In today’s contentious, toxic, and increasingly violent environment, Thurman’s vision reminds us that our principles should not vacillate with shifting political winds. Our beliefs and corresponding actions should be consistent, and they must be based on a solid philosophical or religious foundation, which, for Thurman, was the actualization of the inner presence of God outwardly in one’s words and deeds. Although Thurman looked primarily to the example of Jesus, he also pointed to other people as moral exemplars, those who had “walked with God,” such as Gandhi, Buddha, Plotinus and Meister Eckhart.
. . .
For Thurman, like Gandhi before him and King after him, “non-violence — what Gandhi called ahimsa, which for both Gandhi and Thurman is analogous to “Christian love” — is not merely an abstention from violence. Instead it is a positive force working to effect positive social change: actively wanting and working for the well- being of all people.
And just as Thurman’s philosophy was evident during the civil rights movement in the 1960s (for instance, the 1963 Birmingham Civil Rights Movement's “Ten Commandments”), it has found worthy successors in such current movements as the Poor People’s Campaign led by Barber and Theoharis.
Thurman knew that social justice would never be completely achieved, but he believed that human beings should “really work at it,” because, he argued, despite all of the difficult obstacles one faces, individual people can make the world a more decent and humane place. He ends with this plea, which remains excellent advice today: “Let’s try it and see.”
David B. Gowler
David B. Gowler is the Dr. Lovick Pierce and Bishop George F. Pierce chair of religion at Oxford College of Emory University and the author of The Parables after Jesus: Their Imaginative Receptions across Two Millennia.