Rooted in the South African context, the Rev. Alan Storey is a Gospel storyteller and facilitator of personal and political change. Alan’s commitment to the Jesus way of justice and peace-making was tested early in his life when he faced conscription into the apartheid regime’s military. He chose to be a conscientious objector. He was arrested and faced trial, with a six-year prison sentence as the likely outcome. Alan’s trial was abandoned midway, and he became the last conscientious objector to be brought to trial in apartheid South Africa. Over the years, he has been involved in numerous civil society organizations addressing gun violence, racism, state-capture corruption, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, spatial apartheid inequality, sex worker discrimination, and campaigning for a universal basic income. Alan spearheaded the transformation of the Stipend Policy within the Methodist Church of Southern Africa.

Alan recently retired from serving at the Central Methodist Mission in Cape Town. As a Methodist minister for 33 years, living off weekly words, he is now exploring silence and solitude while writing. He has recently written The Bell, Banners, and Blasphemy. Alan holds an honors degree in theology and a master’s degree in the philosophy of applied business ethics. He is a recipient of the Rotary Paul Harris Fellowship Award and a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative (part of the Aspen Leadership Institute). Alan’s lifelong work remains the experimental practice of the Sermon on the Mount.

Alan’s hope is to contribute to “healing the divisions of the past and establishing a society based on democratic values, social justice, and fundamental human rights," as it states in the preamble of the South African Constitution.