For immediate release
Episcopal Church of Sudan Visits American Friends
Reconciliation and reconstruction in postwar southern Sudan dominated
the conversation of 150 Sudanese and Americans gathered in San Jose,
California Feb. 17-19 for the second annual meeting of American Friends
of the Episcopal Church of Sudan. Enock Tombe, an engineer unanimously
elected last month as Provincial Secretary of the Episcopal Church of
Sudan, told the group that although the ECS rejects homosexual practice
among church leaders, it continues to listen to all voices within the
Anglican Communion and desires closer links with friends in the
Episcopal Church in the USA who wish to help meet urgent needs for
education, health care, and clean water in the tropical region where the
return home has already begun for 4 million southern Sudanese made
homeless by 21 years of war.
Regarding the use of the 50% of Sudanese oil royalties promised to the
Government of Southern Sudan during the current 6-year Interim Period
prior to a referendum on national unity or separation, Michael Kevane,
economics professor at Santa Clara University, warned that large public
works, even ones so obviously needed as highways, are prime
opportunities for corruption. Kevane commended instead the dispersal of
public funds to promote locally owned enterprises, community-initiated
assets like schools and libraries, and even direct cash pension benefits
to widowed, elderly, and disabled citizens.
Giving rapt attention to possibilities for return to gainful employment
in postwar Sudan were approximately 50 Sudanese, many belonging to the
so-called Lost Boys who trekked as living skeletons to Ethiopia and
Kenya during the height of the civil war two decades ago and have
recently resettled in cities from Atlanta to Seattle. Cesar Gevule of
Kansas State University and John Majok of the Academy for Educational
Development in Washington, D.C. urged these young men and women to
consider short-term volunteer work in the fields of health and education
as a way of testing the feasibility of return.
Grant LeMarquand of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge,
Pennsylvania along with Theresa Brown of the Church Divinity School of
the Pacific, Berkeley, California described ways Sudanese pastors
leading the Sudanese Christian congregations that have sprung up across
the US can acquire the basic theological knowledge they lack, even while
they continue to support themselves at minimum-wage jobs in warehouses
and stores. CDSP offers online theological education, while TESM is
about to initiate a second three-year cycle of conferences, mentoring,
and reading which allows untrained pastors to strengthen their grasp of
the Bible, Church history, theology, and pastoral care.
Pastoral care of those traumatized by war preoccupies the host of the
conference, Jerry Drino, a native of California who celebrates that
state’s growing cultural diversity. Drino will present to the Episcopal
Church’s General Convention this summer a proposal for honoring cultural
differences in candidates for the ordained ministry. “Distinctive
culture is one thing,” said Drino. “Trauma is another. All of us
experience stress, when the adrenaline flows and we perform remarkable
feats. But to have lived through the trauma of emotional and physical
violence is something else. Sudanese both in the diaspora and inside the
national territory will be working for years to accomplish
reconciliation after the wounds of war.”
Trauma was not apparent, however, when Harriet Baka Nathan, a
jet-lagged, wiry leader of the Sudanese Mother’s Union enroute to a
United Nations conference on the status of women, belted out, “Jesus is
Lord! Christ is risen!” A troop of Sudanese young adults danced the
offertory procession down the center aisle of St. Andrew’s Episcopal
Church in Saratoga, California on Sunday morning, to the vigorous beat
of the drum. Drino invited communicants, on their way to the high altar,
to put their hand into three gourd bowls holding water from the White
Nile and earth from a destroyed church and a martyr’s grave in the
100-year old Diocese of Bor in Sudan. Ernest Cockrell, the white-haired
rector, remarked to the capacity congregation: “The exchange of the
peace seems to last a little longer when our Sudanese brothers and
sisters are with us.”
American Friends of the Episcopal Church of Sudan (AFRECS) was founded
in 2004 to be a voluntary network of foundations, dioceses, parishes,
and individuals committed to promoting awareness of the priorities of
the Episcopal Church of Sudan. The Executive Director is Nancy Frank, a
parishioner of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Rochester, New York. Further
information is available at the website www.afrecs.org.
Contact: Richard J. Jones,
president@afrecs.org