The Nature of Commitment | September 20, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton
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d…to see timid people rise to their feet, affirming, rejecting, questioning; to watch bold people sit quietly with a newly earned respect for another’s opinion – this was for me an exhilarating experience. Out of the vast fog of conversation slowly emerged the significant peaks.
Among those peaks was the first draft of the Commitment…the one that we recite together at each worship service. Today’s version begins like this:
I affirm my need for a growing understanding of all peoples as children of God, and I seek after a vital experience of God as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and other great religious spirits whose fellowship with God was the foundation of their fellowship with all people.
These words will be very familiar to those of us meeting on a regular basis in this sanctuary. They were originally written by the small group of souls that founded this church, under the leadership of Dr. Howard Thurman and Dr. Alfred Fisk, with an extremely committed group of individuals. Thurman describes the 6-week process of organizing themselves into an independent church as having to face issues that were large and forbidding, stating that one look at their financial situation, put them in a state of shock.
But work they did for the precious independence from the denominational church…so dedicated were they to the idea that all peoples are children of God and that our ability to have a growing understanding was essential to this fellowship. Remember that this happened in 1945, one year after the interfaith testimonial dinner in honor of Howard and Sue Thurman held in Washington DC and attended by Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as Mary McCloud Bethune and Dr. Mordecai Johnson. These prominent figures, in addition to others, remained associated with the church. They were deeply committed to this growing understanding…they worked their entire lives for it. I think they may have resonated with the second part of the Commitment, the current version of which is:
I desire to share in the spiritual growth and ethical awareness of people of varied national, cultural, racial and creedal heritage united in a religious fellowship.
This is the key focus of Fellowship Church as a community…as a place to seek common ground. It is a place to share spiritual growth and to continue to develop our capacity to cultivate and awareness of all peoples united in a religious fellowship. Now in 1945 this was a bold statement…at a time when the leaders of this church had a very difficult time finding worship space, since they were interracial in leadership and in membership. We know this was the reality at the time. It was a time of separation that was very visible. Perhaps less visible today, we are nonetheless separated. It begins with the screens that we, as well as, our children are addicted to. This may have begun as a way to connect, but has instead become something that can keep us profoundly separate. Acknowledging this desire…the desire to share in this growth and awareness with others is powerful…and not only online, but in what Thurman termed contacts with fellowship. It takes this kind of contact to get to a place of depth that Thurman envisioned…a depth envisioned in this statement from the book, Jesus and the Disinherited…again written while he was at Fellowship Church:
It is necessary, therefore, for the privileged and the underprivileged to work on the common environment for the purpose of providing normal experiences of fellowship. This is one very important reason for the insistence that segregation
is a complete ethical and moral evil…it poisons all normal contacts
of those persons involved.
He continues:
The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value. This cannot be discovered in a vacuum or in a series of artificial or hypothetical relationships. It has to be in a real situation, natural, free.
This statement clearly leads to the last part of the commitment that reads as follows:
I desire the strength of corporate worship through membership in The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples with the imperative of personal dedication to the working out of God’s purpose here and in all places.
This is the thesis of Fellowship Church. Thurman says:
The experience of common worship of God is such a moment.
It is a moment of a common sharing in a real situation that is natural and free.
If we desire the strength of corporate worship, what does that mean? I think we could spend hours on this statement alone, much like the small group who founded the church did when they wrestled with this document. Further they say that the personal dedication is imperative…we must do it. This speaks to Thurman’s idea that life is alive and that it is this imperative that causes us individually, and in a group, to want to actualize our potential in the same way a plant actualizes its potential…its growth pattern…it’s reason for being. This is a connection that Thurman often makes…one that drew me to his teachings. He understood on a visceral level…on the level of the organism that we are connected and come from the mystery of life.
When we listen to the following music, this actualization of our potential reminds us that Everything Must Change…this can become a comfort rather than a sense of fear that so many are now experiencing. It seems to highlight the natural, free and easy nature of life that Thurman speaks of…the back and forth…the rhythm of life.
The lyrics read in part:
Everything must change
Nothing stays the same
Everyone will change
No one stays the same
The young become the old
And mysteries do unfold
‘Cause that’s the way of time
Nothing and no one goes unchanged
[Bridge: Bernard Ighner]
There are not many things in life
You can be sure of, except
Rain comes from the clouds
Sun lights up the sky
And hummingbirds do fly
But change demands commitment. In order to come together and do the work that needs to be done we must make this commitment. Thurman dedicates an entire chapter in his book, Disciplines of the Spirit to the idea of Commitment…making the connection to biology and other disciplines. He wrote:
Commitment means that it is possible for a person to yield the nerve center of their consent to a purpose or cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to them that whether they live or die.
Of course, we know this is what the ancestors in the civil/human rights movement did. People such as Martin King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Fannie Lou Hamer and so many others. It is, I know, quite a radical step that few are willing to take. There is no judgement from me about whether or not we are willing to put our lives on the line or not, though I think many are doing it on a daily basis, based on their economic and general material situation.
I think the main point that Thurman made, especially in the formation and nurturance of this community, was to note that when a commitment is made, vast creative energies are unleashed that can facilitate the change we want to see…to see the world we are dreaming of. This moment of commitment…the moment of our high resolve both individually and as a community is what Thurman and the other founders of the church wanted to test. This is how important this document is…The Commitment. This is the experience of saying Yes to our connection with the all-pervading presence and to life and yes to community. We are no longer only individual entities but part of a broader movement of the spirit. Thurman writes in The Search for Common Ground:
It is time for assessing and reassessing resources in the light of the most ancient memory of the race concerning community, to hear again the voice of prophet and seer calling for harmony among all the children of men and women. At length there will begin to be talk of plans for the new city - that has never before existed on land or sea. At the center of the common life there will be strange and vaguely familiar stirrings.
Is this the time for assessing and reassessing? Can we hear again the voice of the prophet and seer of even only 80 years ago? Is this the city that we are being called to build…one based on the resources of our ancestors and the familiar stirrings of life and connection? Can we sense the familiar stirrings?
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