Speaking Truth to Power

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on July 20, 2025 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

Reading for address: Amos 7: 7-17, 8: 1-12

There was once a schoolteacher who came to faith during a gospel mission. He trained for ordination and ran a seminary and twice developed his studies in England. He was made provincial secretary of his denomination and later elected bishop. He moved to the north of the country and started to gain a following as a leader and preacher. But then the head of the army seized power and quickly began a reign of terror. Meanwhile the former schoolteacher was elected archbishop. In a country where faith was everywhere, he was the only person who could command respect from the people and attention from abroad and stand up to the rampaging president. The year was 1974. The country was Uganda. The name of the president was Idi Amin. And the name of the archbishop was Janani Luwum.

Over the next three years, Luwum embarked on a multi-pronged strategy of holding Amin to account. Amin had expelled 55,000 Asians, murdered everyone from his predecessor’s village, and shot many of his own soldiers; he killed perhaps half a million people. Luwum made regular visits to the notorious State Research Bureau to seek the release of prisoners, had briefings from his bishops, and maintained a civil relationship with Amin, exerting relational influence to pursue moderation. Luwum faced criticism as some saw his actions as supportive of the president. By 1976 Luwum resolved it was time for a different approach. Through broadcasts, speeches and sermons, he more explicitly referred to the pattern of arbitrary killings and unexplained disappearances. In February 1977 Amin had had enough. He arrested Luwum, and, apparently with no sense of irony, set him before a crowd and asked, ‘What shall we do with him?’ The crowd replied, ‘Kill him.’ Luwum was placed in a vehicle and driven away along in a Land Rover with two Christian cabinet ministers. It was claimed their death occurred when they tried to seize the steering wheel resulting in a fatal crash; but the many bullet holes found on his body indicated a different explanation. A year later Amin attempted to annex part of Tanzania. This led to Tanzania invading Uganda and Amin being deposed in 1979.

Janani Luwum is among the ten twentieth-century martyrs whose statues were unveiled on the west front of Westminster Abbey in 1998. His witness is synonymous with the expression, ‘speaking truth to power.’ The origins of the phrase lie in ancient Greece, where the term parrhesia refers to courageous unrestricted speech; the kind that got Socrates executed in 399 BC. Its roots also lie in Mahatma Gandhi’s practice of the ‘force of truth,’ or satyagraha, which involved assertion without anger, insult or retaliation. As Gandhi put it, ‘Asatya, meaning untruth, also means non-existent, and satya, or truth, also means that which is. If untruth does not so much as exist, its victory is out of the question. And truth being that which is, can never be destroyed.’ Such ideas were incorporated in a Quaker pamphlet published in 1955 by the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.

Speaking truth to power is an emotive phrase. In the hands of sophisticated organisers like Rustin and Gandhi, it indicates an orchestrated pattern of activity, combining rhetorical statements, symbolic actions, subversive non-cooperation and collective protest. This assumes a context like 1960s America, where the rule of law prevails and the political authorities want to claim the moral high ground; so an appeal to democratic values will eventually prove persuasive. But Janani Luwum had no such culture to rely on. For him, speaking truth was a different story: one that left him riddled with bullets. Today the phrase has been popularised almost beyond recognition. It’s now invoked by almost anyone who disagrees with their boss or feels the urge to denounce an injustice on social media. It’s become a validating slogan for anyone who wants to elevate their dispute and portray themselves as a warrior for justice. What was once a term denoting sophisticated organisers or courageous martyrs has become almost submerged in virtue-signalling self-righteousness.

So it’s a good moment to turn to the eighth century BC and a figure who predates all the distinguished agitators I’ve so far mentioned. The prophet Amos offered diverse oracles to the people of the Northern Kingdom around 30 years before it was destroyed by the Assyrians, and his words were compiled by the people of Judah in Babylon 200 years later into the book that bears his name today. Those in Babylon were searching for answers as to why they had ended up in exile, and Amos gave them an unequivocal thesis: because they had let social inequality grow to shocking levels, allowing poverty to fester at a time of relative affluence. Amos is consequently remembered as the definitive abrasive prophet, telling people what they did not want to hear, advocating justice and upholding the oppressed. I want today to examine his approach to see what we can learn in the midst of both the nobility and the trivialisation of speaking truth to power.

Towards the end of his short book, Amos offers four visions. In the first, locusts devour all the grass of the land. In the second, a shower of fire burns up all before it. In the third, the Lord stands beside a wall with a plumbline in his hand. In the last, the Lord shows Amos a basket of summer fruit. The visions of locusts and fire foretell the destruction of the Northern Kingdom by invading armies. The plumbline indicates that Israel has been formed askew, and, like a wall that’s not built straight, can’t be simply set right. The basket of fruit highlights the inequalities of the marketplace and the way the poor are defrauded, and, as today’s passage makes clear, the severe consequences.

What do these visions tell us? We see a prophet who’s passionately committed to the well-being of his people and the survival of his nation. We behold a prophet whose principal conversation is with God. He isn’t passing his own judgement; he’s communicating a series of pictures he’s received from heaven. We experience a prophet who portrays himself fundamentally as a witness: he speaks of what he sees, and what he sees largely speaks for itself, telling a thousand words. We learn from a prophet who isn’t locked into a personal tussle with an egregious leader. Nowhere in his book do we find Amos calling out an individual; the failures he describes are collective ones, and the cultural trends are ones in which the whole society has a part. And we realise Amos is a prophet who is immersed in his community. He’s not an observer who comments and walks away; he’s not above or beyond the things he’s describing: this is a crisis in which he’s a participant and will remain so.

Having considered the cost of such witness, the history of the discourse, and the example of the prophet Amos, we may now be in a position to reflect on this emotive phrase. How do we know when to speak? How do we find the courage, given the cost, if not to our life, at least to our livelihood, privilege, reputation, comfort and social circle? How do we know we’re in the right, and won’t later have to apologise for hasty judgement or sweeping assumptions? How do we avoid the intoxication of exhilarating righteousness and self-importance? How do we ensure our intervention is not just words, but catalyses the change for which we yearn?

I want to dwell on the three key words in this conversation: speaking, truth and power. Let’s start with power. This whole conversation is about realising there’s more than one kind of power. Idi Amin had violence, coercion and fury. But Janani Luwum had gesture, international scrutiny, the future, and faith. We tend to assume a scenario where we have the entire truth, while our antagonist has complete power. But things are almost always subtler than that. Witness and organising are about uncovering hidden sources of power; they don’t always work in the short term, hence Luwum’s death; but Amin couldn’t live on manipulation and deception for very long. As he was led away, Archbishop Luwum said to his fellow bishops, ‘Do not be afraid. I see God’s hand in this.’ He was saying he trusted a power greater than Amin.

Meanwhile, as soon as we realise we’re not as powerless as we thought, we need immediately to reflect on how to use that power well. We can denounce in a second. But sometimes we turn out to be mistaken, or not to have the whole story. In our eagerness to call out, we can cause further damage. I’ve done it myself. We all have power; some of us have learned how, through collaboration, solidarity, rhetoric or imagination, to maximise that power; all of us are capable of using it for good or ill. We may get a kick out of speaking for the powerless; but our energies may better be used in helping those who experience themselves as powerless find a voice to speak for themselves.

Then truth. The power of Amos’ oracles is that he isn’t centring his own judgement, convictions, or wisdom. He’s saying, ‘This is what I see.’ In his case, that means, ‘This is what God has shown me.’ We can’t all speak with the same confidence. And we can’t assume our deepest source of authority is accepted by those we’re trying to persuade. But there’s a reason why the central moment of a trial comes when the barrister questions the key witness. Because giving account is what testimony is fundamentally about. Judgement is for others to make. Speaking the truth is essentially about witness: ‘This is what I see.’ The power of Amos is in saying, ‘I see those without influence crushed. I see those without money exploited.’ He doesn’t have to point the finger, denounce or call out. He just says what he sees. Sometimes when we claim to speak the truth, we’re asserting that what we see has more validity than what others see. Witness is being content to say, ‘This is what I see; I can’t unsee it; and I think it matters’: and trusting in the power of witness.

Then speaking. Social transformation is a team game. Sometimes one body is best to research, another to organise, a third to publicise, and, in that context of collaboration, one person to speak. We noticed Amos isn’t a pundit, offering commentary from the sidelines. He’s a participant. That means his words aren’t just words. He has a stake in the outcome. There’s no question words can have power, and can convey truth. The question is, are words the best or only way to exercise power in the interests of truth? Long ago I visited an older friend. She started talking about her father. ‘He was one of the old school,’ she said. ‘Manners’, he used to shout. ‘I will have manners’ – and he used to bang the table. ‘Manners are out of fashion’, she added, reflectively. ‘People want things you can have straightaway.’ I asked, ‘How do you bring a child up to be grateful, generous, and thoughtful? Is there any way of teaching manners without banging the table?’ My companion purred for a while. ‘There is another way’, she said. ‘You’re not going like it, because it’s not easy.’ She leant forward, and whispered in my ear: ‘Example.’ She sat back. ‘Told you you wouldn’t like it’, she said.

Actions speak louder than words. In the end, speaking truth is only partly persuasive, regardless of whether you have any power. It becomes compelling when grounded in example. We worship Jesus not because he said, ‘I will be with you always,’ but because he was with us, through opposition, through passion, through crucifixion, through death. To say, ‘You are wrong’ is one thing. To say, ‘I see two things – the way you are doing things, and the way this community is doing things: I can see their very different respective outcomes; I’ll let you be the judge of which is the better way’ – that’s quite another. There’s a time for an individual to step forward and take a courageous stand and face the consequences. But for every person called to be a prophet, many more are called to be part of a prophetic community, striving to embody practices that model a better way. Sometimes the most pernicious words that need to be challenged are, ‘There is no alternative.’ Such words corrode the imagination and make people retreat into powerlessness. The best way to counter them is not just to describe an alternative, but to embody one. That’s not so much speaking the truth to power: it’s more, living in the power of the truth.