Paul Harvey. Howard Thurman and the Disinherited: A Religious Biography.

Abstract

Recent scholarship on Howard Thurman, especially the publication of the five volumes of his papers envisaged and executed by Walter E. Fluker, advanced this mystic and thinker to the leading ranks of influential twentieth-century American religious figures. Among the consequential Thurman biographies is the present volume by Paul Harvey. As a part of the well-regarded Library of Religious Biography of the William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Harvey has written an abbreviated survey of the deep and pervasive impact of Thurman upon multiple areas of religious discourse in the intercultural, interracial, and international spheres. Harvey examines how Thurman’s contemplative and spiritual explorations related to movements for societal and global reconstruction. His engagement with such diverse thinkers as Rufus M. Jones, the Quaker mystic, Mohandas K. Gandhi, the preeminent theorist and practitioner of nonviolence, and other teachers and writers provided Thurman with ideas that molded his distinctive perspectives in seeking the divine and discerning Godly revelations within the breadth of creation. Thurman’s grounding in an African American religious context, however, informed these broad facets of his capacious spirituality.