Thurman, Howard

November 18, 1900
April 10, 1981

Minister and educator Howard Thurman, whose career as pastor, scholar, teacher, and university chaplain extended over fifty years, was the author of over twenty books. One of the most creative religious minds of the twentieth century, Thurman touched the lives of many cultural leaders within and beyond the modern civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, Alan Paton, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, Rabbi Alvin Fine, and Arthur Ashe. "The search for common ground" was the defining motif of Thurman's life and thought. This vision of the kinship of all peoples, born of Thurman's own personal struggles with the prohibitions of race, religion, and culture, propelled him into the mainstream of American Christianity as a distinctive interpreter of the church's role in a pluralistic society.

The grandson of slaves, Thurman was born in Daytona, Florida, and raised in its segregated black community. He was educated in the local black school, where he was the first African American to complete the eighth grade. He attended high school at Florida Baptist Academy (1915–1919), one of only three public high schools for blacks in the state. Upon graduation, Thurman attended Morehouse College (1919–1923) and Rochester Theological Seminary (1923–1926). After serving as pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Oberlin, Ohio, for two years (1926–1928), he studied with the Quaker mystic Rufus Jones in the spring of 1929. He served as director of religious life and professor of religion at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges (1929–1930), and dean of Rankin Chapel and professor of religion at Howard University (1932–1944).

Thurman was cofounder and copastor of the pioneering interracial, interfaith Fellowship Church for All Peoples in San Francisco from 1944 to 1953. In 1953 he assumed the dual appointment of professor of spiritual resources and disciplines and dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University. He founded the Howard Thurman Educational Trust in San Francisco in 1961, which he administered after his retirement in 1965 until his death in 1981.

See also Christian Denominations, Independent; Civil Rights Movement, U.S.

Bibliography

The Faith Project. Public Broadcasting Service. "This Far by Faith," April 2003. Available from <http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/howard_thurman.html>.

Fluker, Walter, and Catherine Tumber, eds. A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998.

Mitchell, Mozella Gordon. Spiritual Dynamics of Howard Thurman's Theology. Bristol, Ind.: Wyndham Hall Press, 1985.

Smith, Luther E. Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981.

walter earl fluker (1996)
Updated bibliography