I don't remember who recommended Albert Luthuli's biography to me, but it was eye-opening and instructive across a variety of fronts. It seems like he could fairly be described as South Africa's MLK or Gandhi, a leader of a great struggle who consistently applied the principles of non-violence despite tremendous pressure to do otherwise.
In Albert Luthuli: Bound by Faith, Scott Couper details the life of Albert Luthuli, the long-time leader of the ANC who led the resistance against apartheid in South Africa on non-violent terms and was the first African to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
The political aspects of his life were somewhat interesting, though he died decades before apartheid was broken down. However, the background of his life and family, along with his thoughts and commitment to a genuine biblical faith in the public square and while seeking both peace and justice, were more interesting to me. The biographer quotes him in various places, and it is beautiful to see how Luthuli's understanding of Scripture both catalyzed, organized, and 'bounded' his public work. His 'social activism' sprang from his beliefs about the divine-image-bearing of all the humans around him. On the one hand, it caused him to pursue comprehensive change in the way that non-Europeans were treated in South African society. Yet, on the other hand, it stopped him from pursuing violence as a means to achieve that good end. Others decided to use violence and sought his support, but his record stands remarkably clearly about his own convictions. (You can read some of Nelson Mandela's defense of the use of violent sabotage here as recorded at his trial in 1963-1964.)
Couper quotes from Luthuli's autobiography, Let My People Go, regarding Christian living, being part of society, and work:
Adams [College] taught me what Edendale did not, that I had to do something about being a Christian, and that this something must identify me with my neighbor, not dissociate me from him. Adams taught me more. It inculcated, by example rather than precept, a specifically Christian mode of going about work in a society, and I had frequent reason to be grateful for this later in life. [italics original, bold mine]
Elsewhere, Luthuli spoke of the fact that living as a Christian was 'not a private affair without relevance to society'...
It was, rather, a belief which equipped us in a unique way to meet the challenges of our society... which had to be applied to the conditions of our lives; and our many works - they ranged from Sunday School teaching to road-building - became meaningful as the outflow of Christian belief.
Listen to these powerful lines from his Nobel Peace Prize speech in 1961.
I also, as a Christian and patriot, could not look on while systematic attempts were made, almost in every department of life, to debase the God-factor in man or to set a limit beyond which the human being in his black form might not strive to serve his Creator to the best of his ability. To remain neutral in a situation where the laws of the land virtually criticized God for having created men of color was the sort of thing I could not, as a Christian, tolerate. (Source)
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