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WORK TITLE: The Ground Has Shifted
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https://www.bu.edu/sth/profile/walter-e-fluker/ * http://www.bu.edu/rct/about/aboutus/wfluker/ * https://www.edx.org/bio/walter-earl-fluker
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PERSONAL
Male; married Sharon Watson; children: four.
EDUCATION:Trinity College, B.A.; Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, M.Div.; Boston University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Ordained Baptist minister, 1980. Boston University School of Theology, Boston, MA, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership, editor of Howard Thurman Papers Project, director of Martin Luther King Jr. Initiative for the Development of Ethical Leadership. Held previous positions at Vanderbilt University, Harvard College, Dillard University, and Colgate-Rochester Divinity School; visiting scholar and professor at Harvard Divinity School, University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, Columbia Theological Seminary, and Princeton Theological Seminary. Former pastor, St. John’s Congregational Church, Springfield, MA; former dean, Lawless Memorial Chapel, Dillard University; former Coca-Cola Professor of Leadership Studies, Morehouse College.
Consultant and workshop leader for numerous organizations, including Democratic Leadership Council National Conversation, Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Program, Eastman Kodak, U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of State, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Georgia State Superintendents’ Association. Consultant to to youth development initiatives in Sierra Leone, West Africa, and South Africa; lecturer, Martin Luther King Jr. Center, Havana, Cuba, and U.S. Embassy Speaker/Specialist Program in South Africa, Nigeria, India, and China; faculty member for emerging global leadership programs at Salzburg Global Seminar, Austria, Global Friends Initiative, Hong Kong, and Johannesburg, South Africa; Distinguished Lecturer, International Human Rights Exchange Programme; consultant to African Presidential Center at Boston University, and Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race, Birbeck College, University of London and University of Pretoria, South Africa. Founding executive director, Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership.
AWARDS:Recipient of awards and grants from Oprah Winfrey Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Archives (National Historical Publications and Research Commission), Lily Endowment, Henry Luce Foundation, Ford Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Coca-Cola Foundation, Goldman Sachs Foundation, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Zeist Foundation; Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant for Researchers, 2016; honorary doctorate from Lees-McRae Colelge, Banner Elk, NC.
RELIGION: BaptistWRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including Boston University Law Review. Contributor to anthologies and reference works, including The Domestication of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Lewis V. Baldwin and Rufus Burrows, Jr., Cascade Books, 2013, and Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook, edited by Sharon Henderson Callahan, Sage Publications, 2013. Contributed foreword to Overcoming Cycles of Violence in Rwanda: Ethical Leadership and Ethnic Justice, by Jean Baptiste Ntagengwa, Edwin Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 2010.
SIDELIGHTS
Walter Earl Fluker has enjoyed a distinguished career as a scholar, educator, and international consultant on leadership and ethics. Ordained a minister in the Baptist church in 1980, Fluker is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership at Boston University School of Theology, where he serves as editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project and director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Initiative for the Development of Ethical Leadership. He has also held faculty positions at Vanderbilt University, Harvard College, Dillard University, and Colgate-Rochester Divinity School as well as visiting scholar appointments and professorships at Harvard Divinity School, University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, Columbia Theological Seminary, and Princeton Theological Seminary. Fluker has lectured and conducted workshops for private and public organizations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States.
Fluker’s books include works on ethics, organizational leadership, and the black church in the twenty-first century. He has also edited several books, including a multivolume series collecting the papers of theologian Howard Washington Thurman.
A Strange Freedom
With Catherine Tumber, Fluker edited the volume A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life. Howard Washington Thurman (1899-1981) was an African American philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader whose influence helped shape quests for social justice in twentieth-century America. Thurman grew up in Florida, the grandson of a slave who, though she was illiterate, valued knowledge and influenced her grandson to pursue an education. He graduated from Morehouse College, completed a theology degree at the Rochester (New York) Divinity School, and was ordained a minister in the Baptist Church. Thurman spent much of his career in academia, teaching at Howard University and at Boston University. Influenced by Quaker thought and by the spiritual traditions of India, where he lived for eight months in 1935 and where he met Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated a theology of radical nonviolence and later served as a mentor to American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Thurman was drawn to mysticism as a means through which churches could achieve community. This work led to the development of his views on racial segregation in Christian churches throughout the United Sates. His first book, Jesus and the Disinherited, addressed these issues and went on to become what is considered a handbook of the emerging civil rights movement.
In collecting some of Thurman’s most important writings, Fluker and Tumber present what Sojourners reviewer Larry Bellinger described as a “marvelous introduction” for readers unfamiliar with Thurman’s work. “We are fortunate,” Bellinger added, “that A Strange Freedom is merely the tip of the iceberg” and that the editors have planned to continue their project to bring Thurman’s published and unpublished writings to the public.
The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman
The first two volumes of this project, for which Fluker serves as senior editor, have been welcomed as important contributions to Thurman scholarship. The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Volume 1: My People Need Me, June 1918-March 1936 covers Thurman’s education, early career, and development as a thinker and leader. Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, writing in Journal of Southern History, called the book an “indispensable resource for examining the evolution of one of the true visionaries of the civil rights movement as he came into possession of his own uniquely prophetic voice and vision.
The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Volume 2: “Christian, Who Calls Me Christian”? focuses on Thurman’s life and work from 1936 to 1943. It includes correspondence between Thurman and such major figures as Langston Hughes, Mary McLeod Bethune, A.J. Muste, A. Philip Randolph, and Carter G. Woodson as well as personal letters to family members.
Ethical Leadership
As an author, Fluker is perhaps best known Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community, in which he argues that current theories of leadership undermine their usefulness by failing to address the importance of the spiritual. Dismissing utilitarian theories of leadership, Fluker insists that the development and practice of shared virtues are at the root of community; without them, true social cohesion cannot exist. In order to promote such virtues, the author writes, leaders must possess civility and respect, as well as imagination, judgment, empathy, and compassion. As examples of leaders with these qualities, the author cites Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King Jr.
Writing in Interpretation, Samuel K. Roberts acknowledged the value of Fluker’s argument but observed that the book does not sufficiently address how the author’s spiritual model might be used in the contexts of politics, commerce, and other secular endeavors. Roberts also wondered how Fluker’s vision might “be embodied among persons whose responsibility it is to adjudicate competing interests among sectors in American society or to wield power responsibly,” adding that the author “seems to consider these questions pertinent as he laments ‘a failure of ethical leadership in American society that crosses racial, political, social, and cultural lines.’” Despite these observations, the reviewer concluded that Ethical Leadership “helps us to envision a narrative that transcends the various communities and interests in American society.”
The Ground Has Shifted
In The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America Fluker argues that the black church has been “haunted” by the specter of slavery and racism, which has “shape-shifted into the language of post-racialism.” Intended for a specialized readership of scholars and black church leaders, the book is highly academic and analytical. It offers a theoretical framework through which to understand the history of the church and to imagine its possible future.
Fluker writes that, in order to move forward, the black church must reject the outworn race-based religious discourse that has shaped it historically and create an identity more in tune with the globalized realities of the twenty-first century. He urges churches to reach out more to young black men and to work on creating solidarity with other disenfranchised groups. In this way, church leaders can reinvigorate the black church’s mission while also honoring its historic identity.
A writer for Publishers Weekly found the book challenging but also “exuberant” in its grappling with complex material. In a review on his website, Amos Lassen observed that Fluker “shows that black lives and black churches really matter as ways to unite spirituality, national imaginary and the human condition.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Fluker, Walter Earl, The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America, New York University Press (New York, NY), 2016.
PERIODICALS
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, December, 2009, L.J. Cumbo, review of Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community, p. 726.
Interpretation, July, 2011, Samuel K. Roberts, review of Ethical Leadership, p. 332.
Journal of Southern History, May, 2011, Juan M. Floyd-Thomas, review of The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Volume 1: My People Need Me, June 1918-March 1936, p. 462; August, 2012, Reginald F. Hildebrand, review of The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Volume 2: “Christian, Who Calls Me Christian?” p. 760.
Publishers Weekly, September 12, 2016, review of The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America. p. 52.
Reference & Research Book News, February, 2010, review of The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Volume 1; April, 2012, review of The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Volume 2.
Sojourners, November, 1999, Larry Bellinger, review of A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life, p. 56.
ONLINE
Boston University School of Theology Website, http://www.bu.edu/sth/ (June 29, 2017), author faculty profile.
EDX, https://www.edx.org/ (June 29, 2017), author profile.
Other Side, http://www.theotherside.org/ (June 29, 2017), review of A Strange Freedom.
Reviews by Amos Lassen, http://reviewsbyamoslassen.com (June 29, 2017), review of The Ground Has Shifted.
Walter Earl Fluker
Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership
Boston University
Walter Earl Fluker, is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership at Boston University. He is the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project and the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Initiative for the Development of Ethical Leadership (MLK-IDEAL).
Professor Fluker will be assisted by Robin Masi, course teaching fellow, MFA, Ed.M., a doctoral student at the Boston University School of Education and the Dean's Fellow with the Center for Character and Social Responsibility (CCSR). Her research is the intersection of ethics and the visual artist. She is a practicing artist and Professor of Art with the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division.
Courses taught by Walter Earl Fluker
Ethical Leadership: Character, Civility, and Community
Schools and Partners: BUx Availability: Archived Starts: May 24, 2016
Walter E. Fluker
Walter Fluker, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership
Walter Fluker, Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership
Walter Earl Fluker is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership and the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project. Before coming to Boston University School of Theology, he was founding executive director of the Leadership Center and the Coca-Cola Professor of Leadership Studies at Morehouse College. Fluker is a featured speaker, lecturer and workshop leader for professionals and emerging leaders in public and private domains. His recent publications include two volumes of a multi-volume series entitled, The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman: volume I, My People Need Me and volume II, “Christian, Who Calls Me Christian?” (University of South Carolina Press, 2009, 2011); and Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility and Community (Fortress, 2009). He is completing a manuscript entitled, The Ground Has Shifted: Essays on Spirituality, Ethics and Leadership from African American Moral Traditions. His prior academic experience includes professorial and administrative positions at Vanderbilt University, Harvard College, Dillard University and Colgate-Rochester Divinity School; and has served as visiting professor and scholar at Harvard University, The University of Cape Town in South Africa, Columbia Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary. He is married to Sharon Watson Fluker and is the father of four children and five grandchildren.
Walter E. Fluker
TitleMartin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical LeadershipEmailwfluker@bu.eduPhone(617) 358-4221EducationPh.D. Boston University
M.Div. Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
B.A. Trinity College
Walter Earl Fluker is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership, the editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project and the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Initiative for the Development of Ethical Leadership (MLK-IDEAL) at Boston University School of Theology. As part of the MLKIDEAL, Professor Fluker has developed a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) entitled Ethical Leadership: Character, Civility and Community that launched on May 24, 2016. Over 7,000 participants from all over the globe engaged the course which explores theoretical and practical elements of ethical leadership through engagement with prominent leadership theorists and leaders in the areas of education, business, government, philanthropy, and global citizenship. He was founding executive director of the Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership Center and the Coca-Cola Professor of Leadership Studies at Morehouse College. Dr. Fluker is a featured consultant, speaker, lecturer and workshop leader at foundations, businesses, corporations, colleges, universities, governmental and religious institutions, nationally and globally.
Known as an expert in the theory and practice of ethical leadership, Fluker has served on numerous committees and boards, including the Urban League of Rochester, NY; the National Selection Committee for U.S. News & World Report America’s Best Leaders; the Board of Liberal Education (the flagship quarterly for the Association of American Colleges and Universities). Dr. Fluker has served as a consultant and workshop leader for organizations as diverse as Democratic Leadership Council National Conversation, Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Program, Eastman Kodak, the Department of Education, the Department of State, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Historically Black Colleges and Universities; and the Georgia State Superintendents’ Association.
His international experience includes serving as consultant to youth development initiatives in Sierra Leone, West Africa and South Africa sponsored by the Ford Foundation and as a lecturer for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Havana, Cuba. He has served as faculty for emerging global leadership at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria and the Global Friends Initiative in Hong Kong; emerging African leaders in the Johannesburg, South African City Council; lecturer for the U.S. Embassy Speaker/Specialist Program in South Africa, Nigeria, India and China; Distinguished Lecturer to the International Human Rights Exchange Programme; visiting professor for the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town, South Africa; and has worked with the African Presidential Center at Boston University and the Transatlantic Roundtable on Religion and Race (Birbeck College, University of London and the University of Pretoria, South Africa).
His recent publications include three volumes of a multi-volume series entitled The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, published by University of South Carolina Press. The first three volumes include My People Need Me (2009), Christian, Who Calls Me Christian? (2012), and The Bold Adventure: The Fellowship Church (2015). Volume four, The Soundless Passion of a Single Mind is scheduled for release in 2017, and volume five is in process. He is also the editor of Educating Ethical Leaders for the Twenty-First Century (Cascade Books, 2013). Recent articles include “Now We Must Cross a Sea: Remarks on Transformational Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement,” Boston University Law Review, 95, no. 3 (2015), 1225-1232; “Looking For Martin: Black Leadership in an Era of Contested Post-Racism and Post-Blackness,” in The Domestication of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by Lewis V. Baldwin and Rufus Burrows, Jr., (Cascade Books, 2013) and “Leaders Who Have Shaped U.S. Religious Dialogue: Howard Thurman” in Religious Leadership: A Reference Handbook , edited by Sharon Henderson Callahan, (Sage Publications, 2013). Dr. Fluker is also the author of Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility and Community (Fortress Press, 2009). His most recent manuscript, The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America, will be published with New York University Press in 2016.
Fluker is recipient of major awards and grants from the Oprah Winfrey Foundation, National Endowment of the Humanities, the National Archives (National Historical Publications and Research Commission), the Lilly Endowment, the Henry Luce Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Coca-Cola Foundation, Goldman Sachs Foundation, J. P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, The Zeist Foundation and other charitable and philanthropic organizations. He is a 2016 recipient of a Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant for Researchers.
His prior academic experience includes professorial and administrative positions at Vanderbilt University, Harvard College, Dillard University and Colgate-Rochester Divinity School; and has served as visiting professor and scholar at Harvard Divinity School, The Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, Columbia Theological Seminary and Princeton Theological Seminary. Ordained at Second Baptist Church, Evanston in June, 1980, he served as Pastor of the historic St. John’s Congregational Church in Springfield, Massachusetts and Dean of the Lawless Memorial Chapel at Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana.
He earned a Ph.D. in Social Ethics from Boston University, a Master of Divinity degree from Garrett-Evangelical Seminary, a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and biblical studies from Trinity College; and received the Doctor of Humanities, Honoris Causa, Lees-McRae College, Banner Elk, North Carolina. He is married to Dr. Sharon Watson Fluker and is the father of four children and five grandchildren.
The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America
Publishers Weekly. 263.37 (Sept. 12, 2016): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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* The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America
Walter Earl Fluker. New York Univ., $35 (304p) ISBN 978-1-4798-1038-3
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The black church is "haunted by an old ghost who has shape-shifted into the language of post-racialism," writes Fluker. (Ethical Leadership), professor of ethical leadership at Boston University School of Theology, in this passionate analysis and call for change. Approaching post-racialism as a "postulate that is subject to argument and investigation," Fluker organizes his discussion around memory, vision, and mission to encourage "a disturbing theology, a disruptive ethics, a prophetic preaching" with a particular focus on the "exilic condition" of young black men. Fluker's up-to-date appraisal includes discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement and ways the "old ghost" of slavery and racial oppression has haunted Barack Obama's presidency. This work, aimed specifically at black church leaders and scholars, offers a conceptual path forward rather than a handbook of specific strategies. Fluker's more poetic, personal sections can be riveting, but his extensive use of academic social science language and close analysis of the work of scholars in his field may make his lines of inquiry difficult for the general reader to follow. Those up for a challenge will find an exuberant, thought-provoking assessment of the dilemmas facing black churches and pointers toward, in Fluker's words, "new ways to model citizenship in diasporas and exiles." This book is perhaps best suited for academics, theology schools, and large public libraries. (Nov.)
Thirsting for Justice
The Other Side. 36.6 (Nov. 2000): p30.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2000 The Other Side
http://www.theotherside.org/
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A Strange Freedom
Howard Thurman, with Walter Earl Fluker and Catherine Tumber, editors
Howard Thurman was a leader among leaders, a man whose strong faith and mystical relationship to God forged new insights as he grappled with the violence and hatred that scarred the last century. The editors have gathered an inspiring selection of Thurman's works, some previously unpublished, to invite us to renew America's search for soul. Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund describes this book as "a pearl of great price" (340 pp., paperback).
A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life
Sojourners. 28.6 (Nov. 1999): p56.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1999 Sojourners
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.home
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A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life Howard Thurman (Walter Earl Fluker, Catherine Tumber, eds.)
* Howard Thurman was one of the great theologians and preachers of the 20th century, yet even to many who unknowingly follow in his footsteps he remains off the radar. This "best of" compilation might help rectify that omission and serve as an introduction to a man called "pastor to the civil rights movement." For Thurman, both the meaning of life and the soul of America can be found in religious faith, and this collection of writings--many of them previously published in other forms--acts almost as a spiritual journal of a lifelong journey of faith. (Beacon Press)
A Strange Freedom: the Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life
Larry Bellinger
Sojourners. 28.4 (July 1999): p63.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1999 Sojourners
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.home
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A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurnman on Religious Experience and Public Life. Edited by Walter Earl Fluker and Catherine Tumber. Beacon Press, 1998.
The "strange freedom" of Howard Thurman.
That Howard Thurman is not a household name is a situation that may soon change. As more and more folks search for an aspect of spirituality in their lives, the facile, self-centered New Age spirituality popularized by Oprah Winfrey's weekday lineup of best-selling authors may give way to the higher ground exemplified by Thurman. A Strange Freedom: The Best of Howard Thurman on Religious Experience and Public Life, edited by Walter Earl Fluker and Catherine Tumber, is a marvelous introduction for those unfamiliar with the man described variously as "mystic" and "prophet." For the many influenced by Thurman's prodigious body of work--which includes essays, poems, lectures, meditations, and, of course, sermons--this 340-page compilation is a welcome new dish for an ever-expanding feast.
Born November 18, 1899, in Daytona Beach, Florida, Thurman was raised in the brutal climate of Jim Crow. It was his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose, who taught him to value knowledge, though she could neither read nor write. Thurman did his undergraduate work at Morehouse College in Atlanta, and then attended Rochester (New York) Divinity School. He took on his first pastoral role at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Oberlin, Ohio, where he conducted his first experiments with integrated worship in what Luther E. Smith, author of Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet, calls "the context of realizing community."
Thurman's desire to work in academia led him back to Atlanta, and Morehouse and Spellman Colleges, in 1929. He was soon recruited by the legendary Mordecai Johnson, then president of Howard University, to lead religious life at this most prestigious university in black America. In the book, this era is introduced with the sermon "Barren or Fruitful?" which Thurman delivered as he prepared to assume his role. Using Jeremiah 17, Thurman urged his listeners to find their security in God, not in the opinion of others. As Fluker and Tumber note, the denunciation of social elitism was an important theme throughout Thurman's career, particularly as he entered the realm of black society's elite at Howard.
Thurman was throughout his life a seeker, and in 1935 he and his second wife, Sue Bailey Thurman, made an eight-month pilgrimage to India. His experience there is richly detailed in the section titled "What We May Learn From India," which the editors describe as an early draft of a formal report on the trip. The journey brought Thurman into contact with Mohandas Gandhi, who told him that "the greatest enemy that the religion of Jesus has in India is Christianity in India." When throughout his journey Thurman was confronted with the contradictions of Christianity within segregated societies, he answered by distinguishing Christianity from the religion of Jesus.
WHEN HE RETURNED to Howard University, Thurman began experimenting with different liturgies and mysticism in an effort to achieve community within a diverse audience. Thurman addressed the questions of mysticism and ethics in a series of lectures delivered at Eden Theological Seminary in 1939. In the chapter "Mysticism and Social Change," the editors have chosen two lectures from that series that illustrate Thurman's belief that the "goal of the mystic ... is to know God in a comprehensive sense; ... the vision of God is realized inclusively."
Establishing "community" in Howard's closed cultural environment through inclusive worship practices was a lofty goal. In order to experiment in a more culturally diverse environment, Thurman accepted an invitation to San Francisco to co-found the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples (Fellowship Church) in 1944. Fellowship Church was Thurman's answer to the segregated Christianity of America. His writing during this period also led to his first book, Jesus and the Disinherited, published in 1949, which many consider to be the handbook of the civil rights movement. The editors have included two chapters from this, his most popular book, including "Jesus--An Interpretation."
We are fortunate that A Strange Freedom is merely the tip of the iceberg. Fluker and Tumber have been compiling audiotaped material, correspondence, and unpublished work along with relatively unknown published material into a forthcoming three-volume edition titled The Sound of the Genuine: The Papers of Howard Thurman. In November, filmmaker Arleigh Prelow of InSpirit Communications will release a documentary titled Howard Thurman: In Search of Common Ground. Thurman is well on his way to becoming a household name.
LARRY BELLINGER is administrative assistant at Sojourners.
The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman. Volume 2: Christian, Who Calls Me Christian? April 1936-August 1943
Reginald F. Hildebrand
Journal of Southern History. 79.3 (Aug. 2013): p760.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
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The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman. Volume 2: Christian, Who Calls Me Christian? April 1936-August 1943. Edited by Walter Earl Fluker and others. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2012. Pp. [lxii], 370. $59.95, ISBN 978-1-61117-043-6.)
Mystic, poet, philosopher, preacher--"When [Howard W.] Thurman occupied the university pulpit, Rankin Memorial Chapel was packed.... so mesmerizing was his resonant voice and so captivating was the artistry of his delivery" (pp. xxxv-xxxvi). That is how James Farmer, one of the foremost leaders of the civil rights movement, remembered Howard Thurman, an extraordinary preacher who had been one of Farmer's professors at Howard University in the late 1930s.
Thurman also became a mentor and counselor to several other civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., who was a student at Boston University when Thurman, in 1953, became the first black person to serve as dean of the chapel there. That same year Life magazine selected Thurman as one of the twelve greatest preachers of the twentieth century.
Christian. Who Calls Me Christian? is the second volume of The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman. Two more volumes are scheduled to be published. This volume's title is drawn from a lecture that Thurman gave in January 1938, in which he asked, "if I am not willing to exercise to the limit of my power moral suasion upon men in the interest of the redemption of themselves and of society--Christian, who calls me Christian?" (p. 109). This volume begins in April 1936, just alter Thurman returned to Howard University after spending several months in India, and it ends in August 1943, just before he embarked on a bold experiment as pastor of a multicultural and multiracial congregation in San Francisco.
In sermons, lectures, and letters, Thurman expressed his beliefs about mysticism, social change, nature, community, ethics, integrity, segregation, war, and nonviolence. In a letter he wrote to Farmer in 1943, he explained, "First, nonviolent civil disobedience is a technique that presupposes very definite discipline. It is an act of the will arising out of a profound spiritual conviction, which by its very nature is devoid either of ill-will, contempt, or cowardice" (p. 328). Above all else, Howard Thurman understood and engaged life from a spiritual perspective. He once told a group of seminarians, "We cannot expect to find God at the end of a syllogism" (p. 197).
This volume includes correspondence with Langston Hughes, Mary McLeod Bethune, A. J. Muste, A. Philip Randolph, Carter G. Woodson, and other luminaries. In addition, in Thurman's letters readers discover a loving father of two daughters; an adoring husband of a very accomplished and highly respected woman, Sue Bailey Thurman; and a devoted son who wrote a blistering warning to his stepfather: "I, as my mother's son, am not going to stand by and let you worry her to death.... I love my mother and I am going to take care of her" (p. 43).
Thurman defied easy categorization. On one hand, he was an ordained black Baptist preacher who was deeply grounded in black history, culture, and traditions. Part of him never left the little, rigidly segregated black community of Waycross, Florida, where he was born in 1899. On the other hand, he sometimes sounded like a Unitarian, and he was able to function effectively and with dignity in the white world years before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1936 he suggested that a white author "abandon" her efforts to write a biographical essay about him because her manuscript and other such biographies "ma[de] the complex life of the Negro too simple" (pp. 2, 3).
Christian, Who Calls Me Christian? has an appropriately complex and well-crafted biographical essay, as well as a detailed chronology of Thurman's life between 1936 and 1943. Scholars who cannot make the pilgrimage to the Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, where the bulk of Thurman's papers are held, owe a real debt of gratitude to the editors of the Howard Thurman Papers Project and to University of South Carolina Press.
REGINALD F. HILDEBRAND
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Hildebrand, Reginald F.
The papers of Howard Washington Thurman; volume 2: Chirstian, who calls me Christian? April 1936-August 1943
Reference & Research Book News. 27.2 (Apr. 2012):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
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9781611170436
The papers of Howard Washington Thurman; volume 2: Chirstian, who calls me Christian? April 1936-August 1943.
Ed. by Walter Earl Fluker.
U. of South Carolina Press
2012
370 pages
$59.95
Hardcover
BX6495
Thurman (1900-81) was one of the most influential intellectual and religious leaders in the US during the middle of the 20th century, leading the first delegation of African Americans to meet Mahatma Gandhi in 1936, and becoming one of the principle architects of the modern nonviolent Civil Rights Movement and a key mentor to Martin Luther King. The four-volume set presents his correspondence and other papers chronologically. Fluker (ethical leadership, Boston U.) is senior editor and director of the Howard Thurman Papers Project at Boston University. He introduces each document and annotates them to identify people and allusions.
([c]2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Ethical Leadership: The Quest for Character, Civility, and Community
Samuel K. Roberts
Interpretation. 65.3 (July 2011): p332.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 Union Theological Seminary
http://www.interpretation.org/
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by Walter Earl Fluker
Fortress, Minneapolis, 2009. 256 pp. $25.00. ISBN 978-08006-6349-0.
WALTER FLUKER CONTENDS that many current theories of leadership are impoverished because they lack a clear focus on spirituality and ethics. Eschewing strictly rationalist or utilitarian based models for leadership, Fluker calls for a model grounded in virtue theory. Typical of such models is a focus on the cultivation of certain virtues, which themselves are grounded in a "narrative" shared by a specific community: Only when these virtues are practiced can overall social integrity ensue. Besides a finely honed sense of civility, among the other critical virtues that Fluker commends to the leader are imagination, compassion, empathy, and discernment. Two exemplars of the kind of leadership that Fluker has in mind arc Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, Jr., both of whom were nurtured in the black church tradition.
Aside from the helpful discussion of Thurman and King, the book will prove useful for persons who are interested in not only leadership In a new partnership with Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, SAGE will publish the journal on behalf of Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, beginning in January, 2012. SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, and Washington, D. C. The company website is www.sagepublications.com. "Interpretation is one of the world's most prestigious journals in biblical studies and theology, and is an exciting addition to our expanding theology program," said Karen Phillips, Editorial Director at SAGE. 'We seek to develop our list by partnering with high quality publications and leading institutions such as Union Presbyterian Seminary, and we look forward to supporting Interpretation's development by extending its circulation worldwide and via our innovations in digital delivery." Samuel E. Balentine, Editor, commented:, "I am very pleased to enter into this partnership with SAGE, which enables us not only to sustain the distinctive quality of our journal, now in its sixty-fifth year of publication, but also to extend its accessibility to a still larger international audience." "Union Presbyterian Seminary is excited about the partnership with SAGE," said Brian Blount, President of Union Presbyterian Seminary. "This alliance will enable Interpretation to continue its tradition of excellence even as the journal expands its reach to a truly global audience. We look forward to an innovative and exciting future with SAGE." As part of the many new services offered by SAGE, Interpretation will be available electronically via the award-winning platform, SAGE Journals Online. SJO offers market-leading functionality, including toll-free inter-journal linking and full access to the digital backfile. studies, but also the intricacies of moral development as well. Yet, despite the valuable analysis Fluker offers, readers will ponder how the model might accommodate the challenges that confront the vast array of persons known as "leaders" in American society, persons who do not live within the orbits of a King or a Thurman. What must persons in politics, commerce, and other significant sectors of American life do to become "ethical leaders"? How might Fluker's vision be embodied among persons whose responsibility it is to adjudicate competing interests among sectors in American society or to wield power responsibly? Toward the end of the book, Fluker himself seems to consider these questions pertinent as he laments "a failure of ethical leadership in American society that crosses racial, political, social, and cultural lines" (p. 188).
A second issue springs from the very methodology of virtue ethics, or "narrative-based ethics." It is absolutely true that virtues grow in the soil of specific communities and are celebrated in their respective narratives. But therein lies the problem that has always bedeviled narrative ethics: to what extent do such narratives dose off any relevance to persons of other communities? Where are the narratives that inform ethical behavior among diverse sectors of contemporary American society? To Fluker's credit, a discussion of the ideal of the "Beloved Community" so important to both Thurman and King, helps us envision a narrative that transcends the various communities and interests in American society
SAMUEL K. ROBERTS
UNION PRESBYTERIAN SEMINARY RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
Roberts, Samuel K.
The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman. Volume 1: My People Need Me, June 1918-March 1936
Juan M. Floyd-Thomas
Journal of Southern History. 77.2 (May 2011): p462.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 Southern Historical Association
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The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman. Volume 1: My People Need Me, June 1918-March 1936. Edited by Walter Earl Fluker and others. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2009. Pp. [cviii], 377. $59.95, ISBN 978-1-57003-804-4.)
The Reverend Howard Washington Thurman (1899-1981) is probably one of the most influential yet overlooked American religious thinkers of the twentieth century. This edited volume seeks to rectify this oversight in grand fashion. Best known for his classic text Jesus and the Disinherited (New York, 1949), Thurman was a prominent pastor, prolific author, profound Christian mystic, pioneering civil rights leader, and provocative public theologian. Culling materials from the vast resources of Howard Washington Thurman's papers and other relevant archival collections, the editors have meticulously compiled a collection of previously unpublished letters, essays, and other documents spanning from his undergraduate studies at Morehouse College in 1919 to his encounter with Mahatma Mohandas K, Gandhi while conducting a study trip to India in 1936. This first volume clearly outlines Thurman's formative years: his formal education, his family life, his leadership in the burgeoning student movement, his years as a professor of philosophy and religion, and his service as dean of Rankin Chapel at Howard University. Notably, the editors include personal as well as professional correspondence in order to provide a detailed, intimate glimpse of Thurman.
A key feature of this volume is the way it shows the synergy of religion and education as twin engines of personal transformation for Thurman that, in turn, inspired him to envision broader prospects for societal change within the context of not only the Deep South but also the United States as a whole. The editors illustrate how Thurman's interactions with the likes of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, A. Philip Randolph, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Mahatma Gandhi (to name only a few) greatly enriched the trajectory and texture of his own growth and development as an estimable voice for spiritual faith and social justice in his own right. From this perspective, the volume's pages do much to reveal the genesis of Thurman's genius.
This volume will serve as an indispensable resource for examining the evolution of one of the true visionaries of the civil rights movement as he came into possession of his own uniquely prophetic voice and vision. In the volume's preface, senior editor Walter Earl Fluker perfectly encapsulates the enduring legacy of Thurman's theological insights by noting "the quiet cadence and lofty idealism of Thurman's interpretation of the religious experience--always pointing inwardly and, yet, challenging the human spirit to soar higher into itself and the world of nature, people, and ideas" (p. xiii). By analyzing the broad array of his writings provided in this exhaustive collection, it is easy to see how Thurman served as a seminal influence on the leadership of the postwar African American freedom struggle, most especially Martin Luther King Jr. Moreover, as senior advisory editor Luther E. Smith Jr. notes, critical research and reflective reading based only on Thurman's published works "are insufficient for tracking Thurman's thinking" since there is a considerable gap between his first published articles in 1922 and his first published book in 1944 (p. xviii). Filling that void admirably, this volume is a particularly worthwhile asset for students and scholars who need to access these wonderfully fruitful primary sources in order to develop a greater understanding of not only Thurman's life and career but also the increasingly robust and complex narrative of race, region, and religion during the twentieth century.
As the first of a multivolume series on Thurman's writings, The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Volume 1: My People Need Me, June 1918-March 1936 is an excellent testament to a luminary figure whose deeply personal take on African American faith and culture contributed to the transformation of American intellectual and religious history. The editors have constructed a masterful compilation that is ideally suited to the needs of the serious academic researcher yet accessible enough for the casual general reader. The documents are neatly organized in chronological order with an extensive table of contents for greater ease of navigation for such a comprehensive text. Moreover, the editors contextualize the documents with a substantial preface and introductory biographical overview as well as a concise yet thorough annotated timeline of Thurman's life. Taken as a whole, Fluker and his fellow editors have crafted an impressive volume that promises to be an invaluable resource for years to come.
JUAN M. FLOYD-THOMAS
Vanderbilt University
Floyd-Thomas, Juan M.
The papers of Howard Washington Thurman; v.1: My people need me, June 1918-March 1936
Reference & Research Book News. 25.1 (Feb. 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Ringgold, Inc.
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9781570038044
The papers of Howard Washington Thurman; v.1: My people need me, June 1918-March 1936.
Thurman, Howard.
U. of South Carolina Press
2009
377 pages
$59.95
Hardcover
BX6495
The series will collect correspondence, publications, and speeches by African American theologian Thurman (1900-81), augmenting the books and essays he intended for public consumption with poetry, fiction, and other writings he considered personal if not strictly private. This first volume begins with his earliest extant letters and progresses through his Morehouse College years; Rochester years; early career; Howard University and Washington D.C.; and the negro delegation to India, Burma, and Ceylon as a pilgrimage of friendship. Editor Walter Earl Fluker (philosophy and religion, Morehouse College) provides footnotes.
([c]2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Fluker, Walter Earl. Ethical leadership: the quest for character, civility, and community
L.J. Cumbo
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 47.4 (Dec. 2009): p726.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association CHOICE
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8V4597
2008-40729 CIP
Fluker, Walter Earl. Ethical leadership; the quest for character, civility, and community. Fortress, 2009. 248p bibl index afp ISBN 9780800663490 pbk, $25.00
Fluker (leadership studies, Morehouse College) offers a model that attempts to bring together two timely concepts, ethics and leadership. He begins with stories of Martin Luther King Jr. and Howard Thurman, describing their activism in the social and spiritual arenas as models of ethical leadership. He builds a basic model with three key aspects. His social aspect is defined mainly as civility and includes reverence, respect, and recognition. In the spiritual arena, he focuses on community as expressed in courage, justice, and compassion. His third is that of the self, or character, which he sees as integrity, empathy, and hope. Rather than using traditional frameworks to explain the ethical dimensions of his model, Fluker chooses the story, or narrative-based approach, providing much originality and eloquence. Chapter endnotes. Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** Informed general readers and professionals.--L. J. Cumbo, Emory and Henry College
“The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America” by Walter Earl Fluker— The Present and the Future
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Fluker, Walter Earl. “The Ground Has Shifted: The Future of the Black Church in Post-Racial America”, (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity), NYU Press, 2016.
The Present and the Future
Amos Lassen
I have heard it said that we are living in a post-racial era and if that is true, we might wonder what is the future of the Black Church. If, in the future, the United States no longer be a discriminatory country and if there will be no racial prejudice then the identity of the church will be affected.
Author Walter Earl Fluker discusses the historical and current role of the black church with passion and he argues that the older race-based language and metaphors of religious discourse are no longer relevant and have outlived their utility. Today, the black church needs to focus on young black men and other disenfranchised groups who have been left behind as the world moves more and more into globalized capitalism. It is up to the church to find ways of seeing and using race as instrument of emancipation in order for it to continue as the center of black life. He opens the door for a new generation of church leaders, scholars and activists so that they can reclaim the black church’s historical identity while infusing character, civility, and a sense of community among its congregants. He powerfully and provocatively challenges the black church and its traditions ands presents a blueprint for moving forward in which the church reclaims “humanity through the integrity of the act” and shows that there is grace and beauty in living in a world without constantly referring to the past. Fluker brings post-racialism, the American dilemma and the black church as a positive agency together. He shows that black lives and black churches really matter as ways to unite spirituality, national imaginary and the human condition.
Fluker looks at the questions that are being asked by a historical Black Church that is still stuck among piety, the politics of respectability, and the shift of realities that have been taken for granted.