Every Child is “The Child”

When Howard Thurman was growing up (1899-1981) in Daytona, Florida, the city did not provide public education for black children beyond the seventh grade (there were only three public high schools for black children in the entire state).  Fortunately Thurman had a cousin who offered him room and board in exchange for chores so that he could attend the Florida Baptist Academy in Jacksonville and continue his education.  

Are you familiar with Howard Thurman?  He was a Christian clergyman, an author, philosopher, theologian and civil rights leader.  He was a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and many others, including me.  In his little 100-page book, Jesus and the Disinherited, he asks “What does our religion say to the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed?” In another book, The Mood of Christmas, he wrote:  “Every child is The Child, the one with whom God is well pleased.  Every mother is a treasure to be treated with dignity and care so that she knows she carries a new possibility for the human race.”  This, he implied, is the teaching of Jesus and it is what religion ought to be saying to the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed.  (Who are the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed in our time?)

“Every child”—whether black, brown, or white, every child whether born in El Salvador or Yemen, whether citizen or migrant—“every child is The Child, the one with whom God is well pleased.”  For me, it follows:  every person “is a treasure to be treated with dignity and care,” so that each person knows she/he carries a new possibility for the human race.   

Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote in his autobiography, For The Living of These Days, that many people thought public schooling was an infringement upon individual rights and gave a gratuitous education to those “who are better suited to their station without it,” and that it would “not meet the nation’s real need for an adequate reserve of laborers who could very well dispense with education.”  In fact, in those early days, public schools were considered a form of “creeping socialism.”  Sound familiar?

A prominent educator in the early 1900’s  heard Susan B. Anthony make a speech.  “Miss Anthony,” he said to her afterward, “that was a magnificent address.  But I must tell you that I would rather see my wife or my daughter in her coffin than hear her speaking, as you did, before a public assembly.”  Is it possible the very same attitude continues to be expressed today?  Have we moved any at all?

What does our religion say to a young Howard Thurman today, to the children in Clint and El Paso, Texas, to women, to health care as a human right, and to underpaid teachers in our public schools?