San Francisco

San Francisco matters in the book as a place where religious ideals were put into institutional practice. It is where Howard Thurman accepted the invitation to lead an intentionally intercultural church, and where he later settled again with his family after retiring from Howard University. The city also marks an early influence on Dorothy Day: as a child living in nearby Oakland, she encountered the suffering and generosity associated with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

A setting for Thurman’s church

In 1945, a Presbyterian minister in San Francisco wrote to Thurman about creating a church in which white, Black, Asian, and Latino people would participate as equals in every aspect of congregational life. After deliberating with his family, Thurman accepted the position. The church, called the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, gave him a place to test questions that had shaped his life: whether worship could be the human spirit’s central act, and whether the presence of God could unsettle the divisions by which people classify one another.

Worship was the church’s keystone. Thurman drew on the arts and on forms of worship that made room for silence and shared attention. The congregation attracted social radicals, union members and leaders, artists, and ordinary citizens. The church thus took shape not only as an ideal of interracial fellowship but as a community brought together through actual practices of worship and participation. Eleanor Roosevelt became an associate member, along with others who lived far from San Francisco.

A home for writing and reflection

After leaving Howard University, Thurman and his family settled back into life in San Francisco. He did much of his writing there, while his books continued to be published. The city therefore appears again after the church-building period, as a home associated with his later work rather than only with a public religious experiment.

That return followed years of service at Howard, where Thurman had experimented with chapel worship to engage students, including periods of silence, meditation, prayer, and liturgical dance. San Francisco became a later setting for the writing that continued his reflection on religious experience and human fellowship.

The earthquake in Day’s early life

San Francisco also enters Dorothy Day’s story through the earthquake that struck when she was eight. Her family had moved to Oakland shortly before the disaster. Day saw the human suffering around her: people were homeless, had lost their possessions, or could not find family members. Alongside the destruction, she remembered people helping one another. Her mother and neighbors spent the day preparing hot meals, and others gave generously.

The episode became an early source of Day’s attention to poverty and mutual care. She came to understand that people could respond to suffering with practical generosity, and that such care could briefly transform the relations between them. The earthquake’s significance in her story lies not only in the devastation associated with San Francisco, but also in the example of shared aid that she carried forward.