Religion in the Sudanese History
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Religion in the Sudanese History
There is no possible reason against a mission station, but it is a most deadly country and very few could possibly stand the climate--it is only fit for a man who is sick of life, has no ties, and longs and yearns for death. Now these men are not common.
--General Charles Gordon, 1877
Although the Gospel message reached Sudan as early as AD 350, South Sudan was untouched by the Gospel until the beginning of 1900s. Christianity became the official religion of the Nubian Kingdom in AD 580 till it was finally defeated by Islam in AD 1504. Both secular and ecclesiastical powers were vested in kings of Sudanese Christian Kingdoms. Therefore, their best title would be priest-kings. Acts 8:27-40, talks about Ethiopian Eunuch. He is a Sudanese, not Ethiopian. Many researchers have shown that Sudanese have been part of the Bible, as John Garang De Mabior put it:
Many people will be surprised that in the Bible, in the Old Testament, the Sudan was part of the Garden of Eden, where it is stated in Genesis Chapter 2, Verse 8 to 14, that the Garden of Eden was watered by four rivers. One of them is the White Nile, it is Pessian in the Bible. The one is the Gihon and there is a Gihon Hotel in Addis Ababa. It is the Blue Nile. And to the east by the Tigris and Euphrates. So the Garden of Eden was not a small vegetable garden. It was a vast piece of territory. My own village happens to be just east of the Nile. So I fall in the Garden of Eden. It will surprise many of you that the Prophet Moses was probably married to a Sudanese named Siphorah, as narrated in the book of Numbers.
From the Biblical days, we move to the ancient Sudanese kingdoms of Awach, of Ritat, of Anu, of Maida, that are believed to be connected with the present day Dinka, Shiluk, Nuer, other Nilotic tribes and the peoples of central and western Sudan. And at the corridors of history we move to the Kingdom of Merowe [Arabic Marawi] that bequeathed an iron civilization to the rest of Africa. Merhawi got transformed into the Christian kingdoms of Nubia. Then followed the spread of Islam and Arab migrations into the Sudan and subsequent collapse of the last Nubian Christian kingdoms of Makuria, Alawa and Soba in 1504, followed by the rise on the edges of the Islamic Kingdom Sinnar, which was founded by the Fuinsh and Shiluk people.
Gen. Charles Gordon (Sudan’s Governor General) had advocated the evangelization of the Sudan in 1878, but the Church Missionary Society (CMS) sent missionaries to the Sudan only in 1899.
In 1905 the missionaries were sent to South Sudan. Mission stations were established in several places in the South. By 1914, there existed already a considerable number of churches in the South. Early in the century, the Episcopal Church of the Sudan (ECS) was part of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem. In 1920, Egypt and Sudan became one Diocese; Sudan was separated from Egypt in 1945, but it was under British leadership. The first Sudanese Assistant Bishop, Daniel Deng Atong was consecrated in 1955.
The Churches faced the serious challenges of Islamisation and Arabisation from 1956 to 1964. Foreign missionaries were expelled from the South in 1964, accused of supporting Southern agitation for succession or autonomy. With intensification of the civil war in the years that followed and due to the reign of terror that the Islamic military government inflicted on the people of the South, many people including Church leaders, were forced into exile. Here they came in contact with the great East African revival of 1950s to 1960s. When the Addis Ababa Peace Accord was signed in 1972, they came back with great zeal and vigor. As a result, the Church began to grow again.
In Jieng (Dinka) communities, Christians’ faith was confined to the towns; traditional worship flourished in rural areas. Jieng was well known for their long history of resistance to foreign culture and customs. It took Archibald Shaw 12 years to convert the first man to Christianity, but Shaw came up with a vision. He predicted that “this people will be evangelized by their children.” He worked successfully toward that vision. The major breakthrough in the growth of Jieng Church came with the outbreak of the current war. When persecution started in towns, especially in Bor town, many Christians fled and sought refuge in rural areas. But they journeyed with the Gospel to the very doorstep of the rural Jieng. This time Jieng heard the message from the mouths of their children, as Shaw predicted. According to many analysts, including Marc Nikkel, ECS is perhaps the fastest growing Church in the Anglican Communion today.