One of the individuals portrayed in the film Selma, Diane Nash, spoke at the White House Celebration of Music From The Civil Rights Movement in February 2009. One comment she made there helped to put me on the path to Fellowship Church. She said the point of the movement was “reconciliation.” That word, reconciliation, rang a bell and prompted me to realize that for 45 years I had forgotten that principle and had been driven by anger, not love.

In the speech Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave at the end of the march to the state capitol in Montgomery, which moved me profoundly as I stood in the crowd, he said:

That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would prey upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality…. And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead: remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.

Unfortunately, it seemed to me, the film Selma did not capture that philosophy, which Dr. Howard Thurman helped shape.

In Dr. Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited, a brilliant self-help manual for activists that Dr. King reportedly carried with him when he traveled, Dr. Thurman writes “To love such an enemy requires reconciliation… It involves confession of error…. To love those of the household he must conquer his own pride.” And Dr. Thurman points out that “too much pride on either side [makes it difficult] to make amends…. The underprivileged man must himself be status free. It may be argued that his sense of freedom must come first…. Love is possible only between two freed spirits.” By “status free,” he meant transcending our social roles and relating person-to-person.

Thurman insists we need “an overall technique for loving one’s enemy…, a discipline, a method, a technique, as over against some form of wishful thinking or simple desiring,… a technique of implementation.” The technique he proposes is “the attitude of respect for personality,” which requires us to “put aside the pride of race and status which would have caused [us] to regard [ourselves] as superior….[and declare] ‘I am stripped bare of all pretense and false pride. The man in me appeals to the man in you.”

When “we emerge into an area where love operates,” we say, as did Jesus, “Neither do I condemn you.” We judge our own deeds and confess our trespasses. “[We] must recognize fear, deception, hatred, each for what it is,” Dr. Thurman states. “Once having done this, [we] must learn how to destroy these or to render [ourselves] immune to their domination.”

Yet, as we saw indicated here at Fellowship Church last week in the film about Grace Lee Boggs, most political activists don’t engage in that kind of critical self-examination, which is essential to nurturing the nonjudgmental humility that Dr. Thurman affirms. Most activists are too busy trying to mobilize others to do what they, the activists, want them to do. They focus on the outer world and neglect the inner world.

Not even faith-based and faith-rooted organizations really talk about the need for critical self-examination. For example, in the call for a strategy conference late last year, Michael Lerner, founder of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, said nothing about the need for self-improvement rooted in acknowledging mistakes and resolving to avoid them. To the contrary, he said, “Nor are we writing you to suggest personal repentance.” I found that statement shocking, but par for the course.

I’ve discussed this issue many times with faith-based leaders and activists and organized some workshops to promote that commitment. But so far I mainly see a focus on external issues and neglect of internal issues. Some projects train activists to work on themselves individually. But I know of no political organization that facilitates all of their members to support one another in open-ended self-development as defined by each member.

I envision user-friendly, easily replicated templates that like-minded individuals could use to provide mutual support — so that we could better transform our social system. The first step, it seems to me, is to establish a new primary purpose for our society: to “rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society,” as Dr. King put it. Once that new mission statement were affirmed, we could better reform all of our institutions, our culture, and ourselves to serve that purpose.

With that positive thrust, we who are working on so many different issues could better overcome our fragmentation by occasionally uniting to support one another on timely, top priority issues. By uniting, we could accomplish much more together than we can fragmented, focused on building our own organization. That vision seems clear and convincing to me. But so far I’ve found no organization engaged in that kind of holistic work and have been unable to initiate one.

I trust, however, that some day soon holistic politics will crystallize. It may be just around the corner. As James Baldwin said:

A day will come when you will trust you more than you do now and you will trust me more than you do now. We will trust each other. I do believe, I really do believe in the New Jerusalem. I really do believe that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are not yet ready to pay.

In the meantime, I plan to stop pushing my vision, ask God to take the weight of the world off my shoulders, try to become more humble, take better care of myself, and learn better how to “love [my] neighbor directly, clearly, permitting no barrier between,” as affirmed by Dr. Thurman.

Then, before I die, perhaps I’ll be a foot soldier in a global movement to transform our global society into a compassionate community dedicated to the common good of the entire Earth Community.

Thank you for listening.

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Presented as the Meditation at the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples Sunday, January 18, 2015