Desmond
Tutu: 'We can only be human together'
24 Feb 2006- "A united church is no optional extra," said Archbishop
Desmond Tutu in an impassioned speech to the World Council of Churches
9th Assembly in Porto Alegre. Rather, he said, it is "indispensable for
the salvation of God's world".
Tutu's audience had just taken part in a plenary
session on church unity. He referred to the film "The defiant ones", in
which two convicts, one black and one white, escape handcuffed together.
"We too can only make it together - we can only be safe together," he
said. "We can be prosperous only together. We can survive only together.
We can be human only together."
Tutu referred in his address to the struggle against
apartheid in South Africa, and paid tribute to the support given by the
WCC, particularly through its Programme to Combat Racism. "This was
controversial but was quite critical in saying our cause was just and
noble and that those who, as a last resort, had opted for the armed
struggle were not terrorists but freedom fighters," he said. "Nelson
Mandela was no terrorist."
The WCC was his "mentor", and he owed it a very great
deal, he said. "You, the WCC, demonstrated God's concern for unity, for
harmony, for togetherness, for friendship, for peace, and you must
celebrate that, you must celebrate the success you notched up in
defeating apartheid, for you were inspired not by a political ideology
but by biblical and theological imperatives."
However, he said, apartheid had continued so long
because the church was divided, and God called it to unity, adding,
"Jesus was quite serious when he said that God was our father, that we
belonged all to one family, because in this family all, not some, are
insiders.
"Bush, bin Laden, all belong, gay, lesbian, so-called
straight - all belong and are loved, are precious."
Speaking to journalists after his address, he said
that Christians "did not have to feel insecure in the face of people
from other faiths". He had mentioned gay and lesbian people, he said,
because "I would not be able to keep quiet and see people penalized for
something about which they could do nothing."
On Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, he said that he
had "admired" Mugabe, who was at one time "the brightest star in the
African firmament," who had brought reconciliation and reconstruction to
his country after the war which ended the rule of the white minority.
"But something happened to him, because now he
oversees something that is totally unacceptable. We, and all of Africa,
should be prepared to say that violation of human rights is violation of
human rights, whoever does it."
Of relations with Muslims, he said, "I hope that the
WCC will preach that it is adherents of a faith who are good or bad, not
the faith. No faith says, 'We believe in injustice or violence.'"
He said of economic progress in Africa that the
situation required a two-fold approach. Rich nations had to understand
that an unjust economic order could not continue. However, he added, "We
have been our own worst enemies. Africa has had a succession of corrupt
governments - though Mobutu and Savimbi were encouraged by the West. But
we too have responsibility. Government exists for the sake of the
governed."
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