JHAD IN THE LAND OF CUSH

"The name of the second river is Gihon: the same it is that compasseth the whole land of Cush" (Genesis 2,13).

     This is not the inter face of inter faith: this is full frontal war. The government of Sudan, which has a Taliban cast of mind, is determined that the Animists and Christians of South Sudan shall convert to Islam and its Sharia Law. An Irish aid worker told of what she had come across in the implementation of this Law. A thief had his right hand amputated, his left leg amputated and then been hanged. A pregnant woman who had committed adultery was buried up to her neck and then stoned to death. A seventeen year old girl who had committed fornication received seventy lashes immediately after he baby was born. (It may take two to tango but the men got off scot free.) Naturally enough, Southerners are determined not to submit to such Law and to compulsory conversion. In fairness I must add that some Southerners who are practising Muslims get on well with their Christian neighbours and serve gladly in the liberation struggle. One guerilla leader rejoices in the name Ramadan. Sudanese refugees in Canada who now worship in my Ottawa church once brought a Muslim friend along with them to tell us how ever. Muslim Southerners suffer at the hands of Northerners, Africans at the hands of Arabs.

     There are refugee congregations of Sudanese Christians in many places, Hove on the South Coast of England, Winnipeg on the Canadian prairies, Cairo in Egypt. One of our Ottawa members told us how she had been gang raped by soldiers and how her father had been shot dead for protesting; how children were captured and taken North, perhaps for concubinage, certainly for forcible brain washing in Islamic studies.

     In theory there is a truce between North and South. Peace talks are held. But the government of Sudan seizes the moment to move tanks down the Nile, to mass forces, to fortify the city of Juba. From time to time the government violates the truce. While our party was in the county, the government bombed one centre, and its infantry attacked a village 80 kilometres south west of where some members of our group were working. The government has handsome royalties (French) from gold mines and handsome royalties (Chinese) from oil fields. It can buy all the weaponry it wants, including MIG fighters and Antinov bombers, from Russia or China. The only weapons the South can obtain must be captured from the aggressors.

     With the notable exception of the USA, the governments of the West "care for none of these things" (Acts 1 8,1 7). The Senate of the US and its new majority leader, William Frith, take a lively interest in human rights. As a heart surgeon Senator Frith has been an aid worker in Africa. To its credit, several members of the House of Lords have debated the Sudan several times, such as the Bishops of Chelmsford and Salisbury, Lady Amos, Lords Averbury, Elton and Moynihan. They spoke of ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity. Lord Alton and the Earl of Sandwich had visited the country, the former the South and the latter the North. But the British expert on Sudan is Lady Caroline Cog of Queensbury who has visited the country twenty six times and who has been tried and sentenced in absentia by the government. She has walked miles and miles to seethe church building in Chali, mined by soldiers so that Christians can not warship in it. Instead the Christians now worship under a tree. When last I heard of the Baroness Cox she was setting off for Afghanistan. Frankly, I have come to think well of Upper Houses. In Canada too it is Senators, such as the Honourable Anne Cools, who are more likely to be concerned for human rights. (She was born in Barbados.) Or even the Governor General herself, Madam Adrienne Clarkson. (She was born in Hong Kong.)

     The government of Sudan has in effect two armies, who correspond, say, to Hitler's Wehrmacht and his SS, or to Mugabe's Defence Force and his Gukurahundi. The Sudanese government can unleash its militia on tribesmen in the remotest bush while claiming to retain its professional army in Khartoum. Two members of our party walked 70 kilometres to a village which had been attacked by the army after the truce had come into effect. The two men took photographs of children's bones and interviewed survivors. A father told how his four year old son had been decapitated, his head stuck on a pole and his body flung into their burning home.

     A Canadian oil company called Talisman is in cahoots with the Taliban type government, to the embarrassment of many Canadian citizens, who recently sent a letter of apology via Voice of the Martyrs to the people of the South, but the Canadian government has invested pension monies in Talisman.

     Our party spent two weeks in the country, with extra days at each end for getting in and out via Kenya. We were an interdenominational and international group, three Americans, one Ethiopian, one Sudanese and four Canadians. Of the Canadians one was born in Britain, one was born in Zimbabwe, and one was born to Canadian missionaries in Ethiopia. He could therefore speak several Ethiopian languages and had a smattering of Arabic. We were from a variety of evangelical churches, plus two unAffirming Anglo Catholics. Our joint leaders were Dennis Bennett, an American layman, a veritable gadget king, and Pastor Glenn Penner, a Baptist who works for Voice of the Martyrs, Canada. He has Russian Orthodox leanings and enjoys our Book of Common Prayer. Glenn had just come from Ethiopia where evangelicals are persecuted by the Coptic Orthodox Church. He would soon be off to Sri Lanka where Christians are persecuted by Buddhists. Not bad for a man suffering from Leukemia! We represented Freedom Quest International, Servant's Heart and Voice of the Martyrs, three small non government organizations. Seven of us nine had previous experience of Sudan. I was a raw novice. Eight of us were practical men of action. I prefer "soft clothing and kings' houses" (Matthew 1 1,8) to roughing it in the bush. For example, my fellow Anglican and fellow deacon, Peter Jardine, has already enlarged and improved an airstrip for relief planes; started a simple school; started a simple orphanage; planted a vegetable garden for improved nutrition; and repaired a veteran landrover for ferrying food and the injured. His next project is the introduction of pit latrines. We divided our forces. In one place our folk concentrated on food and health. 125 kilometres away Glenn Penner and I conducted Bible studies over four days for ministers and lay preachers who, according to local custom, are all equally described as pastors. Dennis Bennett and Mel Middleton did their long walk at night to investigate atrocities.

     Glenn and I were hospitably accommodated by three Kenyans employed by Goal, an Irish aid organization specializing in medial work. These three Kenyans run several clinics and teach public health. In addition to bilharzia and malaria, the three other prevalent diseases are kalazar, carried by sand fleas, kidney worm carried by river flies, and river blindness, also brought by flies. We suspected that one of our party was already displaying symptoms of the blinding illness. Rivers are hazardous to health. On two occasions members of our party went down with heatstroke. There are no roads. There is no public transport. There are no shops, postal services, banks, telephones. Just miles and miles of bush, hot as the hobs of hell in the dry season, a quagmire or even swamp in the rainy season. The Nuba Mountains are said to be beautiful but we were nowhere near.

     The compound of our Kenyan hosts had been bombed, as were the school, the main clinic, and the simple market on market day. Of course there were deaths and injuries. We saw anti personnel shrapnel everywhere. We were glad of the trenches near our huts.

     Our Kenyan hosts were delighted with the peaceful and democratic election back home, and wished his Zimbabwean similar good fortune for his own native land.

     The Anglican church has some two dozen diocese in all Sudan but most of the bishops are in exile, making sporadic forays into their diocese from Kenya or Uganda. Bishop Michael Lugor of Raj if diocese has preached and celebrated for Sudanese refugees in my Ottawa church. Most Roman Catholic bishops are also in exile. The Presbyterian Moderator works from Nairobi.

     It was an honour to meet persecuted Christians. There was Pastor John, a Presbyterian minister who had been stripped, beaten by soldiers and left for dead. He now suffers from chronic asthma, which makes walking from congregation to congregation difficult. He hasn't the strength needed to walk to his neat General Assembly. There was Pastor Andrew who in Khartoum had helped translate the Bible into Mabaan and written Mabaan hymns. He had his finger nails pulled out and then escaped by walking South via Ethiopia. There was Pastor Jacob, a former Animist sorcerer who had flirted with Islam for a short while. It was a presumption to "teach" the Bible to men who know the Scriptures better than I and who love the Scriptures more deeply than I. I remember two venerable patriarchs and several young men who had had conversion experiences while fighting in the Sudanese Liberation Army. Our studies were conducted in a mixture of Arabic, English, Mabaan and Uduk. We had three sessions a day, each of two hours. The Buldits among whom Pastor John works, with moral support from Peter Jardine, have as yet no written language and therefore no Bible.

     It was humbling to learn about missionaries of the 1920's, whom the British authorities had invited to develop the South. Different denominations had been assigned to different areas so that the churches would not fight among themselves, but such is the dislocation of tribes and the separation of families that there are no longer denominational areas. We saw the graves of missionaries bombed by Mussolini's airforce during his conquest of Ethiopia. We learned about Miss Betty and Miss Mary, two young Americans who in 1940 had their ship torpedoed in the Mediterranean, been rescued by the Royal Navy, travelled down the Nile and settled among the Uduk. When they arrived they found only a few Christians. When they with all other missionaries were expelled from the South in 1964, after a coup by a new military and Islamic regime, the whole Uduk tribe was Christian. The two ladies translated the New Testament, the Psalms, Genesis and Amos into Uduk.

     It was pleasing to be reminded of CR brethren who at the turn of last century had been pioneer missionaries also. One evening in our compound we showed a video film, thanks to whizz kid Dennis Bennett, a life of our Lord in Arabic. I remembered Captain Herbert Bennett of the Church Army, not yet a member of CR but already working with the Community from Sherwell Street Mission in Johannesburg. In 1903 or thereabouts he was showing magic lantern slides in shanty towns around the city. I thought also of translators like Harry Buck CR and Bertram Barnes CR, working with the Shona language in Penhalonga. I thought of bush priests like Denys Shropshire CR and Wilfrid Shelley CR, who are also likely to have found pit latrines a great step forward in the march of mankind. CR had trek priests in the bush as recently as Jacob Wardle and Noel Williams. I thought too of Humphrey Whistler CR and Mark Tweedy CR and their much praying for the persecuted church.

     Altogether it was a great privilege to fellowship with the poor in whom "the sufferings of Christ abound" (II Corinthians 1,5), who "bear about in the body the dying of Jesus" (II Corinthians 4,10). We do indeed live in an age of Christian martyrs.

+Robert Mercer, CR

Reprinted from the CR Quarterly Review for March 2003.