Howard Thurman’s encounter with Indian students in 1935 forced him to face a troubling question: What does it mean to represent a faith that has failed to live up to its own ideals? This reflection explores how Thurman’s wrestling with the word missionary reveals the moral weight of language and the responsibility of those who claim to speak for faith.

“Our fathers have given us this practice of patriarchy and racism that remains in our country and in a lot of our churches today. The violent and unjust acts we witness in our world are symptoms of this illness that hides behind American exceptionalism. However, this history reveals, like Kendrick’s song, that this is a generational problem—and our past ‘fathers’ were formed by environments that caused them to harm others.”