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South African activist said a disciplined prayer life sustained him.
Retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, the man who became synonymous with South Africa’s nonviolent struggle against apartheid, died Sunday at the age of 90.
Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer almost two decades ago.
The feisty spiritual leader of millions of Black and white South Africans seized every opportunity at home and abroad to rail against the racially oppressive regime that stifled his country for decades. His struggles earned him the Nobel Peace Prize and appointment to the leadership of a commission that sought to reveal the truth of apartheid’s atrocities.
In later years, Tutu carried his work for justice into other areas beyond racial reconciliation—from AIDS to poverty to gay rights.
“All, all are God’s children and none, none is ever to be dismissed as rubbish,” he said in 1999 to the “God and Us” class he taught as a visiting professor at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. “And that’s why you have to be so passionate in your opposition to injustice of any kind.”
Long before South Africa elected its first democratic government in 1994, Tutu dreamed of and spoke fervently about “what it will be like when apartheid goes.”
But there were times in public speeches and in interviews when the cleric doubted whether, after decades of agitating for social justice, he would live to witness the decay of apartheid.
During the 1970s and ’80s, when other Black leaders critical of white majority rule were being violently snuffed out or silenced, Tutu’s prominence in the church made his one of the few Black voices strong enough to resonate around the world.
But at times, not even his stature in the church or ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
Umn ministry
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