An Introduction to Howard Thurman
This week Harbor is joined by guest facilitator Jessica Hamilton, M.Div.!
Jessica is a public theologian and public policy professional who engages womanist theology, Black theology, and the contemporary political environment to challenge communities of faith to discern their ethical commitments. We are so excited to be led by and to learn from Jessica! (Read her full bio below.) A significant part of Jessica’s scholarship and teaching surrounds the work of theologian and civil rights leader Howard Thurman. In fact, Jessica will be leading us in a meditation by Howard Thurman as we think about community engagement for our times. We thought we would take some time this week to introduce to some of you Howard Thurman and his significance in the modern era of Christianity.
Howard Thurman (1899–1981), grandson of a former slave, was born in segregated Daytona, Florida. As a young boy, he boarded a train from Daytona, where there was no high school for Black children, to Jacksonville to attend high school. His parents did not give him enough money to cover his luggage. As a young high schooler, Thurman sat down and cried. A Black man and stranger approached him and covered the cost of his luggage. This act of kindness greatly impacted the life of Thurman—much of his work and legacy mirrors acts of generosity and finding a “common ground” in community with others.
The spirit of common ground led Howard to attend Morehouse College, to go to seminary at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, and to spend much of his career as a pastor and professor. From 1926–1928, Thurman pastored at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Oberlin, Ohio. Then from 1932 to 1944, he was the professor of Christian Theology and Dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University. As an established pastor and professor, in 1935, he and his wife Sue Bailey Thurman were asked to lead a “Negro Delegation of Friendship” to Southeast Asia. During that trip, Thurman met Mohandas Gandhi who deeply informed Thurman’s nonviolent social activism. In 1944, Thurman helped establish the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, California, the first racially integrated, intercultural, and interfaith church in the United States. In 1953 Thurman was appointed as the Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, where he became the first African American dean at a primarily white institution in the United States.
By the time of the 1950-60s Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Thurman was nationally recognized as a significant leader in the movement. Thurman dedicated his life and scholarship to a philosophy of Common Ground, which guided people to pursue inner spiritual wellness and seek breaking racial, ethnic, and religious barriers to find common human ties. While many hoped that Thurman would function as the “Gandi for the United States,” Thurman took on a more private life and has been critiqued for it. Rather than marching and leading protests, much of Thurman’s influence took form in his work as a theologian and spiritual advisor to many—most notably, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Marian Wright Edelman, James Baldwin, and Arthur Ashe.
Thurman’s influence in the life of King and the Civil Rights Movement are, for many of us, the reasons we begin to engage with Thurman’s work. But many of us soon find that even more incredible than his influence on others is Thurman's rare ability to combine mystical theology and social change, making him deeply formative in our own spiritual formation.
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Here’s some more information about our guest at Harbor this week!
Jessica Hamilton, M.Div (she/her) is a public theologian and public policy professional based in Massachusetts. She has more than a decade of experience working with stakeholders to transform the healthcare system.
Jessica engages womanist theology, Black theology, and the contemporary political environment to challenge communities of faith to discern their ethical commitments. In May 2021, Jessica earned her Master of Divinity from Boston University School of Theology, where she was the recipient of the Howard Thurman Fellowship. Her graduate studies focused on the intersection of theological ethics, spirituality, and public policy. Specifically, she sought to understand what bearing this intersection had on emerging conversations of equity in the public policy landscape.
While in graduate school, Jessica worked at the Thurman Center Networks for BU’s Thurman Center for Common Ground where she facilitated programs and workshops on activism, leadership, and ethics, which included developing and leading “Reading Thurman Together” series to help students understand and engage with Thurman’s scholarship. Jessica was also the 2019 recipient of the Rappaport Institute’s Public Policy Fellowship, which funded her work at the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission. During her fellowship, she was the lead author of a key state report evaluating the cannabis industry’s role in contributing to social equity through positive impact plans for communities disproportionately harmed by the War on Drugs.
