Rowan Williams on Desmond Tutu

Posted on December 27 2021

I thought this was the most incredible thing to say about the late Desmionbd Tutu, written whilst he was still alive, of course:

Tutu seemed to understand that if you are to love your neighbour as yourself then you have first to love yourself.

It's the forgotten dimension of that instruction, and so important, but in the way that Rowan Williams notes.

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5 Responses

  1. Alan says:
    December 27 2021 at 12:28 pm

    The problem of course comes if you love yourself more than your fellow man. Then you are into a dangerous area of self delusion, much favoured by American self help books on always thinking positive.
    Anyway, Happy New Year, and thank you for your consistently interesting blog.

  2. CLIVE PARRY says:
    December 27 2021 at 12:38 pm

    Whilst a staunch non-conformist (eg. CofE = Tory Party at prayer; Labour Party = political wing of the Methodist Church)……
    … I always liked Rowan Williams. However, it seems that the world was unwilling to listen to such a thoughtful man with all the subtleties those thoughts included.

  3. Revd Peter Davies says:
    December 28 2021 at 1:55 pm

    This has been a developing preaching theme of mine over several years. Flourishing comes when people are allowed and encouraged to love themselves. Some, however, want to prevent that. If they can get you to feel bad about yourself it’s to their advantage that you become a lesser person so that they can exercise to their benefit a measure of influence and/or control over you, and you become a cog in a machine that deploys you to service their purposes. As a model, it can be applied to politics, sociology and economics. My starting point is as a ‘test’ of church life and whether it will truly flourish. The purpose of love is to liberate but when that willingness to liberate is absent, then it is not love and tends towards leadership models that can foster abuse. But when that love is present in individuals collectively it becomes the gift for the neighbour. Sermon over!