RELUCTANT PROPHET, tributes to Albert Nolan OP

 462pp., illus., paperback, ATF Press & UJ Press, Adelaide & Johannesburg, 2023

ISBN: 9781776453023

Winner of the Andrew Murray-Desmond Tutu Prize for Theological Publications.

70 tributes to Fr Albert Nolan OP from friends and contemporaries, including fellow Dominicans, former students from his days as a Young Christian Students chaplain, colleagues, academics, and political activists.

Contributors include Frank Chikane, James Cochrane, Leslie Dikeni, Andrew Prior, Brian Robertson, Peter Sadie, Raymond Suttner, Charles Villa-Vicencio, Michel Worsnip, and many others.

Catholic priest, theologian, member of the Dominican Order and anti-apartheid activist Albert Nolan was born in Cape Town in 1934. He served three terms as Vicar-General of the Dominicans in South Africa between 1976 and 2004. He worked for the Institute for Contextual Theology, and was involved in the circle of pastors and theologians who started the process that led to the Kairos Document in 1985. He was founding editor of the radical Church magazine, Challenge, and wrote several books on contextual theology, including Jesus Before Christianity, the gospel of liberation (1976), God in South Africa (1988) and Jesus Today: A spirituality of radical freedom (2006). In 2003, the South African government awarded him the Order of Luthuli in silver, in recognition of "his life-long dedication to the struggle for democracy, human rights and justice and for challenging the religious dogma including theological justification of apartheid" He died in 2022.

Mike Deeb OP served as the Coordinator of the Justice and Peace Department of the South African Catholic Bishops Conference before being appointed General Promoter of Justice and Peace and Permanent Delegate to the United Nations for the Dominicans.

Mark James OP is chaplain to the deaf community in the diocese of Manzini, Eswatini. He was Provincial of the Dominicans in Southern Africa from 2004-2012.

Philippe Denis OP is Emeritus Professor of History of Christianity at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and works as Research and Development Manager in the KwaZulu-Natal Christian Council.