Love in Action ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
February 16, 2025

On September 20, 1958, Martin Luther King Jr. was holding a book signing in Manhattan, having just published Stride Toward Freedom, his book about the Montgomery bus boycott. A mentally ill African American woman arrived at the front of the line of people waiting, took out a sharpened letter opener, and stabbed Dr. King in the chest. (https://theconversation.com/howard-thurman-the-baptist-minister-who-had-a-deep-influence-on-mlk-110132)

The wound was very nearly fatal. Doctors told Dr. King that had he sneezed, he likely would have died.

While recovering in the hospital, King was visited by Howard Thurman, the eminent African-American preacher and theologian, the dean of Marsh Chapel at Boston University, whom King had come to know during his student days there. Howard Thurman had some advice for King: he urged him to take two additional weeks to recuperate, to not rush back into his leadership role in the civil rights movement. Now, this was not to make sure that King’s wound had fully healed. Thurman was more interested in making sure that King took the time to rest his mind and his spirit, to meditate on his purpose, to detach from all the activity to find the clarity within himself that he would need to carry on.

King later wrote to Thurman that he was taking the advice. And in fact, this time helped King to strengthen the spiritual discipline that is required in order to live and espouse a life of agape, and nonviolence.

Long before Martin Luther King emerged as a vital leader, Howard Thurman had been deeply influenced by principles of nonviolent resistance, and ultimately served as an important mentor for King. But we hear little about him today, and his story should be remembered.

Howard Washington Thurman was born in 1899, and largely raised by his formerly enslaved grandmother after the death of his father when Howard was seven. Since she could neither read nor write, he would often read Bible passages to her. The family was devout, and Howard made his way to Morehouse College, and then into the Baptist ministry, ordained as a minister in 1925.

Thurman met Gandhi in 1936. He had been selected to tour India as part of a group organized by the Student Christian Movement in India. They were interested in meeting African American Christians, as they believed that these Americans followed what the Indian students called ‘the oppressor’s religion,’ and were curious as
to why. Thurman was in Asia for six months, and spoke frequently throughout this tour. He was often asked to address the question of segregation in the United States and in American Christianity. Toward the end of the tour, Thurman met Gandhi, and the conversation lasted about three hours. Gandhi pressed the group about how they could be Christian, as Christianity was the religion of slave owners.

The conversation then turned to Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa, or nonviolence, which fascinated Thurman. Gandhi described ‘ahimsa’ as more than a force for nonviolence, but “more positive than electricity and more powerful than even ether.” (https://theconversation.com/how-howard-thurman-met-gandhi-and-brought-nonviolence-to-the-civil-rights-movement-110148).

This form of love, Gandhi believed, was a force stronger than hate. He believed that it was powerfully alive, and existed everywhere throughout the universe.

Some would say that this could describe God; that when we say that ‘God is Love’, it is this force of love that we refer to.

When Howard Thurman returned to the United States, many thought that he would become the leader of African-Americans seeking civil rights. But Thurman believed that the work of ahimsa, of nonviolent resistance, would emerge from the churches, so he returned to ministerial leadership, mentoring students, and writing. It fell to the next generation, especially Martin Luther King, well-versed in Thurman’s books, to take up the mantle and lead the civil rights movement.

Twenty-five years after Thurman’s visit to India, King wrote an essay entitled “An Experiment in Love,” in which he spelled out six tenets of nonviolent resistance. The first remains vitally important: nonviolence, King declared, is never passive. It is spiritually active, and engaged, and is always seeking to find ways to connect with evil, to overwhelm evil with love.

King would go on to tell us that the fight was not with evil individuals, but with the force of evil itself. The fight was against injustice. In this way, through constant activity and fighting injustice, the Beloved Community could be established.

The central tenet of nonviolent resistance, of ahimsa, King wrote, meant internalizing the spirit of love; refusing hatred within ourselves. “Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.” (“An Experiment in Love,” as quoted in https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/07/01/martin-luther-king-jr-an-experiment-in-love/)

I think back to Howard Thurman’s visit to King in the hospital, and his advice. Did he sense, I wonder, what would be demanded of King in the years to come? Would King be ready, be able, to maintain his steadfast rejection of hatred within himself?

I remember how King was called upon to offer the eulogy of the four young girls who were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in September of 1963. It would seem as though hatred and evil had prevailed. But King shared his faith, his belief, that goodness would ultimately triumph. And as if to illustrate his belief that nonviolence is not merely passive acceptance, in his eulogy he also named and held accountable people who were more comfortable maintaining the existing system; those who were allowing racism and injustice to continue. He offered a note of hope in defiance of the horror and grief that all those present were experiencing.

We are once again facing into a time when the forces of evil are strong. It’s easy to begin to feel hatred for those who are wielding increasingly unchecked power with cruelty as their guiding principle. And shouldn’t we hate evil?

Martin Luther King, and Gandhi, and Howard Thurman, would all say that, rather than hate evil, we must fight evil – fight it with love. This feels like a great deal to ask of us during this time when we watch bad actors attempting to dismantle our country. And of course, we have not had extensive training and preparation in the ethos and practice of nonviolent resistance. We are not spiritually well-prepared to respond with love instead of hate. But Dr. King wrote, “To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe.” (Ibid.)

I’m not suggesting we all try to feel love for the 47th President, and his followers. But here’s what we can do, realistically: focus our love on our country, and on our neighbor. We can practice agape, or goodwill for all people. We can do all that we can to help others flourish, to live lives of safety and health.

Dr. King wrote, “Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action… Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community… It is a willingness to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven to restore community…. If I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do nothing but intensify the cleavage in broken community. I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love.”

In these hard days, find what you can do, authentically, to meet hate with love. Raise your voices in protest, help the vulnerable with basic needs, and strengthen our communities. We can do all this without hatred. It is an act of faith – faith in ourselves that we have the strength to summon love, and faith that millions of others are trying to respond with love as well.

Practice love in action.