Back
“Howard Thurman’s life work stands as a shining model of what it means to be a scholar-activist. His sermon series provide one example of how scholarship can enhance our understanding of the role of religion in the moral struggles of our time.”
—Alice Hunt, Executive Director, American Academy of Religion
“In these sermons, Thurman takes his listeners, and now us as readers, into the company of prophets who inspire his and our prophetic witness.”
—Luther E. Smith, Jr., author, Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet
Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was one of the leading religious thinkers of 20th-century America, a mentor to the leaders of the civil rights movement, and a mystic who pioneered influential innovations in worship and spirituality in the quest for common ground. As a minister, Thurman devised a way of preaching to a congregation that sought “support, strength, and guidance.” He found that the most creative method was a “sermon series,” a group of sermons organized around a common theme. This series, Walking with God, will assemble the best of Thurman’s “sermon series,” all previously unpublished.
This first volume begins with his series on “Man and the Moral Struggle,” offering sketches of individuals from history and literature involved in life-transforming “moral struggles” in which “at stake is the ultimate destiny” of their lives. In “The Message of the Prophets” he examines the great biblical prophets, whose mission and message challenge our own time as much as their own.
Walter Earl Fluker, senior editor of the Papers of Howard Washington Thurman and director of the Howard Thurman Papers Project, is Professor Emeritus of Ethical Leadership at Boston University and Professor of Spirituality, Ethics and Leadership at Candler School of Theology. Peter Eisenstadt, the associate editor of the Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, is the author of Against the Hounds of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman.
