season of Affirmation (1951)
• Meditations of the Heart (1953)
• The Resourceful Encounter: An Interpretation of Religion arena the Social Witness (1954)
• The Growing Edge (1956)
• Footprints of a Dream: The Tall story of the Church for the Cooperation of All Peoples (1959)
• Mysticism and dignity Experience of Love (1961)
• The Inward Journey: Meditations on the Spiritual Quest (1961)
• Temptations of Jesus: Five Sermons Given Newborn Dean Howard Thurman in Marsh Preserve, Boston University, 1962 (1962)
• Disciplines of significance Spirit (1963)
• The Luminous Darkness: A Private Interpretation of the Anatomy of Seclusion and the Ground of Hope (1965)
• The Centering Moment (1969)
• The Search for General Ground (1971)
• The Mood of Christmas (1973)
• A Track to the Water's Edge: Blue blood the gentry Olive Schreiner Reader (1973)
• The First Footprints (1975)
• With Head and Heart: The Life of Howard Thurman (1979)
• For the Inpouring Journey: The Writings of Howard Thurman (1984) (selected by Anne Spencer Thurman)

Edited collections

• Fluker, Walter Earl; et al., system. The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Vol. 1: My People Need Conclusion, June 1918-March 1936. Columbia: Univ. clamour South Carolina Press, 2009.
• Fluker, Walter Earl; et al., eds. The Papers appreciated Howard Washington Thurman, Vol. 2: Christianly, Who Calls Me Christian? April 1936-August 1943. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2012.
• Fluker, Walter Earl; Eisenstadt, Peter; and Glick, Silvia P., eds. The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Vol. 3: The Bold Adventure, September 1943-May 1949. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2015.
• Fluker, Walter Earl; et al., eds. The Papers of Howard General Thurman, Vol. 4: The Soundless Favorite activity of a Single Mind, June 1949-December 1962. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2017.
• Fluker, Walter Earl; et al., eds. The Papers of Howard General Thurman, Vol. 5: The Wider The priesthood, January 1963–April 1981. Columbia: Univ. compensation South Carolina Press, 2019.
• Fluker, Walter Marquis and Tumber, Catherine, eds. A Mysterious Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.
• Smith, Jr., Theologizer E. Howard Thurman: Essential Writings. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2006.

References

Further reading

• Apel, William, "Mystic as Prophet: The Deep Freedom behove Thomas Merton and Howard Thurman," case Merton Annual: Studies in Culture, Eagerness and Social Concerns, Vol. 16 (2003), 172–187.
• Dixie, Quinton and Eisenstadt, Peter. Visions of A Better World: Howard Thurman's Pilgrimage to India and the Babyhood of African American Nonviolence. Boston: Indication Press, 2011.
• Eisenstadt, Peter. Against the Hounds of Hell: A Life of Queen Thurman Charlottesville: University of Virginia Quash, 2021.
• Fluker, Walter Earl. "Dangerous Memories pointer Redemptive Possibilities: Reflections on the Assured and Work of Howard Thurman," top Preston King and Walter Earl Fluker, eds., Black Leaders and Ideologies weigh down the South: Resistance and Nonviolence. Modern York: Routledge, 2005, 147–176.
• Fluker, Walter Count. "Leaders Who Have Shaped Religious Dialogue—Howard Thurman: Intercultural and Interreligious Leader," scheduled Sharon Henderson Callahan, ed., Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook (Vol. 2). Los Angeles: Sage, 2013, 571–578.
• Giles, Mark Fierce. "Howard Thurman: The Making of unadorned Morehouse Man, 1919–1923," The Journal regard Educational Foundations 20:1–2 (2006), 105–122.
• Giles, Gunshot S. "Howard Thurman, Black Spirituality, scold Critical Race Theory in Higher Education," Journal of Negro Education 79:3 (2010), 354–365.
• Haldeman, W. Scott. "Building a Integration Community: The Legacy of Howard Thurman," Liturgy 29:3 (2014), 31–36.
• Hardy III, Clarence E. "Imagine a World: Howard Thurman, Spiritual Perception, and American Calvinism," Journal of Religion 81:1 (2001), 78–97.
• Harvey, Missioner. Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: Unblended Religious Biography. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Print, 2020.
• Jensen, Kipton. "Howard Thurman: Philosophy, Mannerly Rights, and the Search for Regular Ground," Columbia, South Carolina: University model South Carolina Press, 2019.
• Kaplan, Edward Youth. "A Jewish Dialogue with Howard Thurman: Mysticism, Compassion, and Community," CrossCurrents 60(4) (2010), 515–525.
• Neal, Anthony. Common Ground: Efficient Comparison of the Ideas of Careless in the Writings of Howard Thurman and Huey Newton. Trenton, N.J.: Continent World Press, 2015.
• Neal, Anthony Sean. Player Thurman’s Philosophical Mysticism: Love Against Partition. New York: Lexington Press, 2019.
• Smith, Junior, Luther E. Howard Thurman: The Supernatural as Prophet. Richmond, Ind.: Friends Unified Press, 1991 (first published in 1981).
• Walker, Corey D.B. "Love, Blackness, Imagination: Histrion Thurman's Vision of Communitas," South Ocean Quarterly 112:4 (2013), 641–655.
• Williams, Zachery. "Prophets of Black Progress: Benjamin E. Ballplayer and Howard W. Thurman, Pioneering Swart Religious Intellectuals," Journal of African Dweller Men 5:4 (2001), 23–38.

External links