America has forgotten one of its great guides.
asserted
America → forget → guides
This country has seen numerous periods of great contention.
asserted
country → see → contention
It has survived all of them.
asserted
It → survive → them
If America wants to survive the current division, it must look to this neglected thinker: Howard Thurman (1899-1981).
asserted
it → want → thinker
He wrote influential books on Jim Crow-era America, pastored a number of churches, became the dean of chapel at Howard University and later Boston University, and became a trusted ally of the 20th century’s most dedicated seekers of peace.
asserted
He → write → peace
During a months-long trip through India, Burma and Sri Lanka in 1935 and 1936, he spoke on black history and segregation and met Gandhi.
asserted
he → speak → Gandhi
This encounter instilled in him the importance of non-violent resistance, an ethos he brought back to what was then a terrifyingly violent America.
asserted
what → instill → resistance
When he returned to America, his work took on an increasingly contemplative tone.
asserted
work → return → tone
He began to look at our social and political divisions in a different way.
asserted
He → begin → way
He began to see faith, not politics, as the most important part the struggle for peace.
asserted
He → begin → peace
Thurman’s most famous work, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” draws a straight line between the violence faced by black Americans and the political oppression in first-century Palestine faced by Jesus of Nazareth.
asserted
work → disinherit → Nazareth
But rather than use that comparison to call for further legislation, Thurman saw a harder truth: Great evil cannot be overcome by laws, but only by great love.
asserted
evil → use → love
As he writes in “Jesus and the Disinherited”:
“To revile because one has been reviled — this is the real evil because it is the evil of the soul itself.
asserted
it → write → soul
Jesus saw this with almighty clarity.
asserted
Jesus → see → clarity
Again and again he came back to the inner life of the individual.
asserted
he → come → individual
With increasing insight and startling accuracy, he placed his finger on the inward center as the crucial area where the issues would determine the destiny of his people.”
asserted
issues → increase → people
What animated the violence of the first century was no different than what animated the violence and division of segregation: fear.
For Thurman, it is fear of others that causes people to oppress others through law and order, and it is fear of this happening that causes people to strike back in counter-violence.
asserted
people → animate → violence
But the way forward is not simply to pass more legislation; Thurman wrote that laws were good teachers, but must give way to encounters with others.
asserted
laws → pass → others
Without these meetings, others remain abstract categories who could be written off and ultimately, destroyed.
uncertain
who → remain → meetings
What roots all of this patient approach is, for Thurman, the contemplative encounter with God.
asserted
roots → root → God
In prayer, silence and contemplative listening, we come to understand that we are people beloved of God, given inherent dignity and called to stand in solidarity with others as a result.
asserted
we → come → result
For Thurman, social organizing and protests were therefore second to something we certainly lack today: contemplation of God and relationships with others.
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we → lack → others
“I surrender myself to God without any conditions or reservations.
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I → surrender → conditions
I shall not bargain with him.
asserted
I → bargain → him
I shall not make my surrender piecemeal …
asserted
I → make → surrender
As this happens, I come into the meaning of true freedom and the burdens that I seemed unable to bear are floated in the current of the life and love of God.”
asserted
I → happen → God
Thurman’s genius lay not in his social organizing, nor in his policies, but in his consistent refrain that the way forward for human division lay in the patient cultivation of souls who were unafraid to love.
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who → lie → souls
We can see the effect of Thurman’s thinking most prominently in the writing of a student he crossed paths with while he directed the chapel at Boston University: Martin Luther King Jr.
asserted
he → see → University
According to some reports, King carried Thurman’s “Jesus and the Disinherited” with him everywhere.
uncertain
King → accord → him
Like Thurman, he spoke of the need for the courage to love and to resist evil with nonviolence, to not give into hate.
asserted
he → speak → hate
Even in Thurman’s own day, naysayers criticized this approach as insufficient to the challenge of segregation.
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naysayers → criticize → segregation
The social divisions we face today are animated by different structures than those of Thurman’s day.
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we → face → day
But they are likewise designed to stoke anger, fear, and separation.
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they → design → anger
And Thurman would say the way forward has not changed.
asserted
way → say → ?
As in the first and 20th centuries, we begin not with assassinations, hatred and lawsuits but by opening ourselves with head and heart toward both friends and enemies.
asserted
we → begin → friends
The Aporia
