Mapping the Journey of Desmond Tutu: Michael Battle [Rebroadcast]

Note: We are revisiting this interview from earlier this year to remember Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who passed away on Sunday, December 26, 2021.

Our guest, Rev. Dr. Michael Battle of General Theological Seminary, offers a spiritual biography of one of the twentieth century’s great leaders.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a pivotal leader of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and remains a beloved and important emblem of peace and justice around the world. Even those who do not know the major events of Tutu's life--receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, serving as the first black archbishop of Cape Town and primate of Southern Africa from 1986-1996, and chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1995-1998--recognize him as a charismatic political and religious leader who helped facilitate the liberation of oppressed peoples from the ravages of colonialism. But the inner landscape of Tutu's spirituality, the mystical grounding that spurred his outward accomplishments, often goes unseen.

Michael Battle's personal relationship with Tutu grants readers an inside view of how Tutu's spiritual agency cast a vision that both upheld the demands of justice and created space to synthesize the stark differences of a diverse society. Battle also suggests that North Americans have much to learn from Tutu's leadership model as they confront religious and political polarization in their own context.

Michael Battle is Herbert Thompson Professor of Church and Society and Director of the Desmond Tutu Center at General Theological Seminary in New York, and President and CEO of the PeaceBattle Institute. The author of eleven books, including Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu, he focuses his ministry on nonviolence, Christian reconciliation, human spirituality, and Ubuntu (the African worldview of community). Battle lived in residence with Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa for two years and was ordained a priest in South Africa by Tutu in 1993.