Christian Mission and Poverty

Chapter 7: Abolition and Liberation

167

As he who first formed the earth out of nothing was then the true proprietor of it, so he still remains; and though he has given it to the children of men, so that multitudes of people have had sustenance from it while they continued here, yet he has never aliened it; but his right to give is as good as at the first, nor can any apply the increase of their possessions contrary to universal love, nor dispose of lands in a way which they know tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being justly chargeable with [rebellion] . . .

H oward T hurman (1899–1981) Background

In many ways, Howard Thurman provided the theological framework for the American civil rights movement. In addition to his role in advising leaders of various social justice organizations, his masterwork Jesus and the Disinherited was of such significance that it is said that Martin Luther King, Jr. carried a copy throughout his travels. Over his storied career, Thurman was a founding member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), Professor of Religion at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges, Professor of Religion at Howard University, where he was the first Dean of the Rankin Chapel, co-pastor of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, one of the first intentional interracial churches in the United States, and Dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University. Thurman’s life spanned the years from Reconstruction and the Great Migration, through the terror of lynching and Jim Crow segregation, through the beginnings of the civil rights movement and the development of active