At the height of apartheid in 1982, first-year seminarian Michael Weeder and fellow activists were barred from praying and fasting in Cape Town’s Anglican cathedral, to register their protest at South Africa’s military raid on Lesotho.
Now, the 53-year-old cleric will be handed the keys to St George’s Cathedral when he is installed as dean by Cape Town Archbishop Thabo Makgoba on Sunday.
It is an irony which does not escape Weeder, who says that perhaps “our God of perfect timing and humour is suggesting ‘here’s the cathedral and its doors are open to you. You wanted to pray here, so here it is’”.
While he has accepted the job “with a huge dollop of humility”, he is clearly looking forward to leading the church at the top of Adderley Street, which has become known as the “people’s cathedral”.
Among the hymns he has chosen for his installation service on Sunday is a contemporary Christian song by Chris Tomlin “God of the city” which includes the line: “greater things have yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city”.
It reflects the vision he hopes to implement for the cathedral which, he says, has critical roles to play in ministry to diverse communities, including political and business leaders, diplomats, tourists, African immigrants and residents of the inner-city. The cathedral must also be “the mother church” for Anglicans of diverse backgrounds, worship styles and sexual orientation from throughout the peninsula.
Weeder was born in District One and among his earliest recollections is travelling to church in the city centre with his mother, a garment worker and staunch Anglican, on Sunday mornings.
At the age of five, he says, watching the priests processing into the church shrouded in the high mass incense, he already felt the calling to the priesthood.
He studied at St Paul’s Seminary (now the College of the Transfiguration) in Grahamstown and holds honours and masters degrees from the University of the Western Cape.
Weeder worked as an organiser for the ANC and served as chaplain to an ANC underground cell in the 1980s.
Given its proximity to parliament, he says the cathedral must give government a “faith-based understanding” of the needs of South Africans, although he cautions that the Anglican church can never be smug about its role in the struggle against injustice.
“As a church we have benefitted from our colonial past and with that privilege comes a special responsibility to correct the compounded, accumulated, systemic injustices that bedevil our country.”
Of mixed heritage, he sees his appointment in part, as representing a homecoming of sorts for communities that were previously alienated from the cathedral.
In a written response during his selection process to a question from cathedral leaders on the thorny issue of homosexuality, Weeder said he hoped to listen “to God but also to the faith community and to the needs and blessings of society at large”.
Weeder takes over from retired priest Rowan Smith and moves to the cathedral from St Phillip’s parish in District Six, where he has ministered for 10 years.
He is married to Bonita, director of the District Six Museum and they have three children, Chiara, 23, Andile, 20, and Khanyisa, 19.
