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Tillich, Paul (1886-1965)

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Amahdi Shabaka

When Hitler came to power, this vigorously anti-Nazi philosopher of power was the first non-Jewish professor to be expelled from his post. Thanks to Reinhold Neibuhr’s efforts, Paulus Johannes Tillich became one of Hitler’s gifts to the New World. This rare and original interpreter of the meaning and value of existence has been highly honored by theist and humanist, Jew and Christian and Buddhist.…

Paul Tillich

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (1881-1955)

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Amahdi Shabaka

A contribution of great thought came from a priest who came to the shores of the United States in 1951 and died and was buried here in 1955. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Roman Catholic paleontologist taught us new ways in which religion is related to science.…

Pierre Teilhard de chardin

Murray, John Courtney (1904-1967)

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Amahdi Shabaka

The first book of John Courtney Murray was We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition. When it was published in 1960, Time magazine ran a feature article and also put Murray’s picture on the cover as “unquestionably the intellectual bellwether of this new Catholic and American frontier” of building the city.…

John Courtney Murray

Wise, Stephen (1874-1949)

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Amahdi Shabaka

Consider “Stephania”—the code word of hope that spread from captive to captive in the Nazi death camps. This symbol of longing for liberation from unutterable atrocities sprang up in tribute to an American rabbi who was known to be working with all his might to rescue victims of Hitler’s reign of horror.…

Stephen Wise

Fosdick, Harry Emerson (1878-1969)

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Amahdi Shabaka

When he was seven, Harry’s mother collapsed. Caring for three children amidst deepening debt were factors in her first nervous breakdown. Later on she sought to comfort her son amidst his dread that he had committed an unpardonable sin, which would thrust him into the everlasting hell described by their family pastor’s fire and brimstone sermons.…

Henry Emerson Fosdick

Reeb, James (1927-1965)

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Amahdi Shabaka

In 1965 fifty nuns marched in Selma, Alabama to get ‘liberty and justice for all,” They marched arm in arm with black and white laity and clergy of varied faiths. They responded to the call of Martin Luther King, Jr. to put their lives on the line in a protest affirming faith in the American Creed of individual equality in freedom.…

James Reeb

Thurman, Howard (1899-1981)

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Amahdi Shabaka

A strong example of relevance in ministry is Howard Thurman, who left a secure position as a university professor to pioneer in the founding of the first effectively integrated church in twentieth-century America. What his life’s work has meant is told in Footprints of Dream: the Story of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco.…

Howard Thurman

King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1929-1968)

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Emily Mace

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s national career began when one woman, Mrs. Rosa Parks, firmly said, “No!” to the white driver of a Cleveland Avenue bus, who ordered her to stand farther back in the Negro section so a white man could have her seat.…

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Glorious Women: Award-Winning Sermons About Women

Posted on October 22, 2014 by Emily Mace

Glorious Women: Award Winning Sermons About Women is a collection of sermons by Unitarian Universalist women which won the MSUU (Ministerial Sisterhood Unitarian Universalist) Award between 1984 and 2004. Edited by Dorothy May Emerson, the sermons are by women and men – predominately women – and entrants to the contest were instructed to address their sermon to the topic of “women and the experience of being a woman.”…

Symbols of Power in Hartshorne: A New World View

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Emily Mace

Designed by Herbert F. Vetter

A LETTER FROM CHARLES HARTSHORNE

January 26, 1962

Dear Mr. Vetter,

Thanks so much for sending me your manuscript. Of course I am deeply moved by your estimate of my work, in relation to your general theme.

…