AIM International's Media Director, Jason Boyd, spoke to Auxiliary Bishop James Lagos Alexander about the church in Sudan and its growth during times of war.
EN: Could you tell us briefly about the war that has been going on in Southern Sudan?
JL: When I was born there was already war, and the question I asked my father, ‘Why are people fighting? Why are people killing each other?’ is the same question my children are asking me.
It’s an economic war, and people are fighting over resources and again over the leadership of the government, and the South feels it has been marginalised. The South also feels that most of the resources of the country are from the South but they have not been used for the South and they want to get their share. So it’s a very complicated situation and it created the war after independence in 1955.
It took different stages. During the first stage, it looked like a political and economic war, and then in the early 80s it started changing from a political to a religious war, where we started to hear a lot of words like jihad being mentioned, and this became popular. A lot of Islamic forces were going into the South to fight, not only to establish the country, but to protect Allah, so you can see how the war has changed its face. That makes us feel, ‘Wow, we’re getting into one of the most difficult stages of this war’, where peace is necessary and, as a church, people have been advocating for peace. We cannot remain killing each other for future centuries.
Growing church
EN: You saw first-hand how the church not only survived but grew during those times of war. How did that happen?
JL: When we look at the church during the time of war, it was much stronger than during the time of peace. When the church feels persecuted, we do not have fear in our hearts; the fear is gone and we feel our responsibility to the gospel which needs to be preached, and it doesn’t matter if things are OK or things are bad, so long as we preach the gospel.
The good thing also is that our young people are more involved in God’s ministry and are bold, fearing nobody. And they feel that it’s their right, as Sudanese, to exercise their faith wherever they are. The majority of the Christians living in the South, when the war was so tense, moved to the North with their faith as Christians, and started establishing centres — prayer centres, worship centres and small house churches — and those churches kept growing because people were coming closer to God. They said: ‘For me to leave, it’s only God, because things are so difficult and the environment around me is so difficult, economically people around me are suffering, and people aren’t getting enough medical services, people are displaced in the desert in very difficult circumstances’, so they feel that there is no way for them and only God can help them.
So a lot of people were coming to church, and church started spreading all over. And even some from different religious backgrounds started joining the churches because they saw something — life and Christian faith — which they had never heard about. A lot considered Christians pagans, infidels, but now they say: ‘No, they’re not. They’re preaching the gospel and they’re praying to one God’, because sometimes people think we are praying to three gods and worshipping idols. A lot of them started coming to know Christ and the church started growing, not only among Southern Christians, but also among others not from the South.
We’ve seen many churches grow and we wondered, ‘How did this happen?’ but it is just God.
Southern independence?
EN: There is a referendum in the South on January 9. How important is that going to be for Sudan?
JL: It’s part of the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005; it’s very important. The Southern Sudanese will exercise their right to determine whether they want to be in one Sudan or to be a different country, and I think that’s going to happen. The whole world is looking for that, and they have agreed; the Sudan government, which is composed of the National Congress and SPLM, also have agreed on that.
It’s a challenging time in the history of Sudan and everybody’s worried, and even right now people in Sudan are confused because they don’t know the future of the country. How are these things going to happen? Is it really going to be a peaceful referendum or is it going to be a violent one? If it’s peaceful, how is it going to be in terms of economy in the North, in terms of stability in the South? People are asking a lot of questions.
We, as a church, are praying hard. The church is non-partisan; we don’t belong to a party. We’re only preaching the gospel, and praying that everything in Sudan will be peaceful. We are against war, we are against violence, and we’re promoting peace. With the referendum, let it take place in a peaceful environment, and let it also be fair and accepted by both parties, and let the Southerners exercise their choice, their freedom. We saw two million people die in the first war and don’t want to see that happen again, because the people in the South and those in the North are all precious in front of God; God loves them all, and for us as a church we value them all together. We want the generation after us to enjoy peace; we have suffered in a time of war and we don’t want any more to suffer; we want them to really, really experience peace and let them develop the country of Sudan, which is a blessed country with a lot of resources. As a church our stance is clear: we want peace in the whole country.
That’s why we as a church are trying to work hard with the international community to sustain the peace that was signed, and we want to create an atmosphere where the Southerners and Northerners can live together as brothers and sisters, as they believed a long time ago, and not let these political things affect their lives. We don’t know, if the South votes to become independent, maybe after some few years it’ll come back again and join the North, like Germany. Nobody knows, but we have to keep that relationship.
EN: Why are you keen to foster partnerships between churches in Africa and churches in the West?
JL: I think it’s very important at this moment. My main purpose here is to make people aware of what is taking place in the country of Sudan, and to encourage more people to pray for Sudan; that is our responsibility as Christians towards other Christians. I believe that when we pray more it will have an impact. We feel that as the Body of Christ we need to work together. Let’s not have geography divide us, or nationality; we are the Body of Christ. I want you to know about me so that you pray better for me, and I also want to know about you so I pray better for you.
It’s a partnership that doesn’t mean that the West gives, but I also need to educate you to understand more about me and to understand about the Church of Sudan, and some of the challenges that we are facing, which need your involvement also. Here we can see how to build this partnership to make it a mutual one.
At this critical moment for Sudan, the important thing is advocacy of peace and prayer.
The video interview can be seen at http://www.aimint.org/eu
