Come Go With Me: Howard Thurman and a Gospel of Radical Inclusivity

by C. Anthony Hunt

Thomas Merton pointed out that the test of our sincerity in human association in the practice of nonviolence and movement toward radically inclusive community is: “are we willing to learn something from our adversaries?”[299] If a new truth is made known, will we accept it? The dread of being open to the ideas of others generally comes from our hidden insecurity about our own convictions. We fear that we may be “converted” – or perverted – by a pernicious doctrine. On the other hand, if we are mature and objective in our open-mindedness, we may find that in viewing things from a basically different perspective we discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideals more realistically.

Religion is to be viewed as a process, and must now be understood in global context. It is no longer an option to confine religious thinking and practice to narrow and particular cultural contexts. In postmodernity, cultures are brought into closer contact by technology.[303] Cousins offered the illustration of an astronaut who travels into space for the first time, and looks down upon the earth. The astronaut is overwhelmed with what they see, as they now view the earth from a new and broader perspective. Likewise, a new global reality causes us to view the world from a different (perhaps broader) perspective.[304]

mysticism