I am delighted to report that the excellent cnn.com reporter, John Blake, has published a cnn.com article on the new documentary film about the great Howard Thurman: "Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.” The documentary is currently appearing on PBS stations around the country.
The documentary includes contributions from such Thurman scholar luminaries as Dr. Luther Smith who explain Dr. Thurman’s significance to the civil rights movement, an influence that continues today, as he is quoted in the cnn.com article:
Thurman forged a connection between Mohandas Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that gave wings to the civil rights movement. He wrote a bombshell of a book that revolutionized the traditional portrait of Jesus. And he still inspires leaders as diverse as civil rights icon John Lewis, the Democratic congressman from Atlanta, and Barbara Brown Taylor, a celebrated author and speaker.
"Howard Thurman was a spiritual genius who transformed persons who transformed history," is how
Luther E. Smith, Jr., author of "Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet," once described him.
Full disclosure: I co-edited a book about Dr. Thurman (Howard Thurman, Sermons on the Parables) and have published articles, book chapters, and other things about him and his work (e.g., an essay in The Washington Post and a clip that ran on NPR). I do not appear in the documentary, but John Blake does use me as one of his scholar-resources for the article:
"One cannot understand King's philosophy and theology without first understanding Thurman's work and Thurman's influence on King and other civil rights leaders," says
David B. Gowler, co-editor of "Howard Thurman: Sermons on the Parables."
Gowler called Thurman one of the
overlooked heroes of the civil rights movement. Yet he wasn't a traditional preacher-activist. One pastor in the film quipped that many expected Thurman to be a Moses, but instead they got a mystic.
Later in the story:
Gowler calls Thurman a "spiritual activist." So was Thurman's wife, Sue Bailey Thurman.
"He was fundamentally both a teacher and pastor to others in the civil rights movement," says Gowler, a religion professor at Oxford College of Emory University in Georgia
I highly recommend the film. As Martin Doblmeier describes his reason for creating it:
Thurman's relative obscurity is part of what drove Doblmeier to make his film.
"My big fear is that Howard Thurman's name might get lost in history," he says. "We want to use this moment in history to get the word out."
Check it out, hopefully on your local PBS station.