Stranger danger? A lesson from Howard Thurman on King Day

The Rev. Howard Thurman, an ordained Baptist minister, was named one of the twelve most important religious leaders in the United States in 1953 by Life magazine. Ebony magazine called him one of the fifty most important figures in African American history. He advised civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer and Pauli Murray. He served as a dean of university chapels (at Howard University and Boston University), taught as a university professor and wrote numerous books about the spiritual life. He even preached at Duke Chapel in 1979!

He was a sage who influenced the thought and life of King, whose father was Thurman’s college roommate at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Many of the themes you hear in King's work — love, justice and community, for example — are also found in Thurman’s writings.

On this King Day, there is one lesson from Thurman’s life that may be enlightening at a time in history when there appears to be pervasive estrangement among the citizens of the United States. When there may be a perception that every stranger is a danger and thus should be dominated or destroyed, there are two scenarios from Thurman’s life that reveal another way forward. 

Both are found in his autobiography, "With Head and Heart." He begins this book by telling the story of when he was an assistant to the pastor at First Baptist Church of Roanoke after his first year in seminary. He was 24 years old and felt an "ambivalence" about his life and calling at the time. But while the church’s pastor, Dr. James, was on vacation, he was thrust into a situation in which a dying man needed pastoral care. On his first night on duty alone, the head nurse of a local hospital called the parsonage looking for Dr. James, but he was away. The nurse asked Thurman, "Are you a minister?" because the dying man was looking for a minister. Despite his hesitancy, Thurman replied, "Yes, I am a minister." Thurman was unsure how to handle this situation because he was inexperienced. He knew he should pray in some way, though he grasped for the right words in that moment. After he prayed with the man, the man thanked him, and Thurman said, "He died with his hand in mine."

The man on his dying bed did not know Thurman, but at his point of need, he turned to a stranger for support. There was no danger, only human care and compassion, and literally a human touch. The image of the hands of strangers touching each other reveals how we are to be bound to one another in our mortality. In this story, Thurman was a stranger to the dying man, and he offered help.

Another story in the book shows how a stranger helps Thurman in the time of his need. When Thurman was only 14 years old, he left the comforts of home to pursue further education at a boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida, since there was no high school for Black children in his hometown of Daytona Beach. When he arrived at the train station to make his trip to Jacksonville, he was shocked to learn that while he had enough money for the fare, he needed more money to check his trunk. 

Thurman thought his great opportunity would be taken away from him on that platform until an "anonymous stranger" approached him and asked him why he was crying. This stranger gave him the money he needed to get to Jacksonville, changing the trajectory of Thurman’s life. After he gave him the money, he walked away, and Thurman never saw him again. Thurman never forgot that act of kindness. It made such an imprint on him that he dedicated his autobiography, not to a well-known theologian or businessman or celebrity or family member, but to this stranger on the platform who "restored his broken dreams." This stranger was not a danger to Thurman but rather his saving grace.

Humans don’t have to be estranged from one another but can recognize our need for each other and the bond of common human flesh and blood. Often in crises, we see that humans embrace compassion, despite differences that divide, and offer support. This resists our tendencies toward tribalism. Tribes can be tyrannical and terroristic such that anything or anyone not in our tribe is viewed as inferior or feared as a stranger. But Thurman, reflecting ancient scriptural wisdom, demonstrated a life that encountered and welcomed strangers with the knowledge that he might be entertaining angels by doing so. He knew that it might take a stranger to restore a broken dream.