Author: Sara Palmer

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One New Book for the Preacher

Charles Raynal

Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

William H. Willimon, Conversations with Barth on Preaching. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2006. 324 pages.

William Willimon, formerly Dean of Duke University Chapel, now Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, offers us the fruit of his forty year engagement with the theology of Karl Barth. His aim is “to put Barth in conversation with contemporary homiletics in a ministry of encouragement and empowerment for today’s preachers” (p. 1). For the book, Willimon has reread Barth’s theology, particularly The Göttingen Dogmatics, from the theologian’s 1924 lectures, three years after Barth moved from more than a decade in pastoral ministry to teaching theology. In addition he has done extensive research in the Karl Barth Archive in Basel and translated “scores of sermons.” This book includes extensive small-type notes, a copy of Barth’s own practice. Some of the material in these notes has apparently come from his teaching undergraduates and divinity students, including teaching German students at the Universities of Bonn and Münster, two universities where Barth himself taught. These notes also include considerable dialogue with contemporary writers on homiletics and on secondary literature on Barth. Willimon offers preachers a serious and helpful presentation of Barth’s theology. After the first chapter on Barth’s preaching biography, every other chapter includes a sermon. Six of them Willimon preached in 2004 on texts from Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary. The other three are: 1) a sermon for Trinity Sunday 1999 (Matthew 28:16-20); 2) “Dear Church,” a topical sermon on the war in Iraq; 3) a sermon “Guess Where You’re Going,” on vocation to ministry preached at the service of celebration for his installation in 2004 as Bishop of North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. He offers these nine sermons to illustrate how Barth’ s theology informs his own preaching. For the rest of this review, I want to comment on these sermons and the way they connect with Willimon’s reading of Barth. In Chapter 2, “Preaching the Bible with Barth,” his sermon, “Untimely Word,” from the lectionary Pentecost passage of Acts 2:12-18, proclaims that God speaks in unlikely times and places. Willimon preached this sermon in an auditorium at two o’clock in the afternoon in 2004 to pastors and colleagues at a conference gathered to honor him and celebrate his preaching, “the wrong time and in the wrong place,” comparing it to Sunday morning at Duke Chapel, where he had preached thirty-two sermons the previous year. He connects the awkward timing with the untimely character of the original Pentecost message and Peter’s sermon. In situations humorous and painful, easily recognizable by any pastor—a wedding at a yacht club, a funeral for an infant who has tragically died, the Sunday morning after 9/11—Willimon captures the improbability of success in our preaching. Thus he shows how all the more miraculous and gracious that God called Peter and began the transformation of the world through preaching, when three thousand heard the message and were saved.

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God chooses the right time. The sermon embodies Willimon’s first main theme from Barth’ s preaching: it comes from the Bible, the source of God’s Word for preacher and hearer, and the sermon’s success is God’s doing, not our timing or rhetorical skill. In the next two chapters, Willimon shows how Barth criticized philosophy and rhetoric as foundations for faithful preaching. In Chapter 3, the sermon is for Easter on John 20, “Seeing is Believing,” interpreting Mary Magdalene’s and Thomas’s coming to see and believe in the resurrection of Jesus. In the introduction Willimon contrasts seeing what is real in common ordinary experience and learning to see in a new way. The difference provides his lead into the stories of Mary Magdalene and Thomas confronting Jesus risen from the dead. Mary, thinking Jesus was a gardener near the empty tomb, came to faith when she heard him call her name. Thomas could believe only when Jesus offered for his touch the wounds in his hands and side. The sermon poses for Easter the biblical witness to God’s raising Jesus from death on the cross. The resurrection of Jesus from death on the cross is a main point of Willimon’s interpretation of Barth for preaching. (See especially Chapter 9, “Easter Speech.”) In chapter 4, “How to Say What God Says,” Willimon’s sermon is on Luke 11:113 , in which the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray and Jesus gives the Lord’s prayer. Willimon focuses on the petition, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth just like it is in heaven.” The sermon affirms that “Prayer is not so much what we say as a determined willingness to let God have God’s say” (p. 106). The sermon on learning to let God speak to us thus becomes his move into Barth’s rhetorical use of expressionism in his Romans commentary, his irony in his crisis theology period, and his realism in his Church Dogmatics. Willimon accepts Tom Long’s assessment that the “turn to the listener” was the most significant new trend in twentieth century homiletics, but he argues that Barth’ s theology does not support it. Willimon criticizes this rhetorical turn, offering a summary of western rhetorical thinking and pointing to Barth’s objective, realistic claim for God in preaching. Chapter 5 (“Word Makes World”) presents Barth’ s emphasis on revelation and the church’s teaching about the Trinity. Willimon offers a Trinity Sunday sermon on Matthew 28:16-20, “The Extravagance of the Trinitarian Faith.” In this sermon, Willimon likens God to a good teacher who is a big talker: God is effusive, loquacious, and commands his followers to go as witnesses and speak on God’s behalf. This is the longest sermon in the book and the most technical. It is a doctrinal sermon on the Trinity, less colloquial and with fewer illustrations and contemporary cultural connections than the others, and yet it moves. It makes a strong connection between real claim for the truth of Christian teaching and the obedience God requires of the church. In Chapter 6 (“The Talkative God”) Willimon continues his emphasis on Barth’s theology of the Word of God as cure for an undue homiletical preoccupation with the listener, reminding us that Barth wrote his theology for practicing ministers. The sermon here is on Luke’s account of John’s baptism of Jesus (Luke 3:21-22) and it emphasizes in a vivid way, with humor and self-deprecation, that in spite of the impossible demands of preaching for the understanding of the people and the impossible task of really hearing a sermon, the Word is proclaimed and people do get it, by the grace of God. Chapter 7 (“Heralds of God”) considers the image of the herald, announcing the message of God as a primary emphasis in Barth’s theology of preaching. Willimon sides with Tom Long in preferring the more encompassing metaphor of witness, a

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more active metaphor, and one that encourages critical awareness of the kind of speech that helps proclamation. The witness of the sermon should bear rhetorical similarity to the scriptural and literary form of the biblical witness. In this chapter Willimon faults Barth’s preaching for being too prosaic. In contrast, his theological writing is full of rhetorical flourish, including irony, narrative, and surprise. Barth’s theology serves the preacher by the critique of preaching it offers, not so much by his example in his sermons. In this connection Willimon offers his sermon, “Dear Church,” in the rhetorical form of a letter like 2 Corinthians, on reconciliation and new creation. He is preaching directly in response to the United States invasion of Iraq. In Chapter 8 (“Troubled Preaching”) Willimon shows how the voice of the church arises in our time of conflict. His sermon “Sabbath Unrest” is a brief, pointed application of Jesus’ sermon at Nazareth (Luke 4:21-30). He shows the countercultural , counter-religious disturbance Jesus’ sermon caused and claims it for a counter-cultural ministry of the people of God today. Particularly in this emphasis, Willimon shows his debt to his Yale teachers Hans Frei and George Lindbeck and to Charles Campbell. Frei’s The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative {191 A) offered a history of and theological commentary on theories of biblical interpretation, primarily from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His work was one main inspiration for George Lindbeck’ s, The Nature of Doctrine ( 1984), which proposed viewing Christian language like some cultural anthropologists describe religion, as the adoption of the language, symbols, and rituals of their culture. Charles Campbell, Preaching Jesus: New Directions for Homiletics in Hans Frei* s Post-Liberal Theology (1997), drew out implications of Frei’s ideas andhis appropriation of Karl Barth’s focus on biblical narrative for preaching. Willimon owns his indebtedness to these proposals for thinking about theology for preaching. Chapter 9 (“Easter Speech”) returns to the Easter message (See “Seeing is Believing” in Chapter 3), and the sermon interprets Luke’s call to the fishers from fishing to make disciples. The sermon keys on the transformation of Simon Peter, from his defiant complaint to Jesus, “We have fished all night and have nothing” (Luke 5:5), to the awestruck, “Get out of here; I’m a sinner.” (Willimon’s Revised Version of Luke 5:8). Paired with I Corinthians 15, this text reflects the resurrection from death to new life in the lives of Jesus’ followers. Willimon uses this theme for a renewal in the life of the church and interpreting success in its program of stewardship. In Chapter 10 (“Called to Preach”) Willimon’s theme is vocation. In the sermon “Guess Where You’re Going,” preached at the Service of Celebration and Installation as the Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, November 14,2004, Willimon reflects on his own vocation, commenting on the calls of Moses, Samuel, Isaiah, and the followers of Jesus. He speaks to the occasion in his characteristically pungent way, even including a reference to his daughter Harriet, who might have been in the congregation. He turns the personal dimensions of his call and placement into a fine reflection on vocation to ministry, specified in the Methodist itinerant context. You serve where Jesus calls and the bishops place you. Different means of placement, whether congregational or presbyerian, won’t prevent nonMethodists from gaining insight from Willimon about serving where you are called and calling for the ministry of the people where you serve. Willimon’s sermons as printed in this book follow Barth’s theology to the degree that Willimon is unapologetically enthusiastic in making real biblical claims, for

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example in the Easter proclamation of resurrection, the demanding call of Jesus to vocation, and the doctrine of the Trinity. Willimon draws from his close colleague, Stanley Hauerwas, and emphasizes Christian moral and ecclesial separation, and, particularly in the case of the present war in Iraq, opposition to American culture and policy. In the critique of American culture, he argues from the standpoint of Karl Barth’s politically critical and progressive stance. He is also like Barth, even as a devoted Methodist pastor and recently appointed bishop, in not sparing the contemporary protestant church’s temptation to become captive to the prevailing culture. On the other hand, these sermons differ from both Barth’s teaching about the writing of sermons and Barth’s actual practice of preaching. He criticizes Barth’s homiletical theory and practice: “Barth’s emphasis against homiletical rhetoric and style is, in the end, an exaggerated overemphasis” (p. 249). Barth’s sermons do not show us the artistic imagination and poetic style that went into the writing of his Church Dogmatics. Willimon asks, “Even in a Sunday congregation, is there not some need for entertainment, illustration, and attempts to retain our hearers?” (p. 252). We can be glad that William Willimon has shared his long-term study of Karl Barth’ s theology and its resource for preaching. The best use of this book is as a guide to our own reading and application of Barth’s theology to the weekly work of preaching.

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One New Book for the Preacher

Rush Otey Selwyn Avenue Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, North Carolina

EXCLUSION AND EMBRACE: A THEOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF IDENTITY , OTHERNESS, AND RECONCILIATION by Miroslav Volf. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996. 336 pages.

Miroslav Volf, presently teaching theology at Yale Divinity School and director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture, has written extensively on a variety of subjects. Many of his articles are readily available over the internet or in print from periodicals such as Christianity Today and The Christian Century. Although he is one of the most provocative and lucid theologians at work today, in my own circles not many preachers have made any consistent efforts to delve into his thought. Volf grew up in Croatia, where his father was a Pentecostal pastor. All of his writing and speaking is grounded in the harsh realities of the war in his native land, and has an existential depth and urgency that is somewhat rare for academicians. Volf has taught in more evangelical seminaries such as Fuller, and yet is now at Yale and has been sought by various other major theological institutions of the Western World as a faculty member or guest lecturer. According to one source, he was courted by Harvard to be dean of the divinity school there, but was not offered the position because of his belief that theology is ultimately within the context of the Church and for the Church. He has a strong tie to the Reformed tradition, in part through one of his mentors, Jürgen Moltmann, and is also intentionally ecumenical. {Free of Charge, published by Zondervan in 2005, was designated the book for Lenten study in the Anglican community by the Archbishop of Canterbury.) Moreover, Volf is committed to interfaith dialogue while remaining a confessing and practicing Christian. The essence of the struggle within Exclusion and Embrace is revealed in the book’s preface. Volf had been giving a lecture on the themes in the title, and at the end was asked by Moltmann, “But can you embrace a cetnikV Volf ruminates:

It was the winter of 1993. For months now the notorious Serbian fighters called “cetnik” had been sowing desolation in my native country, herding people into concentration camps, raping women, burning down churches, and destroying cities. I had just argued that we ought to embrace our enemies as God has embraced us in Christ. Can I embrace a cetnik—the ultimate other, so to speak, the evil other? What would justify the embrace? Where would I draw the strength for it? What would it do to my identity as a human being and as a Croat? It took me a while to answer, though I immediately knew what I wanted to say. “No, I cannot—but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.” (9)

The tension between the message of the cross and the world of violence presented itself to me as a conflict between the desire to follow the Crucified and the disinclination either simply to watch others be crucified or let

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myself be nailed to the cross. (10)

Exclusion and Embrace thus addresses profound issues for the Christian in personal relationships, for the Church beset by our schismatic and judgmental illnesses, for the nation, and for the world. Do we exclude our enemies, even to the point of killing them, or do we embrace them as the gospel teaches? Throughout the book, Volf displays an immense range of theological, philosophical , and literary conversation partners (Augustine, Aquinas, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Mary Daly, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner, Girard, Moltmann, the Niebuhrs, Nietzsche, Rosemary Ruether, Sobrino, and various postmodernists). His writing, while exceptionally erudite, is clear and is accessible for both laity and clergy. At the conclusion of the book there are three full pages of references to biblical texts—the author has a passionate devotion to and strong knowledge of Scripture. A brief review cannot do justice to the complexity and depth of Volf s subject, or to the beauty and often piercing and awe-full insights of his arguments and observations . However, let two brief quotations serve as invitation to the full feast!

.. .exclusion can entail cutting off the bonds that connect, taking oneself out of the pattern of interdependence and placing oneself in a position of sovereign independence. The other then emerges either as an enemy that must be pushed away from the self and driven out of its space or as a nonentity—a superfluous being—that can be disregarded and abandoned. Second, exclusion can entail erasure or separation, not recognizing the other as someone who in his or her otherness belongs to the pattern of interdependence . The other then emerges as an inferior being who must either be assimilated by being made like the self or be subjugated to the self. Exclusion takes place when the violence of expulsion, assimilation, or subjugation and the indifference of abandonment replace the dynamics of taking in and keeping out as well as the mutuality of giving and receiving. (67)

On the other hand, the gospel is God’s embrace (see, for example, the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15). But embrace in this Christocentric and therefore cruciform sense is far from being easy, or retreating into sentimentality, or engaging in polite perfunctory hugging.

The four structural elements in the movement of embrace are opening the arms, waiting, closing the arms, and then opening them again. For embrace to happen, all four must be there and they must follow one another on an unbroken timeline; stopping with the first two (opening the arms and waiting) would abort the embrace, and stopping with the third (closing the arms) would pervert it from an act of love to an act of oppression and, paradoxically, exclusion. (141)

I open my arms, make a movement of the self toward the other, the enemy, and do not know whether my action will be appreciated, supported, and reciprocated. I can become a savior or a victim— possibly both. Embrace

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is grace, and “grace is gamble, always” (Smedes 1984 [Forgive and Forget], 137). (147)

Toward the end of the book, Volf discusses power, violence, nonviolence, and even comments on the book of Revelation, a text frequently used in holy war or just war theologies.

At the very heart of “the One who sits on the throne” is the cross. The world to come is ruled by the one who on the cross took violence upon himself in order to conquer the enmity and embrace the enemy. The Lamb’s rule is legitimized not by the “sword” but by its “wounds”; the goal of its rule is not to subject but to make people “reign forever and ever” (22:5). With the Lamb at the center of the throne, the distance between the “throne” and the “subjects” has collapsed in the embrace of the triune God. (301)

This book would be appropriate for a Lenten study, church book club, or a sermon series (see the chapter titles such as “The Cross, the Self, and the Other” and “Deception and Truth”). Those who seek to be disturbed in a healthy way should “embrace” this book, and also seek out Volf s more recent work Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2005), which further explores the issues raised in this review. One can also find an excellent video interview and presentation by Volf at http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/multimedia/7video, from the 2006 Trinity Institute, which had “Reconciliation” as its theme. Those who do not wish to be disturbed in a healthy way should avoid Volf at all costs…and most likely will continue excluding, dividing, warring, and even killing in God’s name.

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One New Book for the Preacher

Mark Gray

Cooke Centenary Presbyterian Church, Belfast, Ireland

TELL ME NO LIES: INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM AND ITS TRIUMPHS edited by John Pilger. Jonathan Cape: London, 2004. 626 pages.

John Pilger is an Australian investigative journalist. Early in his career, in the 1960s, he helped uncover and bring to public consciousness the hidden depth of social depravation and injustice in Britain. Since then, as war correspondent and filmmaker, he has covered all of the major global conflicts, relentlessly telling truths that those in power would rather keep hidden. Invariably, because he works at the grassroots he gives voice to the voiceless and always infuses his writings with the need to improve human rights. In addition to his journalism and filmmaking, Pilger has also written several important books, which together articulate an alternative version of reality to that propagated by official voices about such places as Vietnam, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Rwanda, and latterly Afghanistan and Iraq. In Tell Me No Lies he gathers together articles by similarly oriented writers, who on a wide range of very different and divergent topics not only attempt to keep the record straight but also hold those in power to account. Introducing the criteria by which he has selected articles from 1945 to the present, Pilger explains that “Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job: who push back screens, peer behind facades, lift rocks. Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour” (xv). To be included, therefore, journalists have to have a strong sense of their own voice and be willing to tilt against the establishment apparatus. Indicating the appropriate journalistic cast of mind, which is sparklingly on display throughout the book, Pilger approvingly quotes the Irish journalist Claud Cockburn’s skeptical insight: “Never believe any thing…until it is officially denied” (xv). In this perspective, one of the key aims of authentic journalism is “rescuing Objectivity’ from its common abuse as a cover for official lies” (xiv). Beyond this, however, as the American journalist T. D. Allman observed,

Genuinely objective journalism not only gets the facts right, it gets the meaning of events right. It is compelling not only today, but stands the test of time. It is validated not only by “reliable sources,” but by the unfolding of history. It is journalism that ten, twenty, fifty years after the fact still holds up a true and intelligent mirror to events, (xiii)

It is journalism that therefore has a pronounced literary quality. Furthermore, in the dynamic of truth telling confronting official mendacity, even though many of these articles are from the past, they still raise pertinent questions about present realities. This is starkly illustrated by Wilfred Burchett’s 1945 article, “The Atomic Plague.” While hundreds of other journalists allowed themselves to be manipulated by the military authorities of the day, Burchett, as he put it, “slipped the leash” and headed

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for Hiroshima. He was the first Western journalist to enter the city after the bomb had been dropped and in his prophetic article, subheadlined “I Write This as a Warning to the World,” he bore witness to a truth the authorities wanted to keep hidden: he had actually seen the effects of the bomb, so he warned about radiation poisoning. The authorities denied its very existence, and Burchett was denounced, not only by those in power but also by other journalists seduced to purveying propaganda. Attempting to read the present through this lens from the past makes you wonder what is being covered up around the world by the mechanism of “embedded” journalism. Part of the answer is supplied in the last section of Tell Me No Lies, in which the heirs of people like Wilfred Burchett report independently from firsthand experience the shocking realities of Iraq. In “Eyewitness in Falluja,” Jo Wilding concludes her piece on the impact of war on the lives of ordinary people by counterpointing George Bush’s Easter Sunday pronouncement to U.S. troops that “I know what we’re doing in Iraq is right” with what she has witnessed. From a grounding in actuality rather than abstraction she asks the president right back: “Shooting unarmed men in the back outside their homes is right? Shooting grandmothers with white flags is right? Shooting at women and children who are fleeing is right? Firing at ambulances is right?” (582). She continues: “Well, George, I know too now…I know what it looks like when a man’s chest is no longer inside him and what it smells like, and I know what it looks like when his wife and children pour out of his house” (582). She concludes: “It’s a crime and it’s a disgrace to us all” (582). Throughout Tell Me No Lies there is a resolutely moral tone. At times some readers might feel that in a bend over backwards way to avoid being hoodwinked by their “own side,” some of the writers have had the wool pulled over their eyes by the “other side.” This is certainly what journalist James Cameron experienced concerning his reporting of North Vietnam during the Vietnamese War. The BBC bought his work only to suppress it as “unacceptable in the current circumstances” (72). Cameron notes, “They whispered that I was a dupe, but what really upset them was that I was not their dupe”(xv). Attacked by Time magazine as “a conduit for the North Vietnamese Communists,” he responded acerbically:

My definition of “conduit,” in common with that of a dictionary, is a channel. I noted down and recorded what diverse people in North Vietnam told me…It is true that I did not intersperse this record with descriptions of [Prime Minister] Pham Van Dong as a slant eyed, evasive, yellow skinned and doubtless and American example of Asian Communism…If the function of a reporter is not that of a channel, I am at a loss to know what his function is, unless it be that of writing for Time. (71)

Effectually Cameron humanized what Western journalism had casually come to denigrate and demonize. This theme of focusing on the human and personal in the midst of mayhem is one that binds the book together. As a fitting touchstone for what is to follow, it starts with Martha Gellhorn’s account of the Dachau concentration camp. At the end of her article, Gellhorn describes how a “half naked skeleton” shuffles in with news that the war is over. After an initial silence, Gellhorn records that “Dachau seemed to me the most suitable place in Europe to hear the news of victory,” before ending, “For surely Journal for Preachers

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this war was made to abolish Dachau, and all the other places like Dachau, and everything that Dachau stood for, and to abolish it forever”(9). That did not come to pass. So the challenge to report, raise consciousness, shine light in dark places goes on. Preaching too is about shining light in dark places, raising and shaping consciousness , reporting on how power is abused in this world, even and maybe especially by those who claim to have God on their side. We all know the mantra of preparing for the privilege of the preaching task by reading with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. In Tell Me No Lies the preacher will find much more than passing sermon illustrations, for this book is a richly informative array of how at its best journalism shines with nobility. Although completely secular in perspective, it is replete with issues resonant of the deepest dimensions of faith: raising prophetic voice; bearing witness to truth; seeing the world through the eyes of the pushed aside; crossing boundaries to live in solidarity with the enemy (exemplified in Israeli journalist Amira Hass’ s depiction of life among Palestinians suffering under Israeli army occupation); the irrepressible hope that rises among those most crushed by the present structure of power; the cost of commitment —one of the articles is by murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who exposed too much truth about the dirty war in Chechnya and needed to be silenced; the conviction that truth will set us free to build a better world. Tell Me No Lies is an arrestingly fitting title for a book to read in Lent, when we are called to radical reflection on the nature of the world, our complicity in its sin and our hope for its healing. It challenges us about how we have been co-opted to systems of power discordant with the standards of the kingdom. It reminds us, as the Puritans put it, that part of our calling is to speak truth to power.

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One New Book for the Preacher

Agnes W. Norfleet

Shandon Presbyterian Church, Columbia, South Carolina

RABBLE-ROUSER FOR PEACE: THE AUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF DESMOND TUTU by John Allen. New York: Free Press, 2006. 396 pages.

In infancy he was stricken with polio. In his youth he was hospitalized for eighteen months with tuberculosis which he barely survived. As an adult he experienced numerous attempts on his life, including one with a sharpened bicycle spoke at a crowded airport and another when his car was run off the road and he was beaten, but the command to kill him was not carried through for some inexplicable reason. Nearly thirty years ago in the heated season of escalating resistance and oppression, he drew up his wishes for his own funeral. His middle name is Mpilo, meaning “Life,” and for Desmond Tutu it is no small wonder. John Allen is a South African journalist who has known Tutu for thirty years and served as the director of communications for the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has observed Tutu up close during his nearly impossible work to heal a nation emerging from its long struggle against apartheid. Allen has had direct access to Tutu, his family, his acquaintances, his detractors, his enemies, as well as volumes of diary entries, notes, sermons, school records, police records, and correspondence. Written in a journalistic style, this book recounts details of people, places, and events down to the hour, and through this precise specificity emerges the fascinating and complex story of how Tutu rose from being a sickly boy in the impoverished margins of South African society to a towering international advocate for peace in his country and for the world. Preachers, I imagine, will be interested to read about how early on young Desmond had no intention of becoming a minister. After spending a year and a half in the hospital with tuberculosis as a teenager, he wanted to go into medicine and applied to medical schools, but his family could not afford the fees. It was a community of Anglican monks caring for him during his long illness and a specific mentor who recognized his potential for ministry and helped him find his way into seminary as a second option. Like many a seminary student, he struggled with Greek, he worried about money and uprooting his family, and he was well into his academic studies before he began to discern his calling to serve God through the church. Tutu didn’t imagine his becoming a giant political figure either. So accustomed was he to living in the racist society of South Africa that it was not until Tutu went to England to study for ministry that he began to realize how oppressively wrong the severe segregation of apartheid really was. Until then much of life and religion had been left unquestioned. His growing sense of call to serve the church paralleled his rise as a political figure proclaiming a more just homeland. Events along the way, from the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 through the increasing turmoil of the 1970’s and 80’s, urged him onto the national stage. Allen gives us a portrait of a very complicated human being whose brave convictions were pulled out of him by complex circumstances in church and society.

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An extreme extrovert with an incredible sense of humor and profound love for people, Tutu spends hours daily in silent devotion and meditation regenerating his personal resources. He is a man of great laughter and flowing tears. He can stir up a crowd to the brink of an uprising and then tell them they need to act nonviolently. He advocates nonviolence but refuses to say violence is never a necessary means of action. He served a large white congregation in Johannesburg preaching from a black African hermeneutic , trying to move them gently and pastorally toward a more just social order, but he also let his anger lead them into uncharted seas of political change. The book’s title, Rabble-Rouser for Peace, is a perfect summation of his seemingly contradictory qualities. Ironically, the Nobel committee chose Tutu because they believed him less controversial than other potential South African choices for the award, and then his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize emboldened him to further rabble-rousing. Allen’s eyewitness account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is an amazing testimony to the Christian understanding of repentance, restitution, and forgiveness. There were many victims of apartheid who wanted nothing more than to punish those who had violated them, and there were violators little interested in being forgiven. Tutu was the one who held firm to his conviction that apartheid had damaged whites as well as blacks and insisted, “There is no future without forgiveness.” He figured out how to use people’s anger and to drain the violence out of it, thus making room for hope. By his persuasive Christian convictions the whole country moved a long way to restoring humanness to all people of every race. During a time when our world is falling apart at the seams by warfare that is largely religious in nature, Allen’s portrait of Desmond Tutu and his amazing South African story provides hope for people of faith truly to live the gospel. Tutu’s life, like the lives of many unlikely biblical prophets, reflects God’s working through him to move a nation toward justice and reconciliation. By a daily meditative ritual of emptying himself to nothingness, Tutu practices becoming a vessel which God can fill to the brim. As Tutu once told a priest who questioned his views, “God’s gift of forgiveness is gracious and unmerited but you must be willing to appropriate the gift.” Tutu’s remarkable journey through life and faith is one worthy of every preacher’s attention. He is a very complicated human being, with ordinary gifts and flaws, but one through whom God has done extraordinary new things. Desmond Mpilo Tutu lives indeed for the sake of the gospel.

Journal for Preachers