Bayard Rustin and Eugene Reed at Freedom House (1964) Photo: Courtesy of the United States Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons
Black Fire
Harvey Gillman gives a personal response to a powerful anthology of writings by African American Quakers
The subtitle of Black Fire is African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights, though no definition of spirituality is given. I would offer: spirituality – a growing into relationship of self with deeper self; self with neighbour; self with cosmos; held together in an embrace of Spirit.
What, then, would be a Quaker take on spirituality? Or an African American one? Or should it be ‘spiritualities’? How do these relationships deepen if you are told that as an individual you have no worth; that your group is inferior to others; that you have no land on which to place your feet and that the God you are taught to believe in holds you in contempt?
