True Religion, Mystical Unity, and the Disinherited: Howard Thurman and the Black Social Gospel

The black social gospel leaders that came of age in the 1920s and '30s were long on graduate degrees, simmering anger, racial justice ambition, and lecture circuit eloquence. Most of them already assumed the social gospel when they began their careers. They came through the doors of educational achievement and ecumenical conferences, and a few became prominent by compelling the respect of audiences on both sides of the color line. Mordecai Johnson, building a black intellectual powerhouse at Howard University, epitomized the black social gospel. Benjamin E. Mays, teaching under Johnson at Howard, was very much in Johnson's mold. Howard Thurman, also teaching under Johnson at Howard, for a time worked the social...