Howard Thurman on Poverty and Community
Fear is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited. There is nothing new or recent about fear—it is doubtless as old as the life of man on the planet … The ever-present fear that besets the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere. It is a mood which one carries around with himself, distilled from the acrid conflict with which his days are surrounded. It has its roots deep in the heart of the relations between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of environment and those who are controlled by it.
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
In possibly his most overtly radical work Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), transformational African-American theologian Howard Thurman (1899-1981) asked the age-old question: “What does Christianity have to say to the poor?” Not about the obligations of others towards the poor, but to those actually struggling in poverty?
It is a universal question at the ethical core of most of the world’s religions. In past HHday musings, "What does our religion say about our obligations to provide charity to those in need?" has been explored within Christian, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, and secular traditions.
Charity, of course, was the traditional response of the “church” towards those in need. Howard Thurman believed in personal charity, but he was concerned that charity given out of a person’s abundance could easily devolve into condescension. Although he remained nominally a Baptist minister, Thurman was also skeptical of an entrenched church.
Instead, Thurman was looking for a practical spiritual response that would help struggling individuals deal with the realities of their situation and not be overwhelmed by them. He doesn’t suggest solutions for lifting folks out of poverty — that would be the work of others. One could always cloth and feed a man for a day. Thurman was far more concerned with the psychological affects of entrenched poverty; how it diminishes aspirations or hope; how shame or resentment might be internalized into self-hatred or self-defeating behavior. Poverty stripped people of finding a “core purposefulness” that Thurman believed was essential to a life lived not just a life survived. That was his ultimate wish for all humanity.
So what was Howard Thurman’s answer? It was community. The long-term solution was to transform society, beginning with the local community. Communities needed to establish a general climate where the struggling individual was accepted as and felt valued as a part of the larger society. Where their contributions were acknowledged. Howard believed that an ethical secular community could emerge that would assume that the needs of all the citizens/community are equally important. Struggle was the reality of the masses. A man or woman without economic security should feel that their situation is nothing more than the absence of economic security. Being in need should be perceived as an economic reality and not an indictment. With that mindset, the community can go forward to unravel the core reasons for poverty and find solutions. Without using the term, Thurman was arguing for economic justice.
Community would come to be such a profoundly universal concept for Thurman, it would become the core mission of the second half of his life’s work, his own spiritual quest, and his vision for transforming a racially and economically unjust world. It would compel him to question traditional Christianity and to embrace a radical interdenominational world view.
Helping Humpday & The Community List
More on Thurman’s vision of community, a brief bio, and suggested readings are below the fold. But first, a reminder of why we are here each and every Wednesday.
Helping Humpday is dedicated to Kossacks helping one another. Humpday — because we’re smack dab in the middle of the work week and getting over that hump sure looks sweet. But for some folks in this community, the humps they need to get over are far more daunting than looking forward to the weekend. That is where Helping comes in. Helping Humpday is specifically about generating support for struggling Kossacks who find themselves facing an imminent financial emergency. Our goal is to publicize the Community Needs List as widely across the site as possible. Our motto is simple: many hands make light work. But we need all hands on deck to make this successful. We invite you all to join us.
CURRENT FULL COMMUNITY NEEDS LIST
Community needs list as of 7/24/18. Please kosmail any updates, corrections or additions to basket.
Medical Fundraisers
BIGJACBIGJACBIGJAC — He was recently switched from working full-time at Walmart to part-time and has medical insurance through the ACA. With premiums forecast to go up next year, he and his wife are already living on the edge and barely making ends meet. A necessary but unexpected car repair tipped the scales and left him in debt. Both he and his wife also need dental work, and if they use their existing funds to meet the co-pay they will not have enough funds for additional medical appointments which are required for each of them monthly. He is looking to raise $600 273 to pay off car repair debt and $2,000 for dental co-pay ($1,000 each for him and his wife) for a total of $2,600 2,273. GoFundMe is here; kosmail him for other payment methods.
MSSPENTYOUTH — She wants to be out there registering new voters and phonebanking for candidates who hope to be part of the #BlueWave this November, among other activities. Unfortunately, she was just discharged from hospital with diabetes complications caused by a tumor in her pituitary gland. She is on SSDI and needs help with diabetic supplies, food appropriate for a diabetic diet, and medicines that are not covered by Medicare. Her most urgent needs are $500 for six months of asthma medications (two types of inhalers and liquid solution for nebulizer) and $400 for three months of insulin (two types). She needs $7,000 2,273 in total (YouCaring, diary explaining her situation: Not Ready to Give Up. Will you help fight a truculent tumor?) PayPal is kim dot yaman at gmail dot com
RICKNELSONMN — He had a partial knee replacement last year but unexpected complications require total knee replacement urgently. Needs $2,0001,460 to cover expenses and bills while recuperating after surgery. (GoFundMe, diary explaining his situation)
Housing Fundraisers
TULSAGAL — She had been taking care of her mom who had stage 1 dementia, until it abruptly transitioned to stage 2 dementia at which point she had to place her mom in a nursing home. During this time, she had an arthritis flare and also fell behind on bills, in addition to having several items (including her work computer, car and house) damaged or destroyed by her mom. She needs help to get current on her most urgent needs which are: mom's nursing service bills which are not covered by insurance ($985 615), utility bills ($855 655) and her own medical bills ($628.36 599.51). PayPal is mansker at cox dot net
JTG — Summer means no scheduling for teachers until mid-August and no paycheck until September. He needs $600 300 for July and $1500 for August; purchases of cat and dog food from Amazon will also help. PayPal is james at jamesthomasgreen dot com (GoFundMe; kosmail for postal address or other options)
JAN4INSIGHT— Sales have been slower than usual and she is facing a shortfall of $200 160 for groceries and other end-of-month expenses. Her PayPal is burchjan at gmail dot com; purchases using PayPal from her Zibbet shop and "coffee" through Ko-Fiwill also help.
MUFFTOOTUFF — She started a new job on March 1st after being unemployed for 11 months, but her job only pays about half of what she used to earn, and she is falling behind on rent and other bills despite supplementing her income with Social Security and efforts to obtain assistance from her county and other charitable organizations. She is looking to raise the following amounts for July: Rent ($850), car payments ($474), phones and other bills ($647 495) for a total of $1,819. PayPal is momeriwether at gmail dot com (PayPal.me link)
Transportation Fundraisers
AVALONBEAR — He and his wife live in a small town in Indiana where a working vehicle is required to go anywhere. The transmission on his vehicle had started to slip and needed to be rebuilt or replaced. He had to use his paycheck to pay for the transmission repair and needs $1,200 to make up the shortfall. Diary: Having a Vehicle Isn't Optional Here. PayPal is theladyherself1971 at yahoo dot com
ZOOM314 — He lives on a fixed income and needs some financial help to undertake various household and car repairs. He needs $619 415 for the most urgent car repairs, which are listed in his diaries. Latestupdate diaries: House and Car Repairs, Needed Car Repairs.PayPal.me link
Spiritual Fundraisers
MICHELEWLN— She was involved in a severe car accident earlier in the month and is in a lot of pain on her left side. Her diary Looking Death in the Eye has more details.
Good News
PAM LAPIER has a job!!!
Why Thurman and Who Was He?
How does one summarize the life and philosophy of one of the most respected theologians of the 20th century? It is daunting. I myself am not a deep thinker. I have long been reconciled with that fact. Deep thinking isn’t everyone’s path. So instead, I compensate by reading the more accessible works of great thinkers. Lately, I have been on a Thurman binge.
In an age of anti-religion, I realize Thurman isn’t for everyone here at DKOS. Which is a shame because at the heart Thurman, while a man of deep faith, was very skeptical of the traditional “church.” His embrace of interdenominational practices and mysticism foreshadowed the mainstream interest in meditation and compassion work so prevalent today. A feminist, pacifist, social activist architect, mystic — Thurman was a very modern man.
Thurman’s writing has been called “elevated, dense, allusive.” It can begin deceptively simple, and then suddenly soar. It is sometimes difficult to suss out the specific social activist message in much of Thurman’s early writings, despite the fact that he was mentor to an entire generation of Civil Rights activists. Firstly, because much of it is coded for a shared African American experience in an age of Jim Crow. Secondly, his white audiences were already well versed in the Social Gospel ethics permeating mainstream Protestant denominations. This reluctance to openly question and engage how Christians should react to social injustices would radically change in his later works.
But even more fundamentally, the writing is deeply infused with and concerned with the internal explorations of the meaning of faith. Faith for Thurman was fundamentally experiential and most often found in a communion with the natural world. Although he counted among his teachers, and later his associates, the best African-American theological minds of his generation, his two acknowledged spiritual kindred spirits were outside the mainstream “church” and were also themselves nature mystics. And neither were African American. The first was the elderly Rufus Jones, a Quaker philosopher, with whom Howard studied in 1929. The second was Kshiti Mohan Sen, a Hindu mystic and recognized scholar on Indian religions who served as the head of Oriental Studies at Visva-Bharati University (aka Santiniketan). Thurman met Sen while on his tour of India in 1935.
The connection between Rufus M. Jones and the young Thurman was immediate and profound. In Jones, Thurman for the first time encountered a renowned scholar who would also speak of personal mystic experiences without embarrassment. Howard himself had experienced similar profound meditative trances since childhood. The combination of Quaker mysticism and pacifism with the call to duty to make the world a better place would inform Thurman’s faith going forward.
In 1935, Thurman took a pivotal trip to India under the auspices of the YM-YYCA. The trip would forever change him. He became the first African American to meet with Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of satyagraha, or “soul force,” would have a momentous impact on Thurman, showing him the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance.
After the journey to India, Thurman’s distinctly American translation of satyagraha into a Black Christian context became one of the key inspirations for the civil rights movement, fulfilling Gandhi’s prescient words that “it may be through the Negroes that the unadulterated message of nonviolence will be delivered to the world.” Thurman now spoke to the inadequacy of the Social Gospel message — individual Christians, despite their best efforts to act to their highest ideals, were powerless in the face of a society that valued power and often enforced that power violently. The answer was collective action in the form of nonviolent resistance. The radical theology of nonviolence that Thurman developed would go on to shape a generation of civil rights activists.
The trip to India and his life-changing conversations with Sen reinforced another kernel gleaned from Rufus Jones that had been percolating in Thurman’s emerging personal theology. Thurman now envisioned a universal definition of a spiritual community that would eschew (or at least downplay) denominational differences and proselytizing in favor of respect for all beliefs. This spiritual community would complement the ideal of a society free from class, racial, and gender biases.
Dr. Howard Thurman believed that the search for common ground is a two-fold journey of personal self-exploration and of building community, and that “…meaningful and creative shared experiences between people can be more compelling than all of the faiths, fears, concepts and ideologies that separate them. And, if these experiences can be multiplied and sustained over a sufficient duration of time, then any barrier that separates one person from another can be undermined and eliminated.”
The Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground seeks to make those meaningful and creative shared experiences happen for Boston University students.
Thus, this was Thurman’s prescription for social transformation — nonviolent resistance to entrenched institutional injustice and the redefinition of community.
Howard Thurman was an African-American Baptist minister, theologian, prominent educator, and civil rights activist. He was also a mystic, pacifist, feminist, and mentor to most of the next generation of civil rights activists including James Farmer and Martin Luther King Jr.
Born in Florida in 1899, Thurman graduated from Morehouse College in 1923, and then attended Rochester Theological Seminary, graduating in 1926. Even in college, Howard was recognized as a rising star. A succession of academic posts followed a brief stint as pastor of a congregation in Oberlin, Ohio. He was granted a joint position with the elite men’s and women’s Negro colleges in Atlanta: Morehouse and Spelman. In 1932, Thurman was chosen as the first Dean of Chapel at Howard University, where he also served on the faculty. He left Howard in 1944 to found, along with Alfred Fisk, the first major interracial multi-denominational congregation in the U.S. — the Church for the Fellowship of All People (aka Fellowship Church) in San Francisco. Thurman was invited to serve as Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University in 1953, where he served out his academic career, retiring in 1966.
His two best-known works are probably Jesus and the Disinherited (1949) which deeply impacted MLK who studied under Thurman at Boston University, and The Search For Common Ground, which is his most emphatic statement on the universality of religious thought/rejection of traditional church.
Bibliography
Read Jesus and the Disinherited at archive.org
With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York: Harbrace & Co, 1979)
The Search for Common Ground (Richmond, Indiana: Friends United Press, 1986; first published by Harper & Row, 1973)
Dixie, Quinton and Eisenstadt, Peter. Visions of a Better World: Howard Thurman’s Pilgrimage to India and the Origins of African American Nonviolence (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011)
Here are more ways to help our community here on DKOS ...
It’s open all year round! Every purchase supports a Kossack, and you get to stay out of those crowded malls. Purchasing from these vendors and artisans helps folks remain self sufficient and financially independent. Plus these folks are just plain good at what they do.
SOCIAL MEDIA — Help Spread the Word
Help us get the word out! If helping financially isn’t the right option for you — or you want to do more — then be the link between need and fulfillment. If you are active on Social Media, go to the linked fund-raising pages on the Needs List and use the social media icons on the page to share it throughout your contacts on Facebook, Twitter, whatever platform you use. If you are active on DKOS, and it is appropriate for your members, republish this diary to your groups and tip, comment, rec so it stays on the sidebar as long as possible.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
What’s the philosophy behind the Community Needs List? I will let bfitzinAR, the original founder of HHday, speak for us:
Kossacks taking care of our own — helping by sharing/donating money or needed items, helping by sharing both donation site links and artisan/vendor site links and purchasing gifts for self or others via those links, helping by sharing knowledge and informational links, or helping by just sharing a hug or a cup of coffee as appropriate — is what community is all about.
We are community — clan, tribe, company, village, culture, and state. Community survives beyond the life of any single member and thrives by supporting and strengthening the life of each individual member — by helping each other, by sharing — all together.
Until such time as we get the government that we want and deserve, when there will be no need for fundraisers, there will always be some Kossacks who need the help and compassion of this kind, friendly, and generous community. That’s why HHday resides at Street Prophets Coffee Hour, the intersection where politics and religion and ethical values conveniently meet and sometime collide. Here at HHday we may highlight a particular Kossack’s story, share links to appeal diaries, share links to support services or other informational sites, spread the word, offer a shoulder to lean on.
MUSICAL INTERLUDE
Today’s musical offering is a throwback to the Flower Power of ‘sixties, apropos of Thurman relocating his Fellowship Church to San Francisco.
It really does take a Village, so thanks to the entire Community Links and List Team, and of course to all our generous donors and helpers.
This is an open thread, so all topics welcome. Be kind to one another (I know you will be because that’s just the kind of folks you are), we’re all in this together. The blog is now open.