Washington National Cathedral

Lloyd: Welcome to the Sunday Forum, where week by week we are seeking to explore the intersection between faith and public life with some of the liveliest minds and spirits in this nation’s capital and in the world.

Today’s guest needs no introduction. We don’t normally have a packed house for a Sunday Forum on Sunday morning. It’s a great joy to welcome Archbishop Desmond Tutu to be with us. As you know, Bishop Tutu led the fight—among other significant leaders as well—the fight against apartheid in South Africa, and maybe most remarkably of all, led the truth and reconciliation process for the healing of South Africa afterwards.

For his many good services, he won the Nobel Peace Prize, especially for the work of resistance to apartheid. In some many ways he would be worthy of another Nobel Prize just now for the work he did afterward in the healing of his nation. As if he needed another prize, we brought him here to Washington, D.C. to present him with the first Cathedral Prize for Advancement of Religious Understanding, which he graciously received on Friday evening.

We want to talk with him today about this whole work of reconciliation: something that seems the world is quite in need of these days. And I thought we might begin by looking back some ten years after to the truth and reconciliation process, Bishop Tutu, which was one of the most remarkable events many people think in modern history. Would you reflect a little bit ten years after on what you accomplished there and what we have learned from that, all of us?

Tutu: Thank you very much, Father Dean, and good morning, dear friends. (Audience: “Good morning.”) Now that’s really lousy. (laughter.) Good morning! (Audience: “Good morning.”) Wonderful!

It is a very great privilege and a very great joy to be back in this Cathedral Church. And may I congratulate you all, members of this wonderful edifice, on attaining your hundredth anniversary. That’s quite something, a considerable feather in your cap. And I also want to say a very deep thank you because Bishop John Walker decided that it was going to be important for our struggle that we link up with this Cathedral Church. And so when I was bishop of Johannesburg, the Diocese of Washington had a linked relationship with the Diocese of Johannesburg. And when I went to Cape Town, he shifted it. I want to mention that because it [has] a bearing on what we are discussing. And it is that our victory against the awfulness of apartheid would have been, if not impossible, a great deal more difficult without your support, without your love, without your prayers. And it’s not just being nice when I say a very deep thank you to all of you for the support you gave. And so thank you!

Why it was important is that, it seems to me if the struggle had gone and on and on, it would probably become a great deal more violent and bloody. And would have made it much more difficult for people to be able to forgive.

So you have a huge part, not only in the victory that we won, but in its aftermath. You made it more possible for our people to be magnanimous. And so thank you, thank you, thank you, all of you.

Yes, what’s the report card on the state of reconciliation? I always say to people, “You know what? The legislation under which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission operated has a wonderful title. It says “the promotion of national unity and reconciliation.” That’s very important. It says “promotion.” It doesn’t say “achievement.” That reconciliation is not an act. It’s a process. It is not something that could have been achieved even by the most efficient commission. It is a national project to which all South Africans are meant to contribute. Each one of us has a part.

I sometimes think things could have been a great deal better. They certainly could have been a great deal worse without the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

You want me to shut up now, yes? (laughter)

Lloyd: I don’t want to ever shut you up.

Tell us a little about how you came to devise this process of reconciliation. It seems so counter-intuitive that a nation could that straightforwardly face into its past, name what had gone on, and decide to leave it behind them. How did you all find your way there?

Tutu: It’s quite important for me to disclaim any propinquity and property of blood, as it were. It’s not being falsely modest. It’s just I really had nothing to do with the run-up to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was other people. The man who was the deputy chair of the Commission, Dr. Alex Boraine, must take a lot of credit for the fact that we chose this particular option of Truth and Reconciliation process because he had established something called The Institute for Transition of Justice which was what we do post-apartheid? How are we going to deal with the horrendous past? So he was one of the key people who invited various people around the world to come and parley in South Africa and put forth suggestions.

And then the African National Congress, quite unusually for a liberation movement, had in fact already instituted, I think, three Commissions of Inquiry into atrocities committed by its own members whilst they were in exile, which is perhaps a unique phenomenon. So they were already moving in that direction.

And then one of the leading lights of the African National Congress, Professor Kader Asmal, was appointed Professor of Human Rights Law at one of the universities in South Africa, the University of the Western Cape. And in a number of lectures, he noted the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So, those are people who gave the outlines of what we might do.

But then we had to say, and probably had someone betting for us up there, because we were given the extraordinary gift of a Nelson Mandela, who by the way, a young man when he went to jail, an angry young man, appalled at the travesty of justice that had happened in the trial where so many of his colleagues and himself were found guilty and sentenced to terms of life imprisonment. And often people say isn’t twenty-seven years a waste of time? And, no, no. Those twenty-seven years were actually quite crucial because in the twenty-seven years in jail Nelson Mandela evolved from the angry young man to someone who grew in magnanimity and in his understanding of the point of view of the other.

And, it was crucial that he had had the twenty-seven years because… comes and he says, “Let’s try forgiveness.” And the first person comes up to him and says, “Oh, twaddle! You know nothing about suffering. I mean you speak so glibly of forgiveness. Twenty-seven years.” That shuts you up pretty quickly.

He therefore had the credibility which could make people accept when he said, “No let us move in the direction not of retribution and revenge; let’s try forgiveness and reconciliation.”

Lloyd: Can I follow up on that?

Tutu: Yes, Father.

Lloyd: How do people do that? To read your account, for example in No Future Without Forgiveness, the horrors that were committed, the necklaces, the burning tires put around peoples’ head, the people they hung upside down and burned and tortured. These very people coming into those hearings and telling their story, or their loved ones telling the story, we are a human race that doesn’t have a good record when it comes to forgiving. How was it that you all created a climate where people were willing to let go of what had been done to them?

Tutu: Yes. In our African culture there is something that is very difficult to put into English. If you say concept, it makes it too cerebral, too much in the head. But, yes, you’ve got this thing called ubuntu. Ubuntu speaks about the essence of being human. And we say a person is a person to other persons. That it’s impossible to be human as a solitary individual, which is true. All of us know that, that you come into the world not fully formed. You do not know how you could speak as a human being, walk as a human being, think as a human being, be a human being, except by learning it from other human beings. That we are created for inter-dependence, and my humanity is caught up in your humanity, and make you to be all you can be in order for me to become all I can be. I need you in order for me to be human. I need other human beings in order for me to be a human being. And ubuntu says we are made for in harmony and revenge, anger are subversive of this harmony.

And so to forgive is not being altruistic. I’m not being nice to you. I’m really being nice to myself. It’s the best form of self-interest. Well, you know it. If you nurse a grudge, if you’re angry, you’re blood pressure tells you. Your heart beats... thump... thump... thump. You’re tense. And your tum-tum also misbehaves. So, forgiving is actually good for your health. It reduces your blood pressure. If for nothing else you say I’ll forgive you because I need it. It is for my good! Because actually, you know, we don’t believe it, but when I undermine your humanity, when I dehumanize you, whether I like it or not, inexorably I am in that process dehumanized.

And we saw it with the kind of people who perpetrate atrocities. What happened to them? We say they are traumatized. We say all kinds of wonderful things. And it is, you will notice that at one time I was a teacher and I stretch out my answers, you know, so you don’t have to ask too many questions. (laughter).

Lloyd: ’ve discovered that. Thank you. (laughter.) Can I ask you a question?

Tutu: This is a free country.

Lloyd: This vision of ubuntu you describe is very powerful. It sounds very un-American. America is a country of individualists. I think, therefore I am. I buy, therefore I am. I own, therefore I am. How can we find our way to that vision of participating in a life with each other?

Tutu: I am your guest so it would be rude to say I disagree with you. But in fact, I do. I want to give you an example. A very deeply moving example. A young woman came from, I think, from Stanford University. She was a Fulbright Scholar. She went to South Africa. Amy Beale is her name. One day she decided she was going to give a lift to an African colleague and drove a township. She got to this township, just outside Cape Town, and mob of youngsters who belonged to one particular political group began chanting their slogans: “One settler, one bullet.” And since all the settlers were white, meant one bullet for every settler they saw. And Amy Beale was a settler. And Amy Beale had gone to South Africa because she had been a committed anti-apartheid activist. They stopped her car. She jumped out and tried to run. She fell. And they killed her. They stoned her to death. The young people who were the leaders of this mob were arrested and sentenced to fairly long terms. And then the TRC comes along. And so they apply for amnesty. Her parents, Linda and Peter Beale, fly all the way from California to South Africa. Relatives and parents had the right to oppose the granting of amnesty if they wanted. Peter and Linda Beale attended the amnesty hearing. And Peter Beale got up and said, “Amy would have wanted us to be here. Amy would have wanted us to support the granting of amnesty to these young men. And so we, her parents, have come to say we want amnesty to be granted to these young men who killed our daughter.

That would have been an almost unheard kind of generosity. Peter and Linda established the Amy Beale Foundation which aims to train young people in the township in which their daughter was killed to salvage them from the violence and the crime to which they would almost certainly succumb.

The Beales are white Americans. One of the young men who killed, or who was involved in the killing of their daughter, works for the Amy Beale Foundation. So I’m not sure, yes, well, yes, maybe you say this is an exception. But I would want to suggest myself that you have in this country not given enough play to one of your most incredible characteristics. And I’m not saying this to butter you up. You are some of the most generous people I have ever come across. And I’ve been around the world a little bit and have met people. In terms of philanthropy, you are top of the league. And that’s… I want to say, why don’t you export this rather than your bombs? (applause)

Tutu: Yes, Father. (laughter)

Lloyd: This is along the lines of how do you do it? What has sustained you through this long ministry of conflict and struggle, loss and pain, healing and reconciliation? I mean, you personally, have been a model of grace in the midst of terrible times. What’s the secret?

Tutu: You know what? It’s fun to be a Christian! It’s really fun. You might think I’m putting it all on and making it all thick. But can you tell me of which other relation or group would you be eager to tell this kind of story? A few years ago I was sitting at General Theological Seminary in New York minding my own business as I always do. (laughter.) And I met up with a nun. In fact, she was a solitary. And I said, “Yes, please just tell me a little bit about yourself, about your life.” And she said, at that time, “I live in the woods in California, and my day starts at two in the morning, and I pray for you.” (he laughs.) I said, “Here I am being prayed for at two in the morning in the woods in California!” What chance does does the apartheid government stand? (laughter.) I mean, you know.

But, most of us don’t take seriously the power of prayer. I knew just how much we owe to those dear old ladies who faithfully go to the Eucharist every Wednesday morning, and they’re unspectacular, unsung. Huh. We’re going to probably discover some extraordinary things when we get to heaven. What we’ll be amazed at the number of people who are the ones who sustained you. In the prophecy of Zachariah you might remember there was somewhere Zachariah speaks on behalf of God, and God says, “The New Jerusalem will be so populous that it can’t have conventional wars. And Yahweh says, “I will be like a wall of fire round Jerusalem.”

Well, we have experienced the wall of fire, provided by the incredible number of Christians around the world who have prayed for us. That’s the one thing, and it’s one of the most im—... You know, perhaps yes, it is very difficult for people who live in comfort to get to be able to hear the Gospel. I don’t say they can’t hear the Gospel. It’s very difficult.

That’s the point of the story about camels and all that kind of thing. It’s not saying it’s impossible, but it’s going to be pretty tough to hear, to hear. And you really need to be at a point where you are at the end of your tether, and you have nothing. And then to have… You know, I think for many of us, one who used to work with me at the South African Council of Churches, there were moments it was almost a physical sensation, being borne up on the prayers and the love. You might think… we didn’t levitate, but we got very close to it. That was the one.

The other was just how incredible the Scripture were. It was almost as if they were telling specifically for us. When you spoke of a God who says, “I create you in my own image.” You tell that to people who have their noses rubbed in the dust every day. I was a parish priest of a parish in Soweto. I was also a General Secretary, so I was already a Bishop. I’d come to this church, and most of the members of the congregation were thoroughly unimportant people in one sense. But I used to say to them, “Hey. Mommy, as you walk the dusty streets, and they say, “Who are you?” You should say, “Me? Oh, I am a God-carrier. I am God’s representative.” And you could actually see those dear old ladies and men sort of straighten their backs a little bit, and for that week they would be people who knew, “Hey I matter! I am a sentry of the Holy Trinity. I’m a God-carrier.”

Now maybe that didn’t mean a great deal to those who have got used to be counting. Well, tell people you know, it doesn’t matter whether you’re tall or short, whether you’re substantial or you have an hour-glass figure, whether you’re beautiful or not so beautiful… Hey, you, you, you are incredible human being. You are God’s representative. You carry all of God in you. And if we took our theology seriously, we not just shake hands and greet. We would genuflect in front of each other and do what the Buddhist does: the God in me greets the God in you.

The Scriptures were incredible. I mean they… It was fun!

Lloyd: I have a follow-up question and then we’re going to go a couple questions from the audience. How do you sustain this personally? When you visited a place where I was years ago, one of the people traveling with you said that you often kept yourself away and praying until ten o’clock in the morning. Didn’t you have more important things to do than that?

Tutu: I wouldn’t be able to do those important things! I was very fortunate, Father. I was trained for the priesthood by a religious community. And I think almost all of us who are ordained miss something. And I say this as a former seminary teacher. I went to seminary in Johannesburg and I would be given the task of cleaning the community chapel for the Community of the Resurrection. And this is outside service time. And I would go in there to polish the floors. And it was an incredible thing to see those old monks huddled in their pews in the stall with their cloak, and as a young ordinary I learned not so much by precept as by example. The Christian life has no authenticity unless half of it is this spirituality that depends on having fairly substantial time of quiet, of the Eucharist, the quiet days. And for me, if I was not to be able to continue in the pattern that I learned from the Community of the Resurrection, if I didn’t pray which almost sounds like we are boasting, it becomes almost physical. It’s like not having brushed my teeth. I can’t. I can’t. I wouldn’t survive. I couldn’t survive.

And the wonderful thing of course is that it’s not that anything depends on you ultimately. Again, I belong in this community. Fantastic! So that if my prayers are lousy and arid, and I’m bombarded by all kinds of… and thank God, for goodness sake, I’m trying to pray, man! Why are you letting all of these strange distractions come? The important thing is, in a way it doesn’t matter! Just throw yourself into this stream, because it’s an ongoing stream. I mean, as we sit here, angels and archangels, hey, they’re glorifying God and all those wonderful people, and it’s an incredible current that says, you don’t have to do anything! Just trust. Just throw yourself into this and you’re borne up, buoyed by that incredible fervor of those who are holier than you. And you’ll never do anything. Just be there. Say, “God I’m here.” And God says, “You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t let you.” (laughter)

You are… We really have an incredible God. You, you, you: your name is engraved on God’s [hands?]. For God I am the best thing that God ever created. You, you are the best for him that God ever created, and God holds you, holds you like something fragile. You know if God let go I would be smashed into smithereens. Isn’t God incredible. Even when I sin, even when I say ‘God to hell with you; I don’t believe in you’, I’m able to do that only because God brings God’s breath to you. ‘To hell with you God”. (Breath.) If I were God I would just snuff you out. And God doesn’t. Incredible. If only we got to believe it. That you are so special that God lets be all the goodies, all the wonderful ones, God says, ‘No, you’re okay. You are here. I’m going to go for that one.’ God won’t let you go. God won’t let me go. And we don’t believe it because it’s so crazy. I mean we won’t accept that we have a God who has the lowest possible standards. Just look at who can become archbishops! (laughter.)

Lloyd: Would you mind if we took a question from the audience?

Tutu: Yes, Father.

Q: Yes, Archbishop, I’d like to ask you to speak to the role of music in the apartheid struggle.

Tutu: Without it, I think we would not have made it in so many ways. There were times there were songs we sang when we were really low, when you heard of a massacre, 30-40 people have been killed over here, someone has died in detention. We had a wonderful piece that we used to sing. (sings.) “What have we done?” And I’m thinking of the funeral of Steve Biko thirty years ago. Yes, when there were things that were ineffable. You couldn’t put them into words. And then there were the incredible times too when we were inspired by what happened here, your Civil Rights movement, and we also sang “We Shall Overcome.” It was something that lifted your spirits. Your heart soared. And in this wonderful way there were the connections across the seas. Yes. There was also music that could sometimes inflame people and their anger. But mostly it was music that was consoled and strengthened and helped to wipe tears away.

Lloyd: One more question.

Q: Your grace, I’m an Anglican from outside North Africa, and my question concerns the worldwide scene, the African church in particular seems to want to put out the American church from the Anglican Communion. Even within the U.S. the conservatives and liberals are bitterly divided. My question is: is reconciliation possible? And if so, how could it be possible when the two factions seem to be Christian in name but very very different in faith?

Tutu: Can you?… I didn’t hear…

Lloyd: He asked the question is about the African churches who want to divide the Anglican Communion. Are you hopeful about the future of the church in Africa?

Tutu: Well, one of the wonderful things is that we ought to keep remembering is this called church. You know. It’s been torn apart many many times by many many controversies. It is painful, yes. And I’m so deeply distressed myself at what is happening in our Communion. I say it can’t be that at a time when the world is crying out, I mean we’ve got many parts of the world ravaged by disease, AIDS, malaria, TB. Many parts of the world ravaged by poverty and hunger and conflict. And what is our church doing? I mean… I can’t, I can’t imagine anything but that Jesus is weeping. You know. I hope, I mean I hope that certainly in our Communion they would remember that one of the things we used to boast about as characterizing the Anglican Communion was that it was this comprehensive body which included everyone! I mean all kinds of and shapes, theologies that were, ha! Some were no theologies really. And yet we belonged in this Communion. That we would…

I was being directed in a retreat by a nun earlier this year. And one of the passages she asked me to read was Luke, Chapter 15. Chapter 15 is where you get the story of the Prodigal Son, the mother looking for her coin. And I’d never, never understood this quite so clearly. In the beginning of the chapter it says the Pharisees and the scribes were angry with Jesus because he welcomed, he welcomed sinners and all, and ate with them. I said, “Ah!” Because when you go down to the story of the Prodigal Son, again one of the incredible points about it is this father who is supposed to somehow represent God, who looks out into the distance and sees this bedraggled figure. And this father, this very important man, who was a wealthy man in his village, very important. What does he do? He lifts his skirts, which was worse than doing that in Victorian days for ladies. You didn’t show your ankles. This man lifts his skirts and says, with all the dignity of a father, and runs down the main street of the village to do what? To welcome. And I said “Ah!”

So we are most like God when we are welcoming. Our God is a welcoming God.

And I then wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to all the Primates—see them eating bananas! And I said I am under divine pleasure. I’ve just been on a retreat and I am writing this letter and saying to you, “Invite all active Bishops whether you don’t like their sexual orientation or they have been consecrated irregularly. Invite all of them.” Be like God. Be welcoming.

And then remember our communion with one another is actually a Divine gift. It is a gift from the Trinity. And the Trinity says our unity is not a uniformity. It is a unity in this diversity. Be welcoming. Welcoming.

Be like God.

Have I sung for my supper?

Lloyd: I have to be the one to stop this extraordinary conversation. At 11:15 our service begins. There is coffee in the west end of the church just now. Please join me in thanking Archbishop Tutu.