Cornel West and Vincent Harding on Obama, FOR, and a new America

I spent last weekend in Chicago, attending the annual American Academy of Religion conference, and (unfortunately) left the city on Monday evening, just before Election Day. It would have been amazing to have been there just 24 hours later for the huge celebration at Grant Park, which I walked by each day during the AAR event.

The conference, attended by 5,000 people, was filled with hundreds of panels on different topics related to faith/spirituality, social concerns, geography, anthropology, theology, and a range of other related academic disciplines. On Sunday evening, I learned about a panel taking place at that very moment: "The Sound of the Genuine: The Papers of Howard Thurman." The panel featured an all-star cast of African-American academics: Clayborne Carson of Stanford University, the editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr. papers collection; Barbara Holmes of Memphis Theological Seminary; Cornel West of Princeton University; and Walter Fluker of Morehouse College. (The program was organized to help promote the four upcoming books of Howard Thurman's collected writings, a 20-year project in the making — the first two books will be released in June and November of 2009.)

I had already missed part of the panel, but was lucky to catch both Carson and West, the latter of whom "rocked the house" with a stirring testimony to Thurman. For those who don't know, Thurman was a mentor to Dr. King, and helped King to deepen his understanding of nonviolence — not just as a tactic, as West noted, but as a way of life.

During the Q&A session, a question about the civil rights movement was posed that prompted Peter Eisenstadt, a main researcher for the Thurman project, to step forth from the audience. He highlighted Thurman and King's relationships to the Fellowship of Reconciliation, as well as other leaders in the movement, such as James Farmer. Cornel West then took the microphone, and expanded on the reference — stressing the importance of FOR to that history.

As a modern-day FOR staffer, I was so proud at that moment! It took all of my willpower to hold back from jumping up and down in the back of the room (of some 400 or so people) and yelling, "FOR is still doing that justice and nonviolence work today!"

The final question posed by an audience member was whether then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama represented "the embodiment of King's Beloved Community." West responded that Obama was not, for two main reasons. First, said West, unlike Obama, "King did not hold race at arm's length. He wanted his body to be a part of [how the Beloved Community is understood]." West noted that Obama operates within a very different historical moment and a different political context, and should not be judged negatively for his avoidance of addressing race — but that it is a central difference between King's vision and Obama's current paradigm.

Second, according to West, the gospel text of Matthew 25 was King's "litmus test" for how the Beloved Community would be defined. "It was NEVER the idea of a black man being in a high place, it was always the LEAST OF THESE," West thundered.

After the program concluded, I had a "life highlight" moment when I went up to Dr. Vincent Harding to introduce myself. Harding co-authored Dr. King's famous and prophetic April 4, 1967 "A Time to Break the Silence" speech at New York City's Riverside Church, and is credited for being King's constant dialogue partner as he controversially spoke out against the Vietnam war, domestic poverty, and a culture of materialism and institutional racism.

Dr. Harding is still working for a nonviolent world, and has co-founded the Veterans of Hope Project to lift up the legacy of other long-time leaders who proclaim these values. He has committed to attending the January 19, 2009 "Rebirthing King, Rebirthing America" interfaith event hosted by the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership being held in Washington, DC, on the evening before the inauguration of President Obama.

Harding shared with me a copy of a beautiful essay he recently wrote titled "Midwifing a New America." I told him that it was ironic to receive those words, since just the previous night I had sat over dinner with a midwife, my mother-in-law — who, in fact, had just delivered a birth that very morning. So as we reflect in wonder on the election of our first African-American president," I close with an excerpt from Harding's powerful commentary:

"[Barack Obama] seems to offer the place where all the 'we' people can stop our waiting and carry on our work to create the pathway, the birthing channel toward 'The land that never has been yet, and yet must be.' Indeed, as I wrestled with Biblical symbols, the birthing imagery and the calls of Langston [Hughes], Martin [Luther King, Jr.] and June [Jordan] (herself the marvelous offspring of Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Anne Braden and Amzie Moore), I could not escape another revelatory metaphor. Not only is something trying to be born in America, but some of us are called to be the midwives in this magnificent, desperately needed and so painfully creative process."