Howard Thurman’s *Jesus and the Disinherited* presents Jesus as a figure whose message speaks directly to those oppressed by fear, poverty, and social exclusion. Thurman identifies the “disinherited” as people whose lives are shaped by constant threat and injustice, and he argues that Jesus—himself a marginalized Jew living under Roman occupation—offers a model for responding to oppression with dignity. Jesus’ grounding in the love of God allowed him to resist fear, hatred, and deception, and Thurman contends that the same spiritual grounding can empower the oppressed to reclaim their sense of worth.

 

Central to Thurman’s message is the transformative power of nonviolent resistance. He insists that nonviolence is not passive weakness but a courageous method for confronting injustice without losing one’s humanity. When the disinherited embrace love, inner freedom, and nonviolent action, they break the cycle of fear and retaliation. In this way, Thurman offers both a critique of oppression and a hopeful vision of spiritual and social transformation for marginalized people