October 8th marks the 80th anniversary of The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. Co-founded by Howard Thurman and Alfred Fisk, their intentional work at inclusion across multiple divisions remains worthy of celebration.
Thurman’s mystical understanding of faith and its embodiment as witness and counternarrative against white supremacy and segregation should be the aim of any fellowship in North America. “In almost every instance, the public worship of God was separate,” Thurman wrote in “Footprints of a Dream: The Story of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples.”
Not surprisingly, this remains true. Fifty-seven percent of churchgoers attend a predominately (at least 80%) White congregation, according to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center. “Additionally, 14% of Americans who attend services do so at houses of worship with membership that is at least 80% black (including 5% who are in congregations that are entirely black).”
“The vast majority of U.S. churchgoers report that they belong to congregations where most people are of their race or ethnicity, but Hispanic Protestants are the exception,” Axios reported last year. “Hispanic Protestants, a majority of whom practice evangelical faiths report their churches are more diverse than others, who remain largely segregated despite the nation’s rapidly changing demographics.”
But why does this remain the case? The short answer is the heresy of white supremacy. Rev. John Buchanan sums up this conviction in his 1957 defense of it: “[T]he good Lord set up the customs and practices of segregation.”
Thurman names its effects. “The common saying in my world was: the white man did not have any religion … That kept me from expecting him to act toward me as I would expect a fellow Christian to act, but curiously enough my religion did not demand of me that I act toward him as a Christian should act,” Thurman wrote in “The Luminous Darkness: A Personal Interpretation of the Anatomy of Segregation and the Ground of Hope.”
He surmised, “It was a cruel dilemma; the price paid for a kind of inner balance that would make for some measure of peace of mind was the rigid narrowing or restricting of the Christian ethic. The struggle was to try to achieve a sense of self in a total environment that threatened the self.”
Thurman names the need to self-segregate from those racialized as white due to the violent assault upon his somebodiness that accompanies it. He is clear that a safe distance needs to be maintained if one’s sense of self and one’s dignity is to remain. It shouldn’t be this way since they share the same Christian faith and thus, it is “a cruel dilemma.”
But it is also a cruel history. Segregated pews led to separate churches and denominations, beginning with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. This sharp and notable division began after Richard Allen and Absalom Jones were dragged from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church while praying in its whites-only section.
This white supremacist theology is the North American church’s foundation, which makes Thurman and Fisk’s attempt at radical inclusion all the more glorious and evidence of their God-given vision. To not merely go against the grain but to go up against the principalities and powers of white supremacy is no small feat.
“The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men [sic] often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making,” Thurman wrote in “Footprints of a Dream.” “In a moment of dedication, they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires.”
It is not a simple decision to work against the colonizing machinery that aims to crush nations into racialized mush: beige, black, brown, red, yellow, and white people. It is more than a kind gesture but a prophetic attempt to do what has never been done in American Christianity— integrate.
The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples is not just an example of the right thing to do but the only thing to do if we identify as Christians and not with the American empire: to call everyone into a sacred assembly that honors their differences— not as ingredients in a “melting pot” but as children of God. It is a principled conviction and a call to bear witness to the “kin-dom” of God.
“I desire to have a part in the unfolding of the ideal of Christian fellowship through the union of men and women of varying national, cultural and racial heritage, in church communion,” Thurman wrote in “Footprints of a Dream.” “In this commitment, I am pledged to the growing understanding of all men [sic] as sons of God and seek after a vital interpretation of the highest manifestation of God— Jesus Christ— in all my relationships.”
It is this subversive spirituality, this mystical reality, that transcends our real and invented differences. To be sure, it is a communion with all things, which cannot be contained in a building or the only supposedly holy timeframe on Sunday mornings.
Instead, it is a deeper union, a fellowship of radical inclusion, adding trees and bees, sands and seas, and the very air we breathe. We must take it all in as the divine presence pervades it all. Thurman was convinced of this, writing in “The Search for Common Ground”: “We are not only living in the universe, but the universe is living in us.”
This is not your regularly scheduled church programming. Thus, their efforts are worthy of more than three cheers.
Instead, I will give this work my all through The Raceless Gospel Initiative and in celebration, I invite you to yield to the inner demand of “whole-making.” The doors of this church remain open to all.
This is The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples. Happy 80th anniversary!