Abstract
In 1984, a Peruvian theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez, wrote a powerful treatise, entitled, We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People.' Following the lead of the twelfth-century mystic Bernard of Clairveaux, who commented that the place where our own spiritual nourishment comes is the place where we think, pray, and work, Gutierrez was concerned that spirituality be located within the concrete lived situations of a people.-' In the case of the people of Peru, their wells were located in the struggle for liberation and their reinterpretation of traditions of Catholicism and native Indian cultures. In respect to the argument for ethical leadership, I am also positing that the eventful language of spirituality, ethics, and leadership is best appropriated from where leaders find their own spiritual moorings. It would be hard to imagine Joseph Lowery, Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Teresa without considering how their morally-anchored character, their transforming acts of civility, and their deep throbbing sense of community were related to the traditions of which they were a part. These are leaders who drank from their own fountains and reappropriated its substantive discourse into appropriate actions and strategies for personal and political transformation. These are the kind of leaders referred to as ethical leaders in this essay.