Reading Howard Thurman in Time: Black Theological Interpretation and Media Ecologies

This roundtable reintroduces Howard Thurman to Black Theology as both an interpreter and a media strategist of Black theological temporality. Panelists engage Shively Smith’s Reading Howard Thurman: His Practices of Interpretation through Womanist Eyes alongside Thurman's media world, including radio & television broadcasts, recorded sermons, print meditations, and artistic collaborations. Short media hearings of Thurman’s own voice and artistry will serve as launching points for panel reflections & group conversation. The session probes how this media ecology sanctified & disrupted temporal experience for Black communities, interracial & interreligious congregations, & freedom movements with which Thurman claimed kinship. Attending particularly to The Luminous Darkness and the 1946 essay “The Fascist Masquerade,” panelists treat interpretation as an ethical practice enacted through metaphor and media diversity. In dialogue with social media, artificial intelligence, and current concerns, they consider what forms of Black theological time Thurman’s practices enable and where Black and womanist theologies must move beyond him.