Desmond Mpilo Tutu and the transfiguration of the Anglican pastoral imagination

Abstract

Discourse on the Anglican pastoral imagination is most closely associated with the English church and theologians from Britain and North America. This article argues that the theology and practice of Desmond Mpilo Tutu transformed the traditional attributes of the Anglican pastoral imagination for a postcolonial age when most Anglicans live in the Global South. Tutu’s expression of the Anglican pastoral imagination draws upon the richness of the biblical image of the Transfiguration and expands the Anglican heritage from a South African context. If Anglicanism is indeed a living tradition, then our pastoral imagination must be forged from a dialogue between the wisdom of the past and the voices of the present, like Desmond Mpilo Tutu. The themes which illuminate the Anglican pastoral imagination tradition are authentic love, the incarnation, prayer and sacrament, and a church for the world.