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This article argues that Thurman was more often an admirer of Paul, revealing a nuanced assessment drawn from Thurman’s published and unpublished writings and his intellectual and religious mentors. Paul appears as a model of personal struggle and religious complexity shaped by citizenship and belonging across two worlds.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-apostle-of-struggle-reappraising-howard-thurman-on-paul/140484/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-apostle-of-struggle-reappraising-howard-thurman-on-paul/140484.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Asher","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-11","2026-08-24",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":24},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"Why is Howard Thurman often portrayed as anti-Pauline?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"That portrayal is usually based on passages from Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), including references associated with an anti-Paul stance.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"What is the article’s main claim about Thurman and Paul?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"The article argues that Thurman was often an admirer of Paul, presenting a far more nuanced position than commonly described.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"How does the article connect Paul to Thurman’s concerns about citizenship?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It explains that, for Thurman and his civil-rights mentor connections, the question of citizenship was crucial, and Paul helped Thurman explore the complex intellectual, religious, and social position of African Americans between two worlds.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},140484,1787576234,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":24,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":144},687197207639,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_a8503ba1806abce46bf441b54a3ca4cd","Church History (2024), 93, 778–799 doi:10.1017/S0009640725101145  \nRESEARCH ARTICLE  \nThe Apostle of Struggle: Reappraising Howard Thurman on Paul  \nPeter Eisenstadt 1 and Benjamin White2  \n1Department of History, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA and 2Department of Philosophy and Religion, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA  \nCorresponding author: Peter Eisenstadt; [Email:](Email: peisenst@gmail.com)[ peisenst@gmail.com](Email: peisenst@gmail.com)  \nAbstract  \nHoward Thurman, the great20th-centuryAfrican American thinker and pastor, has often been characterized as holding an antagonistic view of the Apostle Paul, based primarily on several passages in his most important work, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949). One of those passages describes the anti-Pauline position ofhis grandmother, a former slave, Nancy Ambrose. In this article we argue that Thurman was, in contrast to his grandmother, oftentimes an admirer of Paul. Our thorough consideration of Thurman’s published and unpublished work, as well asthe work of his various intellectual and religious mentors, uncovers that he had a much more nuanced position on Paul than is normally described. He saw Paul as a profoundly radical and original thinker, who was nonetheless compromised by his Roman citizenship, distancing himselffrom his fellow Jews. For Thurman, amentortomanyin the civil rights movement, the question of citizenship was crucial, and he used Paul to help explore the complex intellectual, religious, and social situations of African Americans, caught between two worlds, ambivalent about trying to fit into a world that was ambivalent about them. In this way, for Thurman, Paul was a model of personal struggle and religious complexity.  \nKeywords: Howard Thurman; Paul, the Apostle; slavery; citizenship; Roman citizenship; American citizenship; African American views on Paul  \nIn 1979, toward the end of his life, the great African American religious thinker Howard Thurman wrote that the “most persistent struggles of my life have always centered on the gray areas of compromise.” How to survive in a society to which a person “cannot approve, or cannot assent,” without damaging the core of one’s soul. In this, he writes,“over and over I have echoed the words of the Apostle Paul (Romans 7:21, Moffatt’s), ‘I desire to do what is right but wrong is all that I can manage.’”1 This was indeed the central religio-political question of his life and career – how, as a person, as an American citizen,  \n1Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 249–250 . Citing A New Translation of the Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments, trans. James Moffatt (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1928) .  \n© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society of Church History. This isan Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence ([http://creativecommon](http://creativecommon)[s.org/licenses/by/4.0](s.org/licenses/by/4.0)), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.  \n[https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009640725101](https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009640725101)145 Published online by Cambridge University Press  \nChurch History 779  \nas an African American, as a Christian, to live a moral life in a profoundly immoral and un-Christian society, and to decide when compromise was necessary, and when it was impossible. Throughout his life, Paul was a model for Thurman of someone who had wrestled with his own dilemmas. Paul was a Jew in a Gentile world. He was seared with a religious truth that fit uneasily, or perhaps not at all, into existing religious alternatives. Paul had to chart his own religious path, with all the self-confidence this required and all the loneliness and rejection this often entailed. Thurman did not always agree with Paul’s choices, and there is no evidence t","cbCaihj3KgcR03qW","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaihj3KgcR03qW","pdf",351757,22,"English","# Abstract\n## Central Argument\n## Evidence Base and Mentors\n## Paul, Citizenship, and Civil Rights Context\n## Paul as a Model of Struggle","[{\"question\":\"Why is Howard Thurman often portrayed as anti-Pauline?\",\"answer\":\"That portrayal is usually based on passages from Jesus and the Disinherited (1949), including references associated with an anti-Paul stance.\"},{\"question\":\"What is the article’s main claim about Thurman and Paul?\",\"answer\":\"The article argues that Thurman was often an admirer of Paul, presenting a far more nuanced position than commonly described.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article connect Paul to Thurman’s concerns about citizenship?\",\"answer\":\"It explains that, for Thurman and his civil-rights mentor connections, the question of citizenship was crucial, and Paul helped Thurman explore the complex intellectual, religious, and social position of African Americans between two worlds.\"}]","The Apostle of Struggle - Reappraising Howard Thurman on Paul | PDF",55]