Thurman tells the story of a minister delivering a prayer at the funeral service of a Black man killed by police in the South. The prophet Ezekiel communicated to his people in code through Nebuchadnezzar. Women, Thurman says, have often been forced to deceive men to survive in a “man-dominated social order,” and he argues that equal rights for women are an important step toward rectifying the “morally degrading aspects of deception and dishonesty that enter into the relationship between men and women” (59). Children in class often use deceptive techniques to divert their teachers’ attention. If you’d like more, I commend this interview with Rev Otis Moss III conducted on the On Being Radio Network.Thurman proceeds with numerous other examples. Thurman was also a mystic and a poet and a wordsmith. His book concludes with clear-eyed honesty that the disinherited must recognize the fear and hatred expressed upon them while engaging in the use of the tools at his/her disposal for living out a life in the Spirit and in the manner of Jesusįirst published in1949, one could read this book with 20 in mind. “The religion of Jesus makes the love-ethic central…To love such an enemy requires reconciliation, the will to re-establish a relationship.”īut, let’s be clear here, Thurman is not offering the love-ethic and reconciliation as an easy way of cheap grace. Through the ages, at all stages of sentient activity, the weak have survived by fooling the strong.” “Deception is perhaps the oldest of all the techniques by which the weak have protected themselves against the strong. But he is also one to turn toward solutions and strategy.
He is direct and to the point with his analysis of the disinherited experience.
No degree in theology is needed to understand his writing. “Fear is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the disposed, the disinherited.” He was not the one marching, he was the one to whom those who marched would retreat for sustenance and resolve.
Many considered Thurman the pastor, the mystic, and the chaplain to the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King often carried this little book with him from place to place. Thurman proceeds to lay out what can fairly be called an early treatise of a US American version of liberation theology for the African-American church. But few of these interpretations deal with what the teachings and life of Jesus have to say to those who stand, at a moment in human history, with their backs against the wall.” “Many and varied are the interpretations dealing with the teachings and life of Jesus of Nazareth. His book Jesus and the Disinherited is a small and readable guide to the experience, perspective, and theology behind the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Howard Thurman has come across my desk many times in the past year.
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