“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” —Nelson Mandela In 1994 Nelson Mandela was elected to the presidency of South Africa.  Things were tense: 14,000 people had died in violence in the four years since his release from prison in 1990.  Everyone predicted a bloodbath.  Confounding the experts, however, the new regime did not yield to the politics of revenge.  Instead, Mandela made peaceful overtures to the white minority and appointed Desmond Tutu to deal ...

I like radicals. Admittedly they make me uncomfortable, but I’ve concluded that’s a good thing. Last month I visited Jubilee Partners, a radical Christian community near Athens, Georgia, where several score people live on a 250-acre property. They eat together, share battered cars, lawnmowers, and other material goods, and grow much of their own food. They visit prisoners and provide a cemetery for homeless people and executed prisoners. They organize peace delegations to regions of conflict. Mainly, though, they work to resettle political refugees ...

A truly original character died this week.  I first got to know Will Campbell through his splendid book Brother to a Dragonfly.  Typical of Will, he shone the spotlight not on his own story but rather on that of his alcoholic, self-destructive brother Joe. Ordained as a teenager, Will was destined to be a preacher.  No one could have predicted, though, that he would choose for his flock first the leaders of the civil rights movement and then later a ...

Last week I saw the movie 42, the story of Jackie Robinson, the first black major league baseball player.   Critics have found fault with 42 for being predictable and simplistic, but for long stretches while watching I had a lump in my throat, a lump of remorse and shame.  You see, I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in the tumultuous days of the civil rights movement. The Jim Crow culture that shocked Jackie and his wife as they traveled in ...