On Wednesday, February 7, the Communist Party leadership of the Soviet Union surrendered its seven-decade monopoly on political power and called for democratic pluralism. On Sunday, February 11, the white South African government released Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison.
Mikhail Gorbachev has opened the door to more democracy than any leader of the "free world" has for generations, and the most famous political prisoner in modern times has emerged from captivity as the most powerful force in a nation still ruled by his captors. The Eastern bloc, seen through Western eyes as the ultimate symbol of totalitarian control, has become the world's new cradle of liberty. The black man most hated and feared by his country's white minority now stands as the best hope to bring both blacks and whites together in a new South Africa.
In biblical language these are "salvation events." They are happenings filled with the pregnant promise of freedom, justice, liberation, peace, and reconciliation. They break the yoke of oppression while offering a healing balm to deep wounds. They testify to God's will and purposes on the earth.
Such events turn the tables of history; they shake the world upside down. They are beyond predictability and control, especially by those who rule the earth. The powers we thought to be all powerful are undone by them. The lock of historical inevitability and determinism is broken open and a world of possibilities is again revealed.
Just one day after Mandela's release, a right-wing South African bitterly complained, "Nelson Mandela began as a prisoner of the government, but now, the government is a prisoner of Nelson Mandela." Similar things could have been said of Lech Walesa, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. But having the tables of history turn doesn't just frustrate those who have a stake in the old order, it awakens the deepest hopes of those who long for a new world.
When history appears to be static, it is the oppressed who are shut out. History is not only closed, it is specifically closed against them. The past is forgotten, the future is foreclosed, and only the never-ending present exists to be endured. The poor are told this is the way things have always been and forever will be.
What cannot be allowed to be believed or imagined is the possibility of hope for a new day. Hope is the most feared reality of any oppressive system. More powerful than any other weapon, hope is the great enemy of those who would control history. What salvation events bring to the world, most of all, is hope, and the world's oppressed peoples are always the ones who have the most at stake in them.
Salvation events are not about great leaders so much as they are about releasing the aspirations of millions of people. The truly great leaders know that and believe themselves to be servants -- of God and of the people.
Nelson Mandela's first speech in Cape Town began with the words, "I stand before you not as a prophet, but as a humble servant of you, the people." Addressing a jam-packed stadium of people in his first Soweto rally, Mandela testified, "It is not the kings and generals that make history but the masses of the people. I have always believed in this." And the words of a little girl in Soweto expressed the hopes of millions of black South Africans in Mandela's release when she simply said, "We will be free."
WHEN SALVATION EVENTS OCCUR, we are all surprised. We didn't expect that it could or would ever happen. Most of us, to one extent or another, have fallen victim to the dominant thinking in the world which sees no hope for real change. When it happens, we are taken aback.
Even in faith communities (where we should know better by now), we are as astonished as everyone else. We, too, really believed the rulers and powers were in full control. They seem to govern history, not God. Because we religious people tend to believe in the powers of the world more than we believe in God, we have already accepted their ways of doing things, instead of God's. When the ways of the world come undone, often we do too.
What salvation events offer us again is the possibility of faith. History is open once more, God is acting, we can respond, and there is hope.
Through salvation events, we can also be set free from the illusions that often govern us. Though McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Playboy are anxious to sponsor "democracy" in the Soviet Union, we know their interest comes from a different source. Despite White House words of praise for South African progress, we know that the American investment in a solution there has had most to do with just that -- American investments. But if the KGB and the South African Defense Forces do not ultimately control history, then neither will the "Golden Arches" and IBM.
The most appropriate response to salvation events is thanksgiving. The jubilant crowds embracing democracy in the East and the toi-toi-ing masses welcoming Nelson Mandela are both fitting signs of it. Both show us the way to respond to national salvation. In the words of C.S. Lewis, we are "surprised by joy."
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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