Reflections on the Bishop of Sherborne's visit to Malakal, South Sudan, leading a clergy and lay refresher course on mission theology
Learning Together in South Sudan
by Graham Kings
copublished with The Times, 28 March 2013
‘Any prayer requests?’
‘Yes. For my brother, who has just been shot in the thigh in Blue Nile state, over the border in the Republic of Sudan.’
A Catholic priest, from the Uduk ethnic group, was sharing in a bible study at the Catholic Guest House. I was staying in Malakal in February, by the River Nile in the far north of South Sudan. The study was lead by an American Presbyterian woman, who was chairing a seminar on post traumatic counselling. Ecumenism leaps to life under pressure.
Hilary Garang, the Bishop of Malakal in the Episcopal Church of Sudan, had invited me to his diocese to lead a week’s clergy and lay leaders refresher course, on the theme of mission. This was part of the 40th anniversary of the link between Sudan and the Diocese of Salisbury. With 25 men and 15 women, we explored together 18 passages of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.
I was struck by the response of one priest to the account in Genesis chapter 12 of Abraham leaving his homeland in Mesopotamia, which today includes modern Iraq. She felt deeply for him in the angst of moving away from his ancestral land. In the book of Jonah, where the prophet was commanded to preach to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria and epitome of totalitarian and military might, they saw the spectre of Khartoum, the capital of the Republic of Sudan in the north. The Episcopal Church of Sudan serves both countries, the north and the south. I was moved to be present at the jubilant birth of South Sudan on 9 July 2011, only two years ago.
We used role play for three of the sessions as the Bible came alive in extraordinary ways. In one, four groups represented the main traditions at the time of Jesus in Palestine: Sadducees (priests in the Temple, who collaborated with Rome); Pharisees (holy lay people, who looked down on others); Zealots (revolutionaries against Rome); and Essenes (‘monks’ in the desert, awaiting the Day of the Lord, copying the Dead Sea Scrolls). Bishop Hilary played Jesus and it was fascinating how he and they challenged each other.
The most vibrant and moving role play, based on Galatians 2:11-21, portrayed the crucial row at Antioch between Paul and Peter. Before a contrary message came from James in Jerusalem, Jewish and Gentile Christians ate together, with the consent of Peter and Barnabas. Afterwards, there was a split and Paul countered this, vehemently.
In the role play, some pulling and shoving took place as the groups responded to this division. The Dean, Michael Miakol playing Paul, was magnificent in fury and intellect. He insisted on justification by faith being at the heart of unity and eating together being based on that foundation. There was joy and relief as the groups reunited.
I pondered this passage again last week, reflecting on the global tensions facing the new leaders of the Roman Catholic Church and of the Anglican Communion. I believe Christ comes to Africa and Latin America from the Father, not from Europe or the USA. In Galatians, the Gentiles were flooding into the church, producing tensions, changing its character and renewing its theology. The centre of gravity of world Christianity today has now shifted from the ‘North’ to the ‘South’, and the same renewal is happening.
The Jewish culture of Jesus’ time, oppressed by the Romans, is much closer to the context of the Republic of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan today than to our life in the Britain. This month, Archbishop Daniel Deng and Mama Deborah, his wife, were over here for the Inauguration of Ministry of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. They stayed with the Bishop of Salisbury and his wife, Nicholas and Helen Holtam. In London, following debates in the House of Lords in February , Dr Deng updated the Foreign Office minister, Mark Simmonds, on the current context of the Republics of Sudan and of South Sudan.
At dusk, outside a simple mud house in Malakal, with Bishop Hilary and his senior clergy during a final supper, we discussed Jesus in Galilee finishing a meal in the open air with his group of 12 disciples. One priest, reflecting on independence from the north and the sharp influx of developers from other countries in East Africa, commented wryly: ‘Have we been liberated from crocodiles only to be eaten by sharks?’ South Sudan urgently needs monumental international aid for integrated development.
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Dr Graham Kings is Bishop of Sherborne and theological secretary of Fulcrum
The Rt Revd Dr Graham Kings is Honorary Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Ely and Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide.