Nelson Mandela was a Christian, as I learned during a long conversation with him at a 1992 meeting in Durban of the South African Foundation, a business-backed anti-apartheid organization.

The aura surrounding him then, felt by all who spoke with him, was more mystical than political. Most South Africans, whatever their skin color, are Christians. The country’s ruling Afrikaners saw themselves as a tribe of Israel in exile. The reconciliation between the African National Congress and the apartheid government of F.W. de Klerk was an act of shared faith between two men who belonged to the same syncretic Christian tradition. The West’s economic blockade contributed to ending apartheid but did not bring Mandela and de Klerk together. It was not only the boycott of South African oranges by European and American consumers that overcame apartheid, but also belief in Christ.