from the day he was born this was a job that he was singled out to do. i think every person whoever worked with neil had such a respect for the very quiet confidence that he exuded, his incredibly professional demeanor. he was literally a man for all ages within mission control. and i think every person today has that same respect. it's increased. after the mission, the one time that i ever remember neil talking, almost with boyish glee, was he was sitting over in the corner, i think it was over in the conference room. i think it was 9:30 in building 1. and we were just shooting the breeze. and all of the sudden he just says, you know, i think this

says a lot for american craftsmanship. because in those days, american craftsmanship was really in question. were we capable of building the high technologies that seemed to be coming from europe at this time? at that time, european standards were the ones everyone was trying to emulate. and there were questions whether we were capable of competing in the world of the '60s and the '70s, we were capable of competing for the future. and neil proceeded to elaborate on his feelings about the american craftsmanship and the ability to do something so intensely complex, and be successful the first time around. it was marvelous. >> howard thurman surfed as dean of theology at howard and boston universitieses. as an undergraduate student at morehouse college, thurman was a classmate of martin luther king,

jr.,'s father. thurman became a friend to martin luther king, jr. benjamin mays was a president of morehouse college from 1940 to 1967 and during that time martin luther king, jr., was one of mr. mays' students. up next, a discussion on the relationship between thurman, mays and king. morehouse college hosted this hour and a half long discussion. >> good afternoon. >> i'm willis, interim vice president for academic affairs here at morehouse college.

it's my great pleasure to bring greetings on behalf of our president, robert michael franklin. his schedule has him traveling today but if you know robert, you know that the public intellectual that he is would prefer to be here for this discussion. i want to thank our distinguished panelists for their participation in what promises to be a spirited discussion of inner faith pione pioneers, all morehouse icons as well as giants in the larger world house. i also want to thank you, the members of the audience, for braving the threatening weather to hear and interact with our panelists. finally, let me extend a special thanks to dean larry kraf terry support staffs for putting

together another outstanding testament to the college's commitment to advancing inner faith dialogues. once again, welcome all and enjoy your afternoon. >> thank you. let me add my words of welcome to you. it's such a privilege to see you all here and we're looking forward to not only a robust but enlightening and inspiring conversation that should inform all of us in unimagined. as part of the rich religious tradition here at actually grew of the baptist church, w featuring of three pe parochial nature of their own faith boundaries and they really set the stage for how morehouse

college and people who have come through morehouse college would have an affect, influential role in the broader society particularly has has been celebrated over the last few days in the life and legacy of martin luther king, jr. i would like to call your attention for those of who have not seen just to make sure that you're aware of the additional events that with he have planned during the course of this month of king that are not only sponsored by the chapel but also by the king collection and other institutions right here at morehouse college. we want to thank the faith alliance of metropolitan atlanta for their participation with us in several of these events along the way. i want to say just a brief word about two initiatives that morehouse college is engaged in. one of those is partnership with the interfaith youth core called better together campaign headed by our own campus minister

working with the chapel assistance here and students from some of the other colleges and universities not only within the atlanta university center but beyond. the second engagement that we have is with the president's interfaith campus and community service challenge. we are here at morehousewo workg ionsgently to expand the mannere are made. higher education as has been the case with multiculturalism and matters of gender and other areas has played a pivotal role and provided leadership with an attempt made to be sure that our society embraces conversation that must be who we are and who we are seeking to become. let me take a moment to introduce our moderator.

we go back a few years but he has been on the interfaith battlefields for 37 years. his role not only as a scholar and leader and activist leading people on world pilgrimages part of the world pilgrims organization, standing as an activist on his own right and advocate for matters of dialogue between and among faiths. we invited plemon here because -- i remember a story he told me. he said that the only way that he could get out of coming to morehouse was that he went to harvard. we'll forgive him for that today, but it's clear that his connection and commitment to the life and legacy of morehouse college runs wide and deep. plemon is going to come and share as moderator of this

panel. he will then introduce our panelists to you as well. let me say one or thing about plemon. he's been a part of a number of pilgrims through the world pilgrims organization and plemon has been succeeded by another imam but he also served as the keynote speaker for a worship event we had just a few nights ago right here in the martin luther king, jr. international chapel where we had people that are jewish and muslim and come together and worship. plemon helped to frame that from what it means to be a servant not only of the divine but of a servant of humanity. i present to you, our moderator,

plemon el-amin. >> thank you very much. my father went to morehouse. his two brothers went to morehouse. my mother went to spelman. i went to spelman nurse ry school. i grew up two blocks off the campus. we have three wonderful guests. i will introduce each one of them before they give their brief introductory marks. at the end of the introductory

marks we'll move on. he is an associate professor of american studies with a joint appointment in african and african american studies at the university of kansas. the professor holds courtesy appointments in history, religious studies. he's graduate of the university of michigan with undergraduate degree in history. mccormi mccormi he's also an ordained clergy person in the prechurch of the united states. he's published articles in areas of african-american religious history, civil rights history, and urban and african history. he also has published an award

winning book entitled "african-americans in the furniture city, the civil rights struggle in the grand rapids and grand rapids, michigan." he has a forthcoming book due out in a few months. school master of the movement biography. we look forward to having that. we'll start with the professor as he speaks about benjamin e. mays and his role as an inner faith pioneer. >> thank you to all of the students for coming out. thank you for allowings disting. i want to begin my comments with saying that mays was a baptist. one of hisen a baptist all my l for mays what that meant was one

of the key elements of being a baptist was the freedom of conscience. one could make up one's own mind and only had to look to god for any final judgment. so beginning with mays is that heavy emphasis on freedom of contents and intellectual honesty. one of the things that repeatedly from student to student that he preached intellectual freedom. if you believed in it, you had to act on it. one of the ways that mays became an inner faith pioneer was through the ymca movement. we think of that ymca song but the ymca movement was a global movement among men and it was evangelical movement that went

around the world. people as diverse as dr. mays and many other people who are in history and whole host of people used the ymca movement to go around the world and interact in the ways that dr. mays met gandhi is he was going to india on the international ymca movement. this allowed the freedom to go and to travel. i want to put this a little bit quick context. india, south africa was still under british imperialism and one of the ways you could go was to say that you had religious duties to do or to carry out and mays traveled under that so he could meet leaders.

in 1937 mays went not only to india, but he traveled through what we now call the middle east or near east. and this opened up a huge world to him. one, he interviewed gandhi for 90 minutes which he wrote about extensively in newspapers and secondly he also was traveling because he understood that christianity was a global religion itself and that christianity in and of itself had internal divisions. baptists had their sets of beliefs and others had their sets of beliefs so mays was traveling in the context of trying to look at christianity itself as a global religion and also to begin he was his first

into hinduism and islam. mays was interested in the relationships between christians and jews. especially after the aftermath of the european holocaust that mays thought it was crucially important that particularly black christians not be anti-semitic in thinking of the ways they thought about their own expressions of various expressions of christianity. the greater way he looks at the dialogue is his important role in being an advocate for south africa. one of his most distinguished moments came in 1954 in evanston, illinois, just north of chicago where northwestern university is where he makes a

wholesale thattack. in all of these ways, mays is interacting and then coming back to morehouse and before he was at morehouse he was dean of the howard school of religion as it was called now howard university school. he was attacking these structures telling students to open themselves up to dialoguing about the larger world which they inhabited. this is fairly remarkable thing for a man who grew up in a little town in south carolina. i'll let my colleagues continue but thank you. >> thank you. secondly, we have dr. luther smith. he has served on the faculty

since 1979. dr. smith served as president of the university senate, president of the faculty council and associate dean for faculty development. he was born in st. louis, missouri. attended college at washington university in st. louis where he majored in socialology. his dissertation was the basis of his first book. he is editor of howard thurman essential writings and co-editor of recently released the living wisdom of howard thurman a visionary of our time. dr. luther smith. >> thank you. it's a joy to be back in this community. morehouse has had an important place in my life both

symbolically in terms of the figures who have come through here as well as the time that i've had for sebatical spending time with students and faculty and living ofmorehouse through you and many of my students. thank you for your hospitality inviting us here and for your interest in this theme of inner faith perspectives. i want to begin with a statement from rabbi alvin fine. he says according to a legend, there are in the world at any given time 36 wise and righteous persons gifted with special spiritual powers that enable them to perceive the divine president with clear insight and understanding. because of their merit, the hope for humanity is forever renewed

and forever sustained. surely howard thurman was one of god's chosen. one of those 36 spiritual prodigies who keep human faith alive at all times. it's this kind of statement about thurman that i think reflects how impressed persons not only intellectually but in transforming their lives. you have statements like this not only from rabbi fine but rabbi glazer, a leader among rabbis and persons across faith traditions indicating the way in which howard thurman's witness was transformative for them especially the way in which howard thurman often led them to their own roots. the way in which howard thurman was transformative was not converting people to a christian

perspective but thurman as a christian was interested in taking people to their own thure truly understand the covenant more and what it means to be a jew. in a personal conversation with thurmon he was saying, i really have no interest in converting people from one faith tradition to christianity. but to help them to understand what in their own roots has the authenticity and integrity to lead them in their pursuit of god. if they can find that, if they can get back to that, then they are being faithful to god's call upon their lives. here you get thurmon's understanding, i believe, of the way in which we are to be an interfaith relationship with one another. not in any kind of either arrogant or hierarchical way but in the sense of each faith tradition has an authenticity

and integrity unto itself and with humility and respect and interacting with various faith traditions, hopefully we grow in our own particular way of pursuing god. this understanding of particularity was important to thurmon. it was part of his early teaching. if you are able to understand a faith tradition and deepen yourself in it, hopefully what you discover is the universal in your faith tradition that is also the universal in other faith traditions. another way in which thurmon said it is whatever is true in a religion is not true because it's part of that religion. but it's part of that religion because it is true. so thurmon would often encourage us to lookparticularity, when we

claim to not' race or religion. as well as we get into trouble when we fail to recognize that the universal cannot be contained in any one particular. this is howard thurmon's gift to us, i believe, especially in the 21st century when we are living in communities with increased pluralism and struggling to know how i can be faithful to my own tradition and how i am to relate to other religious traditions which often seem strange and

alienating and different from my own. there is a great tendency of people to ignore the differences among the religions and affirm we are all one. this was not thurmon's approach. thurmon was very much one who said to us, when you affirm your particularity and you are looking for the universal, it doesn't have to be contradictory to declare who you are as you are also embracing others. and appreciating their gift and the way they can transform your life and world. in closing, thurmon's understanding comes to him from his own religious experiences. as a mystic, it's thurman's

experience that as he encounterses god with a sense of oneness, what he also comes to experience is an affirmation of who he is in a particular way and also an affirmation of all there is. all there is. and it's this oneness, this lessening of the boundaries we have established in order to relate with one another that thurman comes to see as god's dream for us. this is reality. we can live yourselves denying it. we can live ourselves seeking to work toward isolation, but anything given to separation and isolation sn fails god's dream for community.

how his own life has been transformed by religious experience itself. thurman was the first african-american who had this extensive conversation with gandhi and was an inspiration to mays and johnson in their trips to india. in the conversation with gandhi you have a sense of thurman respecting gan ti as a hindu. not making excuses that gandhi is somehow an honorary christian and doesn't know it as many christians do in trying to reconcile gandhi's ethics with the fact that they had such a deep appreciation of him. thurman saw in gan ti that which was transformative because gandhi was a disciple of truth. i believe if we are serious in studying thurman, one of the

insights for us in this 21st century will be ways in which we can engage pluralism with celebration rather than trepidation. thurman said it's religion which seems odd. we know how religious people can go at one another, but what thurman led us to is the oneness in religion that transcend it is political, social and personal rhetoric that divides. there is a key to us and it's worth the interfaith journey. >> third and definitely not last is dr. preston king. dr. king was born in albany georgia and earned his bachelor of arts from fist university, his master of science and a doctorate of philosophy from the

london school of economics. he lived abroad for nearly 40 years and was also educated at the university of vienna straussburg and paris. he wanted to mention you were in exile. he's one of the heroes. his family was very much involved in the civil rights movement in albany. they disrespected him. refused to call a him mister and led to other things to accept that abuse he left the country. he was in exiled and -- president bill clinton. he's a distinguished professor of political science and

philosophy. dr. king holds visiting oh appointments at morehouse and the university of east anglia. he's a professor emeritus at lancaster university, a distinguished scholar and a prolific writer. he's authored many books including fear of power, the ideology of order and afternoon winner, toleration, federalism and federation and thinking past a problem. we are so glad to have you here with us, dr. king. >> thank you very much. of all the speakers, my task has to be the'siest because my subject is better known than any of the others. that's not a question of fairness or ub unfairness but a question of fact. at that time risk of being accused of positivism.

i have had great sympathy for martin. largely because and probably mistak mistakenly because i have always seen a great affinity between his life and mine. when i was 18 i was around the atlanta university center lot. i took a lead role in aplay called the man who came to dinner. i have seen martin in things like that. he was par excellence and a person who was concerned to mold his university through language. i have never seen him as a mystic.