Sadly, many of the issues these five prophetic voices confronted in their lifetimes are still with us – racial injustice, economic inequality, political oppression, and the threat of nuclear weapons, to name a few. But our own historic moment also faces issues that were not foremost in the minds of Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, Thurman, Day, or Heschel. None of these figures were compelled to address injustices around sexual orientation or gender identity. Environmental concerns, now an existential threat, did not loom large for most of these figures, although Thurman did address them on occasion, as in this excerpt from his book In Search of Common Ground:

“Man cannot long separate himself from nature without withering as a cut rose in a vase... It is but a single leap to regard nature as being so completely other than himself that he may exploit it, plunder it and rape it without impunity…Our atmosphere is polluted, our streams are poisoned, our hills are denuded, wildlife is increasingly exterminated while more and more man becomes an alien on the earth and a fouler of his own nest.”

Because Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, Thurman, Day and Heschel are such well spoken and profound thinkers, our instinct may be to engage contemporary concerns like those above by asking ourselves, “What would Bonhoeffer do?” or “What would Dorothy Day do?”

While that is high praise for these figures, it comes with inherent danger.

Heschel often said that to follow another’s spiritual path was essentially “spiritual plagiarism.” We can draw something from others, admire others, but each must carve out their own path.