Hailed by Life magazine as one of the great preachers of the twentieth century; a spiritual advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., Sherwood Eddy, James Farmer, A. J. Musty, and Pauli Murray; the first black dean at a white university; cofounder of the first interracially pastored, intercultural church in the United States; Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was a man of penetrating foresight and astonishing charisma. His vision of the world was one of a democratic camaraderie born of faith, and in light of today's global community, one of particular importance.
Jesus and the Disinherited
Paperback
(Reprint)
$16.00
- ISBN-13: 9780807010297
- Publisher: Beacon Press
- Publication date: 11/30/1996
- Edition description: Reprint
- Pages: 136
- Sales rank: 8,565
- Product dimensions: 5.12(w) x 8.16(h) x 0.42(d)
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In this classic theological treatise, the acclaimed theologian and religious leader Howard Thurman (1900-1981) demonstrates how the gospel may be read as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised. Jesus is a partner in the pain of the oppressed and the example of His life offers a solution to ending the descent into moral nihilism. Hatred does not empower—it decays. Only through self-love and love of one another can God's justice prevail.
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From the Publisher
[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic’s lifelong attempt to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called ‘the religion of Jesus.’ Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those ‘who stand with their backs against the wall.’”—Vincent Harding, from the Foreword
Sacred Fire
Published in 1949, Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited
delivers a masterful interpretation of how God
works in our lives. Thurman was one of the foremost preachers
and theologians of the twentieth century, and much of his work
centered on the relevance of the Christian message to the contemporary
struggles of black people. In this, Thurman's masterwork, he argues
that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not just a map for getting to the
next world, but a guidebook for the empowerment of the poor and
disenfranchised in this world. Thurman was one of the leading preachers
of this new Social Gospel that evenually flowered in the form of the
church-centered civil rights movement.Thurman identified the central spiritual problems faced by black folks as the overwhelming stresses of poverty, racism, and a sense of spiritual disconnectedness. He then turned to the life of Jesus as a primary example of the power of love to drive the spiritual regeneration required to sustain a vision of God and self in modern society. The life of Jesus serves as a guidepost to the kind of love that is a hallmark of human spirit, success, and personal salvation. But Thurman doesn't believe that the Gospel only applies to the individual search for salvation: He also challenges our unconscious submission to the philosophies of individualism and insists that the Gospel is a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised.
He interprets the life of Jesus within a context of the oppressed and offers incisive and liberating thoughts on man's most egregious of sins: fear, deception, and hate. Of fear, he says: "He who fears is literally delivered to destruction.... There are some things that are worse than death. To deny one's own integrity of personality in the presence of the human challenge is one of those things."
While Jesus and the Disinherited was influential in shaping the philosophies of the early civil rights movement, it remains topical and deeply relevant even today.