Reconciliation: the ubuntu theology of desmond tutu

Reconciliation is Michael Battle’s highly original analysis of Bishop Tutu’s theology of ubuntu – an African concept recognizing that persons and groups form their identities in relation to one another. This model proved successful in opposing the apartheid racism in South Africa, but it also offers a Christian paradigm for resisting oppression wherever it appears. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, including Tutu’s unpublished speeches and sermons, as well as many secondary sources, Battle portrays the Nobel Peace Prize winner as a theologian who embraces Anglican orthodoxy and who has consistently applied that framework to issues of race in South Africa. Yet Tutu is much more than a conventional theologian. He is, as Battle shows, not only an articulate preacher and at times an unwilling politician, but a genuinely committed theologian whose deepest roots are in prayer and protest.