The Search for Common Ground by Howard Thurman

In their Black Fire (2011), which traces the history of the “black Quaker experience,” Harold Weaver, Paul Kriese, and Stephen W. King traces his conversion to pacifism back to a 1950 sermon by Mordecai Johnson in Philadelphia. Not only did Thurman meet with Gandhi in 1936, he was also a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation from the early 1920s. Although it is sometimes assumed that the origins of philosophical or spiritual pacifism in African American history stretch back to King’s veneration of Gandhi, recent scholarship suggests that the inspirational sources are to be found much earlier and extended far broader than that. Thurman’s creative appropriation of this distinction in Gandhi’s thought, as well as a unique application of it to the problem of segregation in America, was formative to King’s understanding of and sustained, albeit tested, commitment to nonviolence. Paul within the Christian tradition, is distinct yet ultimately and intimately related to the success of satyagraha, which is a distinctive method of nonviolence. The philosophy of nonviolence, ahimsa, or what Gandhi and Thurman agreed to translate as “agape” and “the love-ethic,” as expressed by St. took for granted, but which the present generation of scholars tends to conflate or overlook entirely, namely, between ahimsa and satyagraha. There is a very fine distinction within Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence, a distinction that Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King Jr. Throughout his life Thurman strove to create a climate of 'inner unity of fellowship that went beyond the barriers of race, class, and tradition.' In this volume Jensen meticulously documents and analyzes Thurman as a philosopher, activist, and peacemaker and illuminates his vital and founding role in and contributions to the monumental achievements of the civil rights era. Showing how Thurman was a 'social activist mystic' as well as a pragmatist, Jensen explains how these beliefs helped provide the foundation for King's notion of the beloved community. Jensen explicates Thurman's construction of a philosophy on nonviolence and the political power of love. Thurman espoused a unique brand of personalism. While Thurman's profound influence on King has been documented, Jensen shows how Thurman's reach extended to an entire generation of activists. Jensen provides new ways of understanding Thurman's foundational role in and broad influence on the civil rights movement and argues persuasively that he is one of the unsung heroes of that time. In Howard Thurman: Philosophy, Civil Rights, and the Search for Common Ground, Kipton E.

Although he is best known as a mentor to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Howard Thurman (1900–1981) was an exceptional philosopher and public intellectual in his own right.

The Search for Common Ground by Howard Thurman