Ubuntu, The Kingdom of God and the American Dream

The words of two men that I like and admire intersected this week: Russell Brand and Barack Obama. Brand’s introduction to the MTV Awards in the US began with a tirade against George Bush, and an endorsement ‘on behalf of the world’ of Barack Obama. Brand’s humour was wicked and cutting, and caused uproar (no bad thing if he is correct, I feel).

But what about Barack Obama? I feel such hope for the world when I look at him, and his weaknesses in experience are more than overcome by his vision, charisma and oratory skills, which the US needs far more than an experienced hand at foreign policy (he also isn’t Sarah Palin, and so receives about a million bonus points as well).

Obama made a speech in 2004 that propelled him to the forefront of the Democrats’ consciousness. In it he said this:

‘If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child.
If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and is having to choose between medicine and the rent not my grandparent.
If there's an Arab-American family being rounded, that makes my life poorer, even if it's up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.’


I find this quite an inspiring model for social organization, and an interesting challenge to the dominant individualism demonstrated by much of our culture. I wonder if it is also a rather good reading of St Paul’s analogy of the Church as a body in 1 Cor 12. It is also rather reminiscent of the African spirituality of ‘Ubuntu’, in which our own well-being is placed within that of the communities in which we find ourselves, and to which we give and receive. This radical notion of living in community, and of giving to and receiving from that community is a quite wonderful thing.

I have commented before on Desmond Tutu’s reading of the story of Christ and the ten lepers, which I think also has a lot to say here: our dependence on the good grace of others is to be matched by a deep thankfulness for the goodness that we have received. I wonder if this might be what the Kingdom of God is like – people realizing their communal interconnectedness, and the ways in which our lives are shaped by the good and bad actions of others, which, in turn, shapes the nature of our communities as a whole. The relationship of individuals becomes a microcosm of society as a whole, which is comprised of an enormous number of these relationships.

So Ubuntu, The Kingdom of God, the American Dream. Spot the difference?