Browse Lecture Series (35 total)

In this sermon series on the Parables of Jesus, Thurman walks listeners through the central themes of the parable. In the stories, Thurman finds Jesus pointing illustrating our deep human needs for community and wholeness. Thurman offers the sermons as invitations into Jesus' religious experience, which demonstrate for us what God is like, and what is required of us as disciples, children of God, and human beings in search of fulfillment.

This collection holds four sub-collections that each represent a version of Jesus and the Disinherited from different periods in Thurman's life. The series range in date from 1959 to 1976.[In Progress]

The Lay-clergy Institute hosted by the First Congregational Church in Longmont, Colorado, is described as "a gift to the community, and provide opportunities to consider, discuss, and act on a wide array of philosophical and social issues." The program is now called the Mind & Soul Series.According to their website, "The First Congregational United Church of Christ has a long history of active social justice and bringing challenging conversations and topics to the forefront in our…

In this series, Thurman discusses the concepts of freedom in the actions of an individual, how freedom is negotiated in a fluid world of logic, time, and natural order, and how communities can act in freedom.

In this 8-part series, Thurman discusses a variety of topics related to the disciplines of the spirit, including growth, personal stability, commitment, dedication, actions, dualism, and redemption.

"[Jesus and the Disinherited] is the centerpiece of the Black prophet-mystic's lifelong attemot to bring the harrowing beauty of the African-American experience into deep engagement with what he called 'the religion of Jesus.' Ultimately his goal was to offer this humanizing combination as the basis for an emancipatory way of being, moving toward a fundamentally unchained life that is available to all the women and men everywhere who hunger and thirst for righteousness, especially those 'who…

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 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.

In this series about the Search for Meaning, Thurman discusses approaches to finding meaning in things to which we choose to devote our lives and energy through the experiences of self, freedom, and love.