MPILO DESMOND TUTU

At a time when African states lost most of their credibility, the Churches, both Catholic and Protestant, came out as powers of solidarity and strength. Throughout the continent, Catholic bishops proclaimed their social concern and political opposition by way of common Lent encyclicals, to be read from the pulpit in all the Churches of a diocese. In a South Africa still dominated by apartheid the Church, more particularly the Anglicans---through Archbishop Desmond Tutu and others---Methodists and Presbyterians played a decisive role which was eventually to lead to the liberation (after twenty-years in prison) of Nelson Mandela and indeed of the country as a whole.

-Bengt Sundkler and Christopher Steed, A History of the Church in Africa (2000).