Reconciliation:
The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu. - book reviews
Christian
Century, Feb
4, 1998 by Paul
E. Stroble
By
Michael Battle. Pilgrim, 272 pp., $19.95.
As
adjutant to Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1993-94, Michael Battle
participated with Tutu in both everyday and dramatic activities. He attended
church and dignitary functions, took part in the bishop's rugby matches and
walks, made pastoral calls, listened to telephoned death threats, witnessed Tutu
cast his first ballot and attended Nelson Mandela's 1994 inauguration.
Battle
does not call his book a systematic exposition of Tutu's theology but a
"meditation" on Tutu's spirituality and theology in its cultural
context. Actually, the book fits both descriptions. It provides a clear
elucidation of Tutu's theology drawn from a variety of published and unpublished
texts while also meditating upon the dynamic and compassionate aspects of that
theology.
That
cultural context is, of course, apartheid, formalized in South Africa in 1948
and deposed in 1990. The history of South African colonialism includes a
Calvinist theology wherein God's sovereignty was interpreted racially: the
divine judgment demands the division of persons into racial groups, with whites
supreme and blacks subordinate. The heritage of the European Enlightenment, too,
gave primacy to the thinking, self-determining subject, which in turn gave
ideological grounding to the separation of persons into dominant and oppressed.
Against
this background Tutu brings a theology that "seeks to restore the
oppressor's humanity by releasing and enabling the oppressed to see their
oppressors as peers under God." This is his ubuntu theology, so named after
an African idea of community. Tutu shows that human beings are defined not by
their race but by their createdness in God's image, which brings value and
dignity to all people. That imago Dei thus breaks down racial barriers. Tutu
declares "we can be human only in ... community, in koinonia, in
peace."
Ubuntu
theology sees community rather than self-determination as the essential aspect
of personhood. People are distinctive beings, able to recognize and acknowledge
one another through mutual encounter and cultural integration. African
assertions about God's transcendence and immanence emphasize both God's
creativeness (and separateness from creation) and God's encounter with human
beings in the divine kenosis.
Anglican,
Eastern Orthodox and liberation spirituality come together in Tutu's theology, a
theology grounded in both prayer and social action. The result is what Battle
calls "an African spirituality of passionate concern," which leads to
a political involvement that does not compromise Christian values. Tutu's is a
deeply liberating theology (more inclusive, according to Battle, than Western
black theologies) because it is generous, embracing and conciliatory to people
of all races and systems of belief and at the same time prophetic in the
struggle against racism.
I
found Battle's book a helpful source of reflection, showing how a deeply
spiritual concept of Christian embracing. The community can be at once
uncompromising, prophetic, open-hearted and embracing. The bibliography and
notes provide a lengthy and helpful guide to Tutu's writings.
Reviewed
by Paul E. Stroble, adjunct instructor at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary in
Louisville, Kentucky.