July 10
Rev. Dr. Peter Storey
president, Methodist Church of South Africa; pastor to Nelson Mandela

Rev. Dr. Professor Peter Storey is a seventh-generation South African Methodist minister who spent most of his ministry serving the inner-city in churches such as that in District Six, Cape Town, and the Central Methodist Mission in Johannesburg, South Africa.

In the 1960s he founded the first Life Line telephone counseling centers in Southern Africa. During the 1970s and 80s, as President at different times of the South African Council of Churches and of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa, he was deeply involved in the anti-apartheid struggle. In the 1990s he was a regional chairperson in the National Peace Accord structures intervening in political violence, and was the founder of Gun Free South Africa. In 1994 President Mandela appointed him to help select the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. After retiring as Methodist Bishop in Johannesburg, he taught for nine years in the United States, is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Duke University Divinity School, and was consultant to the first Truth Commission in the USA, in Greensboro, NC. He preaches widely across the world and has authored a number of books. He now lives in Simon’s Town, South Africa and directs the project to build the new Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary in KwaZulu-Natal.