Browse Lecture Series (35 total)

”Quests for the Human Spirit” is an eleven-part lecture series focused on the creative process of self-actualization. Thurman shows how this process centers and affirms a person’s purpose in life. Discussing pursuits like freedom, stability, values, identity, and integrity, he illuminates the importance of questing in identity formation.

In this sermon series, Thurman covers the prophets of the Hebrew Bible and the particular religious insight that they bring to the tradition. Thurman exchanges with the prophets on the topic of responsibility, the inclusiveness of our faith, the sovereignty of God who acts in and above history, and more. Thurman gives voice to each of the individual prophets whilst still extracting the unifying messages and challenges from their writings.

Various sermons, meditations, and readings related to holidays and national holidays.

This collection contains a two-part interview between Miriam Rogers and Sue Bailey Thurman. In this interview, Thurman explores the lives of Phyllis Wheatley and Amos Fortune, two black people brought to Boston on slave ships, presenting their lives of thought and action as exemplary of democracy and freedom in America. Thurman also talks briefly about the life of Harriet Tubman, and other current events, including: the growing influence of Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence, and readings from…

This collection includes an audio recording of part one of Howard Thurman's 1969 interview with Roberta Byrd Barr, originally aired in three parts with the title "A Creative Encounter" on Seattle-based KING-TV. All three parts of the interview are available on the Virtual Listening Room site by Boston University.

In this series delivered at Fellowship Church from March 9 to March 30, 1953, Thurman discusses encountering the divine in our everyday lives. Thurman finds God's logic in moments of personal crisis and chaos, as well as in our encounters with human need. Both crisis and human need can be dealt with at a surface level, but Thurman highlights the necessity of dealing with them at a deeper level – the level of religion. Do we dare search for God in our darkest moments? Do we have eyes to see the…

Toward the end of Thurman's life he held "sessions for spiritual renewal" through the Howard Thurman Educational Trust. These sessions were for emerging African American leaders around the United States who were open to "examine the bearing of these elements on the life and the fulfillment of those of us whose roots are in the Black community" (Against the Hounds of Hell, Eisenstadt, p. 376). These seminars were dynamic spaces of reading and reflection, with Thurman often reading a gospel text…

In this series delivered at Fellowship Church from May 6 to June 10, 1951, Thurman discusses the meaning of loyalty in our private and public lives. For Thurman, loyalty is a steadfast dedication to a cause. This commitment summons all the power within the personality and dedicates it to the goal. To the extent that we experience loyalty, we feel involved with life, giving our lives a sense of meaning and significance. For Thurman, loyalty is the measure of our self-conscious commitments, in…

In this sermon series, Howard Thurman illustrates the all-encompassing nature of religious experience. The encounter with God is a renewing experience in which one's very center is changed, rippling out into all of one's life. It is in this whole-bodied commitment that one comes into the creativity and responsibility of ethical life. This sermon series contains a number of Thurman's most familiar images, i.e. the inward sea, the sound of the genuine, etc.