No Hands but Ours 4 - Ubuntu, and our global body

For the fourth blog in our series leading up to the SCM Autumn Gathering, 'No Hands but Ours', Durham University student Sam Slatcher explores the global nature of Christ's body:

In celebration of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s eightieth Birthday, I feel a mention of Ubuntu is necessary. This is especially as the concept of Ubuntu, I am discovering, is rather like the theme of this series “No hands but ours”.

Ubuntu is an African spiritual philosophy of human solidarity, which roughly translates as “I am a human, because you are a human”. Desmond Tutu, writing in the context of the Apartheid in South Africa, puts it: “If you dehumanise another, you are yourself inexorably, dehumanised”.The reason I am particularly drawn to Ubuntu – and Desmond Tutu’s articulation of such a term – is because of Tutu’s radical commitment to the inclusion of all peoples. Despite his official retirement from Public life last year, Tutu finds it difficult to remain silent where human rights are denied. Tutu often refers to the global family, arguing it would be ridiculously to demand a baby to pay the same as its mother: “each according to their ability” Tutu reminds us.

If we are to rethink the body (i.e. the family) as the human diversity of our planet, of the people in the street of all colours, creeds, cultures, and complexities, and we read again St Paul’s words in Corinthians: “If one part [of the body of both Jew and Gentile, Slave and Free] suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it”, then we begin to grasp what ‘our’ collective body is. When I think of the poem “No body but ours”, I am reminded that “God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be” (Corinthians 12:12). It’s not that Christ is outside of our realm of being, intervening when we pray, rather that the spirit of God, the reincarnation of Jesus, is among us – and that we are the “body of Christ”.

Back to Ubuntu: we have a wonderfully diverse, multiple, and holistic body to look after! The concept of Ubuntu reminds us that we need every part to be fully itself, in order for us to be fully human. Therefore we must look after our body! When one part suffers, we are inescapably caught up in the same suffering. To live-out Ubuntu (our global body) we must understand the ways in which our humanity is caught up in the humanity of the other, where there exists a complex web of relations to others within our body. This understanding of our inter-connectedness, coupled with the command to love our neighbour as our self, should be our driving motivation for our campaigning, for example, to end the UK government’s support of the arms trade – motivated by our sense of injustice that our tax is contributing to corrupt, and harmful regimes of governance – or whether we are actively reducing the carbon footprint we are responsible for, or ensuring the coffee we purchase, is not at the expense of the well-being of our family abroad. Let’s remember we have one body, which requires one heart, and one love. Our body – whether in our community, SCM, University, Church, or as a global human family – is all we have. Ubuntu reminds us to truly look after our body, our body of nearly seven billion, who are probably bound to us in ways that are closer than we think.

You can book your place for our Autumn Gathering here.