Jesus and the Disinherited

Howard Thurman

Written immediately post WWII as a treatise on what it means to be a follower of Jesus at the same time you are a member of an oppressed class. Thurman talks about fear and deception as tools that the oppressed utilize to cope with their reality, or as tools to 'get over' on the oppressor. The argument here is that these tools are precisely what Jesus was teaching against and offering alternate ways to cope and 'get over'. Thurman takes the additional step, arguing that in fact, utilizing these will always turn back on the user, in effect ceding your power to the oppressor instead of giving you power over them. In his opening section, and supported thereafter, Thurman sets an important foundation for the argument by showing how important it is to read Jesus life and teaching first knowing the context from which he lived and taught. The book was a foundational work for radically nonviolent social justice movements that followed over the next several decades, and is unsurprisingly still relevant and challenging today.
Read