Heschel Abraham Joshua - American prophets: seven religious radicals and their struggle for social and political justice

AMERICAN PROPHETS

AMERICAN PROPHETS

SEVEN RELIGIOUS RADICALS AND THEIR STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL JUSTICE

ALBERT J. RABOTEAU

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2016 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR

press.princeton.edu

Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2011 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Excerpt from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, copyright 1947, 1948, 1952 by Ralph Ellison. Copyright renewed 1975, 1976, 1980 by Ralph Ellison. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Excerpts from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Abbey of Gethsemani. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third-party use of this material, outside this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House LLC for permission. Fannie Lou Hamer speech in Madison, Wisconsin, excerpted from Rhetoric, Religion, and the Civil Rights Movement, 19541965: Volume 1, edited by Davis W. Houck and David E. Dixon, 2006. Extended quotation courtesy of Baylor University Press.

Excerpt from pp. 2889 from The Prophets by Abraham Heschel. Copyright 1962 by Abraham Heschel. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Raboteau, Albert J., author.

Title: American prophets : seven religious radicals and their struggle for social and political justice / Albert J. Raboteau.

Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016010944 | ISBN 9780691164304 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: United StatesReligionHistory20th century. | Civil rightsReligious aspects. | Civil rightsReligious aspectsChristianity. | Civil rightsUnited States.

Classification: LCC BL2525 .R25 2016 | DDC 261.8/3092273dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016010944

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion and Trajan

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

TO JOANNE SHIMA RABOTEAU

A constant example of compassion

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the Lords favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

to comfort all who mourn.

Isaiah 61:12

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,

to undo the straps of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover him,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

and your healing shall spring up speedily;

your righteousness shall go before you;

the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;

you shall cry, and he will say, Here I am.

If you take away the yoke from your midst,

the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,

if you pour yourself out for the hungry

and satisfy the desire of the afflicted,

then shall your light rise in the darkness

and your gloom be as the noonday.

And the Lord will guide you continually

and satisfy your desire in scorched places

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water,

whose waters do not fail.

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;

you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;

you shall be called the repairer of the breach,

the restorer of streets to dwell in.

Isaiah 58:612

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness

like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos 5:24

Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of

these my brothers, you did it to me.

Matthew 25:40

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WISH TO THANK ALL OF YOU WHO took my Religious Radicals course over several years for your interest and inspiration. I learned a lot from you. Translations of Abraham Joshua Heschels poems are from Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Ineffable Name of God: Man, translated by Morton Leifman, 2004, and Continuum US, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. Other extended quotations from the works of Abraham Joshua Heschel are reprinted with the gracious permission of his daughter, Dr. Susannah Heschel. Excerpts from On Prayer from Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Copyright 1996 Sylvia Heschel. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. The A. J. Muste Institute generously granted permission to reproduce selections from The Essays of A. J. Muste, edited by Nat Hentoff, 2002, the A. J. Muste Memorial Institute. The poem I Think Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great, from New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender, 2004, is reprinted with kind permission of the Estate of Stephen Spender. For permission to reprint extended selections from Fannie Lou Hamers speeches, I am indebted to Mrs. Hamers daughter, Mrs. Vergie Hamer Faulkner. Excerpts from Foreword from Stranger at the Gates by Tracy Sugarman, with a foreword by Fannie Lou Hamer. Copyright 1966 by Tracy Sugarman. Reprinted by permission of Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. A quotation from Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days by Sheyann Webb and Rachel West Nelson, as told to Frank Sikora, 1980 by the University of Alabama Press, is used by permission. was presented as the inaugural J.W.C. Pennington Lecture at Heidelberg University on June 14, 2012. I would like to thank the sponsors of both lectures and the audiences for their generous appreciation. My thanks also to the staff at Princetons Firestone Library for indefatigable assistance, especially Joan Martine and Margaret Kehrer for their help with office space.