Desmond Tutu on Universal Brother/Sisterhood

Desmond Mpilo Tutu OMSG CH GCStJ (7 October 1931 – 26 December 2021) was a South African Anglican bishop and theologian, known for his work as an anti-apartheid, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner. He distinguished himself as a non-sectarian, inclusive champion of universal human rights. He espoused a perspective of  Liberal Christianity, a current inspired by Martin Luther King and Ghandi, which has Theosophical influences. His concepts of universal brotherhood are expressed through the notion of Ubuntu, God’s family, and the unity of humanity within diversity, using the term ‘Rainbow People’.

Dear child of God before we can become God’s partners, we must know what God wants from us. “I have a dream, “God says. Please help me realize it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, its war and hostility, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts, where they will be more laughter, joy, and peace, where they will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and caring and sharing”. I have a dream that swords will be beaten into plough shares and spears into pruning hooks, that my children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God’s family, my family (Tutu D 2004. God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time. Johannesburg: Rider, p.19).

In God’s family there are no outsiders, all are insiders black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight, Jew and Arab, Palestinian and Israeli, Roman Catholic and Protestant, Serb and Albanian, Hutu and Tutsi, Muslim and Christian, Buddhist and Hindu, Pakistani and Indian all belong (Tutu D 2004. God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time. Johannesburg: Rider, 20).

Ubuntu points out that those who seek to destroy and dehumanise are also victims. Never was this more obvious than during the apartheid years in South Africa. All humanity is inter-linked. The humanity of the perpetrators of apartheid was inexorable, bound to those of their victims when they dehumanise them by inflicting suffering and harm, they dehumanised themselves. The end of apartheid would put Ubuntu to the test, yet I never doubted its power of reconciliation. In fact I often recall the words of the man called Malusi Mpumlwana, an associate of Biko who even while he was being tortured by the security police looked at his torturers and realised that these were human beings too and that they needed him to help them.

We will grow in the knowledge that the white people are God’s children, even though they may be our oppressors, though they may be our enemies. Paradoxically and more truly, they are really our sisters and brothers, because we have the privilege to call God Abba our father. They belong together with us in the family of God, and their humanity is caught up in our humanity, as ours is caught up in theirs. (Tutu D 2004. God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time. Johannesburg: Rider, 71)

For this universe has been constructed in such a way that unless we live in accordance with its moral laws we will pay the price. And one such law is that we are bound together in what the bible calls “The bundle of life”. Our humanity is caught up in that of all others. We are human because we belong. We are made for community, for togetherness, for family to exist in a delicate net work of interdependence. Truly, ‘it is not good for man to be alone’. For none can be human alone. We are sisters and brothers of one another whether we like it or not Tutu
(Tutu D 1999. No Future Without Forgiveness. Johannesburg: Rider, 154)

At home in South Africa I have sometimes said in big meetings where you have black and white together: "Raise your hands!" Then I have said: "Move your hands," and I've said, "Look at your hands - different colours representing different people. (The Rainbow People of God: South Africa's Victory Over Apartheid by Desmond Tutu Doubleday, 1994)

We can be human only together. A person is a person to other persons. We so desperately long for all of us to learn that we are meant for one another. We are meant for complementarity. (Interview: Desmond Tutu on gay rights, the Middle East and Pope Francis September 13, 2013 Sarah Pulliam Bailey)

We have this thing called the extended family. When you are well to do it is quite amazing how many relatives you suddenly acquire. But the sense of family is something that the West longs for and lacks. Westerners are largely individualistic. (Tutu D 2004. God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time. Johannesburg:
Rider, 22)

I hope we can accept a wonderful truth – we are family! We are family! If we could get to believe this we would realize that care about ‘’the other’’ is not really altruistic, but it is the best form of self-interest. (qtd in Trystan Owain Hughes, The Compassion Quest, 2013)

Short Quotes

This is something that can unite us. We have 11 different official languages but only one word for the wonderful institution of braai (barbecue): in Xhosa, English, Afrikaans, whatever –(September 2007)

We are made to tell the world that there are no outsiders. All are welcome: black, white, red, yellow, rich, poor, educated, not educated, male, female, gay, straight, all, all, all. We all belong to this family, this human family, God's family.

We are made for goodness. We are made for love. We are made for friendliness. We are made for togetherness. We are made for all of the beautiful things that you and I know.

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

The God who existed before any religion counts on you to make the oneness of the human family known and celebrated.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

We inhabit a universe that is characterized by diversity. And every human being is precious.

Your ordinary acts of love and hope point to the extraordinary promise that every human life is of inestimable value.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

For goodness sake, will they hear, will white people hear what we are trying to say? Please, all we are asking you to do is to recognize that we are humans, too.

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were French horns? Isn't it amazing that we are all made in God's image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?