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Protest at Midnight
Ministry to a Nation Torn Apart
by Peter Storey
Edited by Sarah Musser
Foreword by Will Willimon
Imprint: Cascade Books
"Let me say to President Botha: apartheid is doomed! It has been condemned in the councils of God, rejected by every nation on the planet and is no longer believed in by the people who gave it birth. Apartheid is the god that has failed . . . let not one more sacred life be offered on its blood-stained altar."
This is what Bishop Peter Storey preached in 1986 in the darkest hours of black suffering in a South Africa torn apart by racial oppression. Join him as a youthful chaplain to Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, defying armed police entering his pulpit, heading the SA Council of Churches with Bishop Desmond Tutu, leading 25,000 marchers against Johannesburg's secret police headquarters, and confronting Winnie Mandela's wrongs. Storey's ministry was shaped by one simple question: "What does it mean to obey Jesus in apartheid South Africa?" This book tells of his answer and challenges the silence of American churches in the face of nationalism, systemic racism, and right-wing populism in the USA.
Peter Storey is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke University Divinity School. In his former roles as Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa and president of the South African Council of Churches, he was prominently involved in the anti-apartheid struggle and the post-apartheid work of reconciliation.
“This is no ordinary memoir that one reads with detached intellectual engagement. It is a complacency-shattering challenge to invest one’s life on behalf of justice, compassion, truth-telling, and radical hospitality rooted in the ‘kin-dom’ of God. Here is a book of profound theological insight and vision that reads like a riveting novel. It is a must-read for anyone who wishes to be an agent of transformation in this dangerous world.”
—Kenneth Carder, Duke Divinity School, emeritus
“Protest at Midnight is sure to become a classic of Christian conscience. . . . It emerges from the inside of South Africa’s struggle against apartheid and from inside the soul of the courageous man of faith who helped lead it. On every page, one encounters the brutal truths of politics. And every page is suffused with the blood of the martyrs. We owe Peter Storey a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.”
—Richard Lischer, author of Just Tell the Truth: A Call to Faith, Hope, and Courage
“Peter Storey’s long-awaited memoir of his extraordinary life and ministry in South Africa during the apartheid years is one of the most insightful and theologically rich accounts of the racial struggle of both nation and church that we now have in print. . . . Peter places us all in his debt with this powerful text, and it needs to be placed in the hands of everyone seriously committed to faithful Christian witness.”
—Willie James Jennings, Yale Divinity School
“Bound to be a classic. Protest at Midnight is right up there with the greatest accounts of Christ’s collision with a world in need of redemption.”
—Will Willimon, Duke Divinity School
“While reading Protest at Midnight, I was overwhelmed with tears, because Storey not only tells his story but gives context to my own. As a Black girl growing up in the shadows of Jim Crow in Mississippi, Storey’s memoir tells the parallel stories of two lands and one church’s response to systemic racism. Storey dares us to look at the painful past, truthfully name the social and theological ills of today, and respond to God’s clarion call for radical justice and freedom.”
—Theresa S. Thames, Princeton University
“This awe-inspiring memoir chronicles a ministry ordered and orchestrated by God in the process of liberating South Africa from its brutal system of apartheid. It could provide the key to the character, courage, and convictions necessary to deliver America from its deadly scourge of racism and temptations toward autocratic government.”
—James A. Forbes Jr., Senior Minister emeritus of the Riverside Church in New York City
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