Dean’s Professor of Spirituality, Ethics, and Leadership at Candler School of Theology.

Dr. Walter Earl Fluker, who served as the Alonzo L. McDonald Family Chair on the Life and Teachings of Jesus and Their Impact on Culture at Candler in spring 2019, has joined the Candler faculty as Dean’s Professor of Spirituality, Ethics, and Leadership.

He is Professor Emeritus and the former 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 at Boston University School of Theology. 

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. Known as an expert in the theory and practice of ethical leadership, Fluker is an internationally-known consultant, speaker, lecturer and workshop leader. 

If you have any questions about the course, please feel free to reach out to Dr. Fluker at Walter.Fluker@emory.edu.

Session 1

Wednesday, January 12, 2022 6:30 PM

Join the Community

Each week there will be focus questions prepared by Dr. Walter Fluker and the course assistants to engage with the course content and readings. All weekly discussion questions will be posted in the Facebook group, please click on the link below to request access.

Preparing for the First Day

In order to prepare for the first day of class, please click on the two links below to watch a Howard Thurman interview with Landrum Bolling. During this time, please write down your thoughts or questions you may have in order to prepare for the group discussion during our first session together.

Respond to the following questions regarding the course:

• Who are you?
  Why are you taking part in this course?
  What are your goals and expectations for this course?

Session 1 Recording

Session 2

Wednesday, January 19, 2022 at 6:30 PM

Preparing for the the Class Session

There are multiple readings listed in your syllabus for class on Wednesday, January 19, 2022. Two of the links in the syllabus are currently inaccessible, so please use the links below to access the PDF’s.

Session 2 Recording:

Session 3

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Please review the following readings for your next session.

Required Reading:

• Fluker, Biographical Essay, The Papers of Howard Washington Thurman, Volume II, “Christian, Who Calls Me Christian? April 1936-August 1943” (University of South Carolina Press, 2012).

• “Dangerous Memories and Redemptive Possibilities: Howard Thurman and Black Leadership in the South.”

Suggested Reading:

• Smith, L. “Intimate Mystery: Howard Thurman’s Search for Ultimate Meaning (1900–1981)”

Focus Questions: Please post answers on our community Facebook group.

1.     What does Walter Earl Fluker mean by the term “dangerous memories”?  What were some of the dangerous memories for Howard Thurman and how did they impact his formation and quest for social justice?  Are there some outstanding elements in this portrayal of Howard Thurman’s journey that speak to your own quest for spirituality and social justice?

2.     Why does Luther E. Smith depict Thurman as a “mystic and prophet”?  Please identify his rationale for this attribution.

Click Here to View the Session Recording:

Session 4

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Focus Questions: Please select 3 of the questions and post answers on our community Facebook group.

1. What was the dominant concern of George Cross's thought? How is this theme demonstrated in the life and work of Jesus?

2. Cross writes that "The whole story of human life becomes the story of the manner in which human creative personality has wrought through the transformation of the race by seeking to impart to every member of it his or her own very selfhood in all its worth." Discuss this statement in reference to Thurman's social ethical and theological project.

3. According to Luther E. Smith, Cross's thought can be located in evangelical liberalism. What were the central themes and values of evangelical liberalism, according to Smith?

4. Smith also claims that Cross's thought can be viewed in three distinct, yet interrelated ways. What are these three ways of viewing Cross's thought and how might they have impacted Thurman's developing theological perspective?

5. In the biographical essay of "My People Need Me," there is a reference to Cross's influence on Thurman's thought in respect to his dissertation, “The Basis of Sex Morality: Inquiry into the Attitude toward Premarital Sexual Morality among Various Peoples”. What is the aggravating problem that his dissertation presents for this claim?

6. How do Luther E. Smith and Walter Earl Fluker understand the influence of Olive Schreiner on Thurman?

7. What are "negation and affirmation mystics"? Who was the pivotal influence introduced these concepts and how were they appropriated by Thurman?

8. Supplemental Question:  What does Kipton Jensen mean by “pedagogical personalism” and how is it related to Thurman’s early intellectual formulation at Morehouse College?

Click here to view the session recording:

Session 5

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Focus Questions: Please post answers on our community Facebook group.

1. What does Thurman mean by “common ground”?

2. Discuss the sources for Thurman's thinking regarding the nature of community.

3. Thurman maintains that a consistent theme in Hopi and Genesis myths is "creation with the harmony of innocence; the loss of innocence with the disintegration of harmony.” What does this mean in respect to his larger discussion of “racial memory”?

Session 6

Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Focus Questions: Please post answers on our community Facebook group.

Discuss Howard Thurman’s understanding of the “inner life” and “world-mindedness”

a) “A sense of self”

b)  Reason or “the fundamental structure of orderliness upon which rationality seems to depend”

c)  Freedom and responsibility

d)  This "subject quality of life," writes Thurman, “seems always to be previous in time to all particular living things or all particular manifestations. What does Thurman means by this statement?

e)  One of the crucial demands of the religious experience, according to Thurman ,is that the individual is addressed by God at a personal and intimate level. God can never be understood abstractly but must be experienced as Presence. The Presence of God can be encountered at any level of experience, in the common place or through religious discipline and preparation. What are the disciplines to which Thurman refers?

f)  In religious experience, Thurman thinks that the individual is enabled to deal honestly and lovingly with her/himself and others. What is experienced in encounter with the love of God becomes the basis for her/his relating to others. "What is disclosed in his religious experience he must define in community." When the individual experiences the love of God, s/he finds the basis and the method for authenticating the vision of community within her/himself and in the world. Please discuss.

Click on the video below to view the lecture recording.

Session 7

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

A.   Smith, Shively T.J., “Thurman-eutics: Howard Thurman’s ‘Clothesline’ for the Interpretation of the Life of the Mind and Journey of the Spirit”

 1.     How does Shively Smith define “hermeneutics”?  What does she mean by “Thurman-eutics”?

2.     What is the relationship of the imagery of the “clothesline” to “hermeneutics” in her construal of Thurman’s interpretive practices? 

3.     What does she mean by “the self as text”?  How is this understanding related to personal experience, embodiment, relationality and purpose?

4.     Please respond to the three guiding questions at the end of her essay.

B.         Jesus and the Disinherited

Chapter 1, “Jesus—An Interpretation”

1. What is the primary question with which Thurman is concerned? How does this question inform his interpretation of Jesus of Nazereth?

2. What were the two alternatives faced by the Jewish community of which Jesus was a part?
3. Which alternative did Jesus recommend and why?
4. According to Thurman, what did Jesus mean by, “the Kingdom of Heaven is in us”?

 Chapter 2—“Fear”

1. What is the relationship, according to Thurman, between fear and violence? How does this relationship between fear and violence effect one’s sense of self? What are some expressions of this relationship between fear and violence on the oppressed?
2. How is “fear” cultivated by the oppressed? How is this “fear” related to the State and participation in the common life?
3. How does Thurman relate “fear” to “segregation?” How is “segregation” related to “religion?”

Chapter 3, “Deception”

1. Why does Thurman characterize deception as a “technique” of the oppressed? How is this characterization related to “power?” What are some illustrations of deception as outlined by Thurman?

2. How is deception related to “truth-telling?” What are the alternatives that the oppressed have relative to the question of deception? Which alternative did Jesus choose, and why?
3. How is “truth-telling” or “sincerity” related to “freedom” and “power?”
4. Do you agree or disagree with Thurman’s analysis of deception? Explain why you agree or disagree.

Chapter 4, “Hate”

1. How does Thurman describe hatred? How does he construct an anatomy of its

development?
2. How are “hatred” and “self-realization” related? How is this relationship illustrated in the lives of the disinherited? How does hatred, thusly understood, become a device by which the disinherited protect themselves from moral disintegration? How does it provide a basis for moral justification or self-righteousness?
3. Hatred, like deception, is a technique of survival according to Thurman. How does he account for this association?
4. What was Jesus’ attitude toward “hate?” Why did he counsel the oppressed against hatred?

Chapter 5, “Love”

1. Thurman explains that the love ethic is central for the religion of Jesus.  What were the three enemies that Jesus had to deal with in his interpretation of the love ethic?  In your view, there any relevancy in Thurman’s interpretation of Jesus to your context and the larger society?

2.  Thurman writes, “The first step toward love is a common sharing of mutual worth and value”.  Please explain what this means for Thurman and for your context of ministry and service.

3. What does Thurman mean by an “ethical field” and what is its significance for contemporary modeling of community?

4.  Comment on what Thurman means by “reverence of personality” and how did Jesus define the same?

 C.   Thurman, “Exposition of the Book of Habakkuk” November 19, 1956, The Interpreter Bible,  Volume IV, PHWT, pp. 136-149.

1.     How does Howard Thurman depict the role of evil in his Exposition of the Book of Habakkuk?

2.     What does Thurman mean by “the divine context”?

Session 8

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Focus Questions: Please post answers on our community Facebook group.

Please respond to A and B.  

A. Central to Thurman’s view of religion was the notion of “moral struggle,” the spiritual resources to call upon when an individual is faced with the responsibility to make a decision on which path to take when faced with a crucial moral fork in the road. All of his subjects in The Moral Struggle and the Prophets are challenged by what Thurman calls “frustration,” the consequence of individuals finding their transcendent goals thwarted as a result of forces outside of their control and internal inhibitions that restrict the private will.  This becomes a moral struggle “for the realization of these ends that are out beyond,” in a struggle that “now involves the whole destiny of his life.”  In at least two of the required readings from this text, please identify and discuss “the moral struggle” that each experienced. 

1. How did they attempt to reconcile their struggle in light of their sense of destiny and loyalty to God?

2. What are the key hermeneutical strategies that Thurman uses in these texts?

3. Can you identify a personal moral struggle in your life that speaks to Thurman’s concern?

B. After reading “Religious Experience and the Ethical Life,” (Section II) in Fluker and Tumber, A Strange Freedom, pp. 97-187, respond to one of the questions below.

1. How does Thurman attempt to reconcile the “individualistic impulse “of mystical religion with the question of social transformation? What is at stake for the mystic in giving “disinterested service” to society? In your opinion, is Thurman successful in making the case for the mystic’s approach to social action? What are the pros and cons of his approach? Please cite examples that illustrate your responses.

2. Thurman recognizes that the overwhelming problems of human relations cannot be solved by the radical transformation of individuals in society. How does he, therefore, understand the relationship of the “freedom of the will” to the problem of the ethical significance of mysticism?

3. How does his view of the individual (moral anthropology) address the dilemma of “moral persons in an immoral society”?

Supplemental Question (Optional):

Fluker, Ethical Leadership, Introduction and Chapters 1-2

Fluker claims that Howard Thurman was "the opener of the way." Discuss Fluker's idea of the intersection in Ethical Leadership in relation to the life of Howard Thurman. According to Fluker, how did Thurman help leaders navigate the intersection?  

Please click on the video below to view the lecture recording.

Session 9

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Focus Questions: Please post answers on our community Facebook group.

Please respond to all questions.

1. Discuss Amanda K Brown’s,  The Fellowship Church: Howard Thurman and the Twentieth-Century Religious Left (selected chapters TBD)

2. Please comment on this statement: For Thurman, the ministry of the church is twofold: it should provide for an environment of worship in which experiences of spiritual unity are achieved, and it should serve a pedagogical function by teaching and interpreting the religious and moral implications of political, economic, and social arrangements in which the church finds itself.

3. Discuss Thurman’s concept of “the Jesus Idea” and its implications for Thurman’s view of the church and culture.

4. Discuss Robert Williams analysis of “structure and anti-structure” in the experience of worship.       

Please click on the video below to view the lecture recording.

Session 10

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

Focus Questions: Please post answers on our community Facebook group.

Please respond to all questions. 

1. Discuss Mozella Mitchell's description of Thurman of shamanistic performances and how it is related traditional roles of priest and prophet. How did Thurman's mystical orientation influence and shape his role with leaders involved in social activism?

2. Thurman says "Christianity in Negro churches has little to do with dogmatic controversy. Life has been too realistic for that. This intense realism has caused their souls to recoil into an overemphasis upon the other world." Discuss this statement in respect to Thurman's understanding of the black church and challenges to its ministry?       

Session 11

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Focus Questions: Please post answers on our community Facebook group.

Please respond to all questions.

1. Discuss the following statement by Fluker in respect to Thurman's conception of Community:

Our notion of democracy, by its very nature and history, suggests that our borders

are always expanding and are ever inclusive. And so, it must be with leadership—

ever expanding, becoming more and more inclusive and respectful of the other.

leaders at the intersection will need to respond to the question of the other with

recognition, respect, and reverence.”

2. Identify a particular contemporary problem of democratic life to which Thurman’s vision of the national community might apply.  Please demonstrate through analysis and argument whether his vision of democracy is adequate for resolution of the problem you have identified.

3. Mitchell, M.  The Human Search, Chapters 3-4:

Session 12

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Focus Questions: Please post answers on our community Facebook group.

Please respond to all questions. 

1. Discuss the relationship between Thurman’s theology and Black Nationalism in light of Alonzo Johnson’s argument that Thurman “was not simply an unrealistic, naïve integrationist” but he was “philosophically and methodologically committed to an integrationist agenda.”

2. Discuss the influence of black religion in Howard Thurman as discussed by James Cone.

3. Victor Anderson’s critique is helpful in rethinking the relevancy and limitations of Thurman’s contribution to a religiously inspired public ethic. In his illuminating essay, "Beyond Ontological Blackness, “Anderson acknowledges the significance of Thurman’s contribution to religious and cultural criticism in a racialized culture. He warns, however, that Thurman’s notions of transcendence and community are problematic because the suppositions of order, continuity, and cooperative qualities of life which informed his universe of discourse cannot be taken for granted in a postmodernist culture where grand meta-narratives are suspect. He argues that “it is also conceivable that one may equally discover and produce counter-narratives from the same grounds. And these counter narratives can be as cynical and tragic as Thurman’s is an ideally utopian narrative of world reconciliation and reformation of a lost primal community.”    How would you respond to Anderson's critique?

4. Supplemental Question (Optional):  Neal, Anthony Sean. Howard Thurman's Philosophical Mysticism: Love against Fragmentation (Rowan and Littlefield Publishing Group, 2019), (Selected Chapters TBD)

Discuss Anthony Sean Neal’s assertion, “Most patrons, upon entering a museum, have at one time or another, noticed the many signs that caution against touching the displays. Therefore, regular patrons develop what I am choosing to call the museum stare.”  How does he understand Thurman’s use of John Dewey’s reflective method of investigating and solving a problem as “a way of grounding his solutions to philosophical questions in the material world.” What are the steps of investigation that he outlines for Dewey’s reflective method? Why is this method important for understanding Thurman’s relation to black theology and black religion?