Daring to Change Our World
The Study of Moral Leadership
I (Gushee) have witnessed many changes in the twenty years I have been studying and teaching moral leadership. American moral and political polarization has only deepened. The lack of figures whom everyone admires has become undeniable. Even Christian “family values” conservatives, in the age of Donald Trump, appear to care more about policy wins than character.
In this context, the study of great moral leaders seems more important than ever. We hope you have encountered in these pages more than a few people whom you consider to be moral leaders. You may also have encountered people who troubled you, who you doubted belong in this book. In our experience, if such objections do not flow from the acknowledged flaws or blind spots of a moral leader, they stem from getting stuck on one or more of the following five questions.
Our moral leaders can help. Moral leaders engage in a deeper form of peacemaking. In some cases, they instigate tension in order to expose the violence just below the surface. They ask us why we condemn violence but participate in conflict, war, or economic supply chains made affordable only by the threat of violence. They call us to see how societies come to accept violence—such as slavery, apartheid, lynchings, concentration camps—as a normal, everyday occurrence. They call us to repentance and seek to alleviate injustice before it erupts into murder. If we look to their example, we have beacons to guide us even without absolute principles. We can let these leaders interrogate us and learn from what they might say about how our societies operate today.
WHO COUNTS AS A MORAL LEADER?
The foregoing are inflections of the ultimate question: Who counts as a moral leader? We have a list of fourteen that has grown out of twenty years of teaching and an intentional attempt to include voices too often left out of books like these. Still, our list tilts heavily toward men and people of European origin and overrepresents the United States and Western nations as well as people who pursued political or religious leadership. The reasons for this are many but include barriers to leadership for marginalized people then and now; social biases about what kind of person qualifies as a “leader” then and now; historical and biographical research as a result of those two trends; time constraints in the publishing process; and, of course, our own blind spots.
Studying moral leaders becomes a way to check those blind spots. When it is harder to publish a book or make a Hollywood movie about a woman of color than a white man, we will inevitably fail to remember moral leaders in our midst. Intentionally studying leaders that the dominant culture ignored forces us to question the ways we produce history. It also demands we take a fresh look at the potential leaders around us now.
We believe that those included, though, do have a claim to the label of moral leader. They all led remarkable lives that left the world changed. Of course, we anticipate change. Twenty years ago, it would have been unthinkable to publish such a book without Mohandas Gandhi. Today, it is an open question whether we have erred in including him. That is part of the process of historical discovery; it is also the reason why respectful engagement, not blind defense or exuberant legacy demolition, is so necessary.
We began this book insisting that the obsession with leadership stems from a world in which true leadership is all too rare. That may be so. But a funny thing happened. Whenever we told people about this project, they would respond with name after name. Suddenly, it seemed like the world was chock-full of examples of leadership. A partial list of those whose names came across our desk is below. Here again, this list is neither exhaustive nor based on a critical survey. We simply had to start somewhere and stop somewhere else. All of us will benefit from taking some time to explore a few of these lives.
Moral leadership is not as absent as we might think. The problem lies with us. We stop looking. Or, quick to discover faults, we dismiss people. We chase fairytale notions of human perfection and condemn people when they fall short. In doing so, we only hurt ourselves. Seeing the flaws in great leaders helps us to acknowledge similar flaws in ourselves. Studying those leaders offers a tremendous gift: the hope that we, too, might rise above our worst instincts. There are still leaders, more than we think, and a great many who devote life and limb to transcendent moral causes. Their seeming scarcity flows from our inability to recognize and admire them.
William Wilberforce helped eradicate a form of slavery. Abraham Lincoln made ending slavery central to the American Civil War. Florence Nightingale transformed medical care. Harriet Tubman led people to freedom. Ida B. Wells-Barnett turned the tide against lynching. Mohandas Gandhi guided India to independence. Dietrich Bonhoeffer mobilized the resistance to the greatest evil of the twentieth century. Mother Teresa ministered to “the least of these.” Oscar Romero stood up to the powerful on behalf of the poor. Nelson Mandela was a reconciling freedom fighter and father to a nation. John Paul II stood for the dignity of life against crushing authoritarianism. Elie Wiesel insisted we remember victims in order to prevent new tragedies. Martin Luther King Jr. led a movement against militarism, economic injustice, and racism. Malala Yousafzai faced down terror to speak up for the education of women and girls.
It is hard not to feel a measure of awe seeing those names one after another. They all led remarkable lives, which fill us with inspiration and admiration, both as individuals and as a collective group, one made of astonishingly different people in unique circumstances.
These fourteen lives show us there is no one correct way to change the world. We need people of moral character in positions to make key decisions, just as we need individuals pushing those decision makers and holding them accountable. We need organizers, activists, prophets, writers, journalists, mystics, medical professionals, novelists, pastors, and priests. They also teach us that it is never too early or too late to find one’s calling. We tend to seek consistency from leaders and value those with clear foresight and unshakable convictions. The lives of moral leaders offer a note of caution and a word of grace. Caution, because perhaps our reluctance to honor transformation in others has more to do with tribal loyalties and our own need to feel superior. Grace, because they remind us that it is never too late to drop what we are doing and devote our lives to others.
For all the dizzying differences, moral leaders have so much more in common. Both their lives and their work share common attributes:
Just as these fourteen leaders display similarities as persons, their work shares common themes:
DARING TO CHANGE OUR WORLD
We began this book with a dual claim: There are some human beings who have an air of greatness about them that easily inspires and is hard to forget. At the same time, those people are just that—people. They are human beings with frailties and insecurities, great gifts and disturbing weaknesses, who swerve between heroic feats and sinful failings, never quite attaining the perfection we want to imagine in them. We said that there are neither angels nor demons in this book. After digging into the lives of fourteen astonishing individuals, we hope you see what we mean.
Yet we also tried not to tumble into self-righteous deconstruction of lives. Some people, with a gleeful disdain revel in seeing heroes fall from their pedestals. Certainly, if someone falls into a moral leader’s “blind spot,” as we generously term it, it would be cruel to demand they admire that leader. What concerns us, instead, is a broad societal cynicism. Every few months, someone goes viral for an act of courage or selflessness only for others to discover and publicize their disqualifying flaws. Angels appear and then fall to become demons in a brutal and dispiriting cycle.
We need to practice holding failure and greatness together, in tension. Human beings need mythical heroes because myths tell us something about our lives. They teach us about ourselves and our communities, change the scope of what’s possible, and offer hope that humanity is more than the violence and suffering we see around us. Yet myths alone do not sustain us because, by their very nature, they are incredible. Flawed people, on the other hand, are credible—precisely because we have made some of the same mistakes. Their imperfections convey authenticity. We need myths. We believe in flawed people. We must have both.
We must apply such a nondualistic mind-set to the study of the past as well. The leaders in this book offer a road map to two centuries of history. William Wilberforce’s campaign against slavery set the table for the American Civil War, forever altering the lives of both Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Tubman. The failure of Reconstruction led to the rise of lynching and Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s fierce crusade against it. She barely escaped death in the same city, Memphis, where Martin Luther King Jr. died. Tubman was the oldest person in attendance for the founding of the National Association of Colored Women, and Wells-Barnett’s infant son was the youngest. Florence Nightingale’s parents knew Wilberforce, and her work influenced medical practices in the American Civil War, where Harriet Tubman served as a nurse. Both Wilberforce and Nightingale focused on the poor conditions under colonial rule in India, against which Gandhi later led a peaceful revolution.
Nelson Mandela was born three years after Gandhi left segregated South Africa. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wished to go to India to study Gandhi, as King later did. Instead, he ended up at Buchenwald in the winter of 1945, the same camp where a fifteen-year-old Elie Wiesel was desperately trying to survive. A young Pole named Karol Wojtyla witnessed the destruction and devoted his papacy, as John Paul II, to fighting for the sacredness of life. Martin Luther King Jr. used Gandhi’s tactics to undermine the Jim Crow South, working with organizations Wells-Barnett helped found. He denounced America’s export of militarism, like the American-trained soldiers who helped turn Oscar Romero’s El Salvador into a killing field. John Paul II oversaw both Romero and Mother Teresa, with their contrasting approaches to poverty, and spurred Western nations to oppose Soviet Russia. Malala Yousafzai grew up in the shadow of Western aid to anti-Soviet fighters in Afghanistan and the partition of India and Pakistan after independence.
When we understand how moral leaders connect, we come to a greater appreciation for the interconnection of events all over the world. Studying their lives reminds us that we are people who live with the legacies of those who came before us. History was not so long ago. Wells-Barnett was born in slavery, and yet a long-lived person today might have met her as a child. History is messy, contradictory, obscure, paradoxical, and in many ways frustrating, just like the human beings who make it. We move forward slowly and haltingly—backsliding, starting over, recognizing some mistakes and clinging to others. Studying moral leaders forces us out of a world where yesterday seems like eons ago and reminds us of the slow pace and unstable direction of human society.
When progress arrives, it does so at great cost. You may have noticed something missing from our litany of commonalities among leaders: the cost. William Wilberforce ended his life nearly bankrupt. Harriet Tubman came perilously close to death repeatedly. Ida B. Wells-Barnett miraculously escaped lynching. Florence Nightingale almost died in Crimea. Elie Wiesel lost most of his family. Nelson Mandela saw two marriages end and lost children while behind bars. Mother Teresa never saw her mother and sister again. Malala Yousafzai survived being shot in the head. John Paul II also survived a shooting. Abraham Lincoln was shot. Mohandas Gandhi was shot. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. Oscar Romero was shot. Fully half of these fourteen moral leaders died before their time or were very nearly killed.
These fourteen lives, then, offer caution and warning alongside inspiration and awe. The price they paid is the antidote to our society’s obsession with greatness and brutal evidence of our fear of change. Studying these leaders is enough to make us want nothing more than a quiet life with family and steady, meaningful work. It gives us greater appreciation for those who paid the ultimate price to extend the horizons of compassion and justice. We look around us at a world still being born, still groaning in the pains of childbirth, still moving through tumult to become a creation overflowing with promise and possibility, and we give thanks to God for fourteen leaders who dared to change our world.