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Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: Social Action/Compassion/Justice for all Human Beings [1]

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Date: 2025-07-17

As I consider the daily outrages coming from the Trump administration, especially the devastation it is doing to those who have, in Howard Thurman’s words, their “backs against the wall,” it’s hard sometimes not to move past the anger. Which then brings to mind one of my favorite Thurman quotes:

Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater. While it lasts, burning in white heat, its effect seems positive & dynamic. But at last it turns to ash, for it guarantees a final isolation from one’s fellows....Hatred bears deadly and bitter fruit. — Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited

Thurman offers an alternative (similar to how Daily Kos helps to build a community).

As many of you know, Howard Thurman was a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and many other leaders of the Civil Rights movement, especially through his classic 1949 book, Jesus and the Disinherited (Dr. King and others carried the book with them in many of their travels). Yet, as a mystic, Thurman’s vision transcended Christianity (e.g., he was greatly influenced by Gandhi and was the leader of the first group of African Americans to meet Gandhi in India). Thurman believed that the divine exists within each human being, and he communed with the divine through nature, in encounters with other human beings, and in other ways.

I believe that we can still learn from Thurman and what he taught people looking for community, including social action and justice. So much so that last fall I published a book about it: Howard Thurman and the Quest for Community: From Prodigals to Compassionate Samaritans (I’m not linking it, because this post is not an ad). I should add that the final chapter is written for those those who remain unconvinced of Thurman’s mystical perspective of the unity of life and the role of a creator, or those who reject the concept of God or the supernatural altogether, or who are skeptical about Thurman’s nonsectarian perspective on religion that envisions Jesus not as a savior but as an example among others who “walked with God,” or those who are looking for a light at the end of the very long tunnel of disappointment. Or, perhaps, for those who, like Thurman, believe in a divine presence but are despondent over the ways in which evil often succeeds in our world, wondering whether their task to make the world abetter place is a Sisyphean endeavor (I include, for example, the arguments of Frans de Wall about empathy developing through evolution and religion being added later).

Here are some direct quotes from the section on de Waal (there’s also a section on Buddhism earlier in that chapter, which explains some of what is quoted below):

Frans de Waal, for example, argues that that we can have morality without religion, that morality is older than religion, that it exists for evolutionary purposes, and it is therefore ingrained in the human psyche. Religions came later and incorporated, adapted, and codified the morality already in existence. A key aspect of de Waal’s arguments is that morality exists, for instance, among animals for the same evolutionary reasons, and he proposes that it consists of two pillars: (1) reciprocity combined with a sense of justice and fairness, and (2) compassion and empathy, even in the face of, or sometimes because of, an often-brutal world that includes power, aggression, and domination. Human morality also is an “evolved morality,” de Waal states; although more developed, it exists in continuity with other primates (e.g., empathy and consolation, prosocial tendencies, and reciprocity and fairness).[i] Such research fascinated Thurman, and he sometimes cited scientific studies to bolster his own arguments for religious experience and the unity of life—note the research he uses in The Search for Common Ground and how he points to the “basic structural patterns in nature.” Another relevant aspect of de Waal’s work is that he incorporates decades of research that shows that animals can learn to cooperate, cooperation that involves reciprocity and empathy.[ii] Numerous studies, of course, show that human beings, religious and non-religious, also can develop empathy and compassion in ways that change people, relationships, organizations, and cultures. One key aspect of research specific to the topic of this book is that storytelling—another positive aspect of parables!—can increase understanding of and empathy for another.[iii] Another contact with Thurman is that researchers discovered that not only can empathy be developed but that such empathetic growth can be sustained over long periods of time. This long-term growth in empathy requires chronic, repeated experiences and practice. Such a result brings to mind Thurman’s thoughts about community (or dynamic integration) requiring unifying experiences that were multiplied over extended periods of time.[iv] One of the ground-breaking researchers of these studies, Tania Singer, used insights from Buddhist monks—who believe that empathy and compassion can be developed—to investigate whether the ancient techniques used by those monks could “tune people’s brains for kindness.” She and over seventy other researchers conducted a two-year study that sought to develop empathy through training people in meditation, focusing on others, and practicing empathy. The researchers discovered striking differences in behaviors and practices and, in addition, “found that empathy-related parts of the brain grew in size after kindness training . . . . Singer’s team showed for the first time that through purposeful effort, people can build long-term empathy and, in the process, change their biology.”[v] Research has also suggested, however, that among “non-human vertebrates,” spite is “virtually absent” (“rare or absent”).[vi] Human beings may be the only animal—and definitely the primary one—to act with spite. The next few sections will briefly consider various options about how to build community, beginning with an example Thurman cites about senseless spiteful behavior. The examples will be extremely selective but illustrative as the following sections focus on Thurman’s insights, discuss ways they can be expanded or refined, and, hopefully, build toward more positive behaviors and outcomes. [i] De Waal quotes Charles Darwin, who stated in The Descent of Man: “Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts . . . would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed . . . as in man.” De Waal also cites the parable of the Good Samaritan in his New York Times October 17, 2010, “Opinionator” column. Cf. its use in de Waal, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society (New York: Crown, 2009), 89–90, where seminarians sent to preach on the parable fail to live up to its message. [ii] For example, the work of Meredith Crawford (1937) at the Yerkes Center, where chimpanzees learned to cooperate, and that cooperation extends to help another chimpanzee, even when others do not benefit (because of past or future reciprocity). De Waal argues that it includes both an emotional channel (situated in the body) and a cognitive channel (that builds a self-other distinction), the latter of which is found in only a few animals who can understand the perspective of another (e.g., elephants and apes). See de Waal, The Age of Empathy, 118–57. [iii] See the many examples discussed in Jamil Zaki, The War for Kindness: Building Empathy in a Fractured World (New York: Broadway Books, 2020). The comment about storytelling is on page 267. [iv] See the discussion in Chapter 2 (cf. PHWT 5:155–56). [v] Zaki, War for Kindness, 47–49. [vi] Marc Hauser, Katherine McAuliffe, and Peter Blake, “Evolving the Ingredients for Reciprocity and Spite,” in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 364 (2009): 3255–66.

So, I want to present in as brief for as possible, the outline of the arguments of the book. Street Prophets may be most interested in these arguments, but, again, the last chapter (in Part V of the book) contains a universal appeal that is not dependent on religion (e.g., Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Us plays a big role: empathy and compassion can build a “virtuous spiral”).

The book’s thesis of this book is that Howard Thurman’s interpretations of the Prodigal Son and Good Samaritan parables illustrate his understanding of how to (re)establish community with God (Prodigal Son) and therefore with other human beings (Good Samaritan). The book itself and the chapter study guides weave together major aspects of both my own and Thurman’s interests that integrate responses to what these parables “mean,” how they “work,” and what they “want” from us in response: (1) in-depth exegesis of the parables themselves; (2) Thurman’s insights into these parables and their implications; (3) the intersecting ways in which parables and visual art work, create a dialogue about their meaning, and encourage an ethical response; and (4) the ways in which parables and visual art can heighten spiritual consciousness and be used to create and deepen community:

Part I begins with Chapter 1’s examination of Thurman’s life and career and an exploration of Thurman’s classic book, Jesus and the Disinherited, that bridges the gap between Jesus’ proclamation to those with their “backs against the wall” in the first century CE to Thurman’s era spanning most of the twentieth century and now to the twenty-first century. Chapter 2 discusses Thurman’s mysticism, its relationship with social change, and his practice of using the fine arts to raise one’s spiritual consciousness, encourage a “sympathetic understanding” of other human beings, and deepen the sense of community.

Part II builds on the foundation of Thurman’s use of the fine arts by focusing on the parable of the Rich Fool and a painting by Rembrandt to illustrate the ways in which we should envision how parables “work” (Chapter 3) and what parables “want” (Chapter 4). Parables and visual art, for example, can both illuminate some things brilliantly, but because of their inherent nature can leave other aspects in the shadows, and by doing so engage the hearts, minds, and imaginations of their hearers/viewers/readers in ways that result in a multiplicity of diverse interpretations, responses, and dialogues. The parable of the Rich Fool also makes clear that Thurman was correct in the way he framed Jesus’ message: Jesus spoke his parables in his own historical context as a poor, disinherited, oppressed, first-century Jew, including a powerful critique of the wealthy and powerful, and the Rich Fool parable prepares the way for Jesus’ answer to the disinherited and the inherited: the Jewish love-ethic of loving God and one’s neighbor—including the restoration of broken community—that are illustrated so powerfully by the parables of the Prodigal Son and Good Samaritan.

In that light, Part III and Part IV of this book have a two-fold task. First, to attempt to understand better the parables of the Prodigal Son (Part III) and Good Samaritan (Part IV) in their first-century contexts. These interpretations seamlessly integrate analyses of the inner, inter, social and cultural, and ideological textures (see Chapter 4) of these two parables. Second, using insights from Thurman, to contextualize the parables of Jesus authentically—making them relevant for contemporary society without anachronizing or domesticating Jesus’ message.

Part III argues that the Prodigal Son is a “parable about us” and includes Thurman’s insights that one has to listen for the whisper of God, to recognize the Sound of the Genuine within us, and to “churn the milk” (Chapter 5) with the conclusion that the prodigal’s return and the differing receptions by his father and older brother illustrate that “there must be community” (Chapter 6).

The demonstration of the father’s love and compassion in the Prodigal Son parable is the pathway that leads to Thurman’s interpretations of the Good Samaritan parable. Part IV of the book (Chapters 7, 8, and 9) thus interprets the parable of the Good Samaritan by arguing that the compassionate Samaritan can be seen as one of Thurman’s “apostles of sensitiveness.” In other words, the merciful Samaritan—just like the father in the Prodigal Son parable—models the compassion that Jesus shows for others, that Jesus proclaims God embodies, and that Jesus commands his followers to have for all human beings. Just as the portrayal of the merciful Samaritan breaks the negative stereotype of Samaritans and creates community between “enemies,” the furthering of community depends on the innkeeper similarly acting against stereotype and continuing to extend community to the traumatized man.

Part V (Chapters 10 and 11) reaches some conclusions about Thurman’s ideas about how human beings should strive to be transformed from being prodigals to being compassionate Samaritans. Just as the compassionate father in the Prodigal Son parable sets the standard for which human beings should strive, so does the compassionate Samaritan in the Good Samaritan parable. The responsibility for restoring community in response to their father, however, rests on the shoulders of both sons, just as responsibility for extending community, in response to the Samaritan, rests on the shoulders of the innkeeper. In this way, both parables place these responsibilities on the shoulders of all interpreters. Readers/hearers of these parables must decide how the sons and innkeeper should respond in ways that allow true community to emerge, continue, and expand—and readers/hearers should respond similarly in their own lives. In light of the continuing challenges we face, the book concludes with thoughts about the way forward, including how “we all do better when we all do better” through compassion-in-action, justice, and extending community to all.

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