Howard Thurman
Alton B. Pollard III joins Karen Wright Marsh to recount the story of Howard Thurman and to consider Thurman’s urgent question, “How can I believe that life has meaning if I do not believe that my own life has meaning?”
Howard Thurman (1899–1981) is a rarity in our world. He practiced what he believed and what he believed was that every human being matters -- and not only that every human being matters, but that all of life matters. Thurman’s words and witness resonate now, more than ever.
Reverend Dr. Alton B Pollard III is a national author, speaker, ordained minister and the president of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. As a scholar of African American and U.S. religion and culture, he has written on mysticism and social change, the social witness of Howard Thurman, and a new edition of WEB DuBois’s The Negro Church. Pollard was previously dean of the School of Divinity and professor of Religion and Culture at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
To learn more about Howard Thurman, Karen recommends:
Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman
Howard Thurman: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters Series), edited by Luther E. Smith, Jr.
Meditations of the Heart by Howard Thurman
With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman
Video “Backs Against The Wall: The Howard Thurman Story” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdjLfORZ7Jo&ab_channel=MPTNational
“The Sound of the Genuine: Traversing 2020 with ‘the Mystic of the Movement’ Howard Thurman” an interview with Rev. Otis Moss III by Krista Tippett, On Being, Oct. 15, 2020
“People of Faith: Howard Thurman” https://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/howard_thurman.html
And from Alton B. Pollard III
Mysticism and Social Change: The Social Witness of Howard Thurman
A new edition of W.E.B. DuBois’s The Negro Church: With an Introduction by Alton B. Pollard III
Video of “Life in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” his Howard Thurman Lecture at Emory University https://vimeo.com/144547507
“From civil rights to hip hop” in Faith and Leadership, faithandleadership.com/alton-b-pollard-iii-civil-rights-hip-hop
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