In the introduction to Howard Thurman & the Disinherited, author Paul Harvey argues that although Thurman was not a political activist, his influence on civil rights movement leaders was unmistakable. But the book goes beyond exploring Thurman's influence on civil rights luminaries such as Martin Luther King Jr., Pauli Murray, Benjamin Mays, James Farmer, and Jesse Jackson. In this brief but comprehensive biography, Harvey examines Thurman's life, his career as an academic, his tenure as a pastor, and how he shaped left-wing Protestantism. Thurman's goal, according to the author, was to create lifelong relations among people beyond the evils of segregation by breaking through what W. E. B. DuBois labeled the veil.
The author highlights key moments in Thurman's life, such as when he was at Oberlin School of Theology and moved away from a religious piety to a more critical way of thinking. In this early period of his life, Thurman became critical of American materialism and argued that churches should play a key role in combatting this evil. Black religious leadership played a role in “cultivating a sense of ‘ethic meaning’ such that the mere buildings of institutions would not suffocate the spirit of Jesus” (38).
A key moment in Thurman's life was his trip to India. A major problem he and his delegation faced was the view that people in developing nations had of Christianity. It was seen by many Indians and others as the religion of white supremacy and exploitation. Thurman made a distinction between the United States’ racial practices and India's caste system. The American idea gave him hope that social protest movements could force the United States to live up to its ideal. Thurman maintained that India's caste system simply made it impossible to end social inequality
While examining the trip to India, we learn not just of the impact that Gandhi and India had on Howard Thurman but also on his wife Sue Baily Thurman. According to Harvey, she concluded that the black freedom struggle in the United States had to be tied to global struggles for independence. She focused on the role that black women, past and present, played in campaigns for freedom. Harvey tells the reader that Sue Thurman became a strong advocate of teaching African American history to press the point that African Americans were part of a collective of freedom fighters. She also proposed that African Americans and darker oppressed people adopt Gandhian techniques.
In addition to noting Thurman's embrace of mysticism, the author examines his views on race. One theme explored is how racial discrimination of black Americans was a threat to democracy. Harvey writes about one of Thurman's most ambitious projects, establishing an interracial congregation in order to find out if “experiences of spiritual unity and fellowship are more compelling than the fears and dogmas and prejudices that separate men” (24). The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, located in San Francisco, symbolized Thurman's commitment to pacifism, interracial fellowship, and ending racial discrimination and poverty. Among the church's projects was reintegrating Japanese Americans into San Francisco's society after World War II.
Thurman's most important work as a scholar is Jesus and the Disinherited. He argues that the real meaning of Jesus is to be found in his poor status as a Jew in the oppressive Roman empire.
Harvey declares that part of Thurman's legacy was his ability to pronounce the virtues of Christianity, embrace its otherworldliness, the protest nature of the black spirituals, and at the same time his fierce criticism of the religion as it was practiced. He insisted that the opposition to Christianity had to do with Christians’ maltreatment of black people. Thurman, as Harvey notes consistently addressed the evils of segregation through a Christian lens, laying the groundwork for a black Christian critique of American racism.
Paul Harvey's book is not for those looking for a definitive work on Thurman. However, the book is a concise biography that covers his evolution as one of America's most important religious thinkers in the twentieth century. Mainly relying on Thurman's speeches, sermons, and correspondence, including unpublished letters, articles, and books by Thurman, as well as much published material, Harvey uses a chronological approach, with an in-depth analysis of the great theologian's writing. Harvey's Howard Thurman & and the Disinherited is an extremely readable text and the bibliographical essay is quite useful for those unfamiliar with the voluminous amount of material on Thurman.
