AFRECS: American Friends of the Episcopal Church of Sudan

PRESIDENT’S REPORT TO BOARD OF DIRECTORS

August 9, 2005 

In 1981, Bishop Heath Light of Southwestern Virginia attended a Partners in Mission Consultation in Juba.  There Bishop Light met the American missionary Marc Nikkel, whom he later ordained and who would become for the remaining 19 years of his life the chief human link between the Episcopal Church of the Sudan and the ECUSA. My own involvement with Sudan began in Bishop Light’s diocese. Although today individuals in approximately 20 dioceses of ECUSA have some connection to the ECS, and over the past decade communities of resettled Sudanese have sprouted across the USA, it is worth remembering that the small Diocese of Southwestern Virginia remains connected with both Church of England and Sudanese partners and has recently issued an invitation to commemorate Marc Nikkel on Saturday, Sept. 3, 2005, hoping to encourage General Convention to add this commemoration to our church’s annual calendar.

A second center of sustained interest in the ECS has been the Office of Anglican and Global Relations at the Episcopal Church Center in New York City.  Under the leadership of Patrick Mauney and more recently Margaret Larom, this office built a list of American Episcopalians known to be working in some capacity with the ECS, or with resettled Sudanese.  It was this office which shared with the Church Missionary Society in the UK in the financial support of Marc Nikkel as a long-term missionary and recruited Ross Kane as a short-term missionary assigned to the New Sudan Council of Churches; it was this office which convened a meeting in New York in 2003 of interested American Episcopalians with Archbishop Joseph Marona and Provincial Secretary Enock Tombe; and it was this office whose generous grant of $6,000 made it possible to launch American Friends of the Episcopal Church of Sudan.

Believing that face-to-face meeting was important to strengthen and coordinate our diverse modes of involvement with Sudan, a group of us organized a meeting of approximately 100 people from the mid-Atlantic region in January 2004 at St. Albans Church in Annandale, Virginia, with Fritz Gilbert as host.  From that meeting sprang the vision of launching a nationwide American Friends of the Episcopal Church of Sudan. That launch occurred in February 2005 at St. Paul’s, Alexandria, Virginia with attendance of 150, chaired by Jack Mathias of Virginia and Nancy Frank of Rochester, New York.  The planning committee for those two Virginia conferences has now grown into a Board of Directors with broad geographical representation, thanks largely to the work of our Executive Director, Nancy Frank.

The broad and unvarying purpose of American Friends of the Episcopal Church of Sudan is to hear and respond to the voices of our brothers and sisters in that Church. AFRECS exists to remind us to pay attention.

I can summarize the accomplishments of AFRECS in the six months since our inaugural conference by referring to six goals we set ourselves last February:

1. Pray and open ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s movement toward, from and within the Episcopal Church of Sudan.  If you agree with the theologian Ephraim Radner that disunity is a sign that God has taken his Holy Spirit away from us, you might well worry about both our churches.  Schisms are being fostered in the ECS by former bishops Gabriel Roric Jur and Peter El Birsh. Conflicts continue between some American bishops and some American parishes, in particular one parish in Kansas City, Kansas strongly involved with both delivering relief to Darfurian refugees and encouraging the organization of the Sudan Council of Churches in the USA.  The ECS was unable to convene the nationwide Synod it had hoped to hold in Juba in April 2005, although the stated reasons had more to do with landmines than dissent. I understand last weekend’s funeral for John Garang in Juba was an ecumenical Christian rite, and I appreciated Jerry Drino’s challenge to Christian Sudanese in San Jose, California to make space for Muslim Sudanese to share in the public mourning of John Garang. We continue to need the help of God’s life-giving, fire-purging, unifying Spirit. I know that I for one have not sufficiently prayed: “Lord, take not your Holy Spirit from us."

2. Encourage American dioceses, parishes, and the Executive Council, as well as Sudanese living in the U.S., to become involved in Sudan by promoting awareness of ECS needs and priorities. Bishop Eluzai Munda last February left us with a comprehensive statement of postwar priorities composed by a group of bishops of the southern dioceses, assisted by the Sudanese director of the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa, John Kanyikwa. It is a long list of needs, beginning with food, water, and education and going on to education in peacemaking in local communities. Because our website remains inoperative, this list has not been disseminated beyond those who attended the conference in Alexandria.  Your Executive Committee has not promulgated this list of needs to additional dioceses or parishes, and we have not communicated with the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church. The Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, however, has spoken about the massacres in Darfur, the Presiding Bishop has written to the President of the United States encouraging intervention in Darfur, and on June 27 Episcopal Migration Ministries held an event at the Episcopal Church center in New York with John Prendergast and Catherine Waynick to lift up Sudan before the American public.

3. Help U.S. dioceses and parishes share experiences and information about Sudan through conferences, a newsletter, referrals, and a web site.  We have  received an invitation from Jerry Drino and Trinity Cathedral, San José, California to hold our second annual meeting there February 17-19, 2006.I have made inquiries at Christ Church, Overland Park, Kansas about the possibility of their inviting us for 2007. Debra Andrew Maconaughey has agreed to chair the Committee on Communications and has begun eliciting news.  I have a candidate to suggest for editor of the newsletter, which will be published, in accord with decisions we make at this meeting, either in electronic or print form. Referral of project proposals coming from the ECS to potential collaborators and donors in the ECUSA has not yet begun in any orderly way.  We need workers for the Relationship Development and Project Linkage Committee, people with orderly minds, a range of contacts, and an ability to do sums.

4. Amplify the voice of Sudanese Christians by adding our united voices to theirs in prayer, worship, and witness.  The past week of memorial services across the US for First Vice-President John Garang has been the occasion for some of our members to act in prayerful and political solidarity with Sudanese in this country. (I like the slogan, “Prayer is action.”) In May Nancy Frank arranged for Jerry Deluccio of Rochester, New York to meet in Washington, D.C. with Carolyn Mackay, Ross Kane, and a number of Americans who lobby our government regarding Sudan. Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick replied to a letter from me concerning the fraudulent sale of the ECS guesthouse property in Khartoum and said, “Thanks for writing. We’ll keep on top of it.”  (The Sudanese ambassador to the USA did not reply to a similar letter.) With a General Convention of the Episcopal Church coming up in 2006, and with continued difficulty in managing sanctions, reconstruction and development aid, and international peacekeeping in Sudan, AFRECS may continue to have occasion to raise its voice. We have not yet defined our relation to the Sudan Council of Churches in the USA.  Our decisions on that relationship and on guest speakers to be invited to San Jose will test whether we really can amplify their voice, while still finding our own voice.

5. Help promote successful resettlement of Sudanese by linking diverse efforts to resettle, recognize, and empower Sudanese in the U.S.  Poulson Reed of St. John’s Cathedral, Denver, Colorado has agreed to chair the Committee on Resettlement.  The presence of these important pockets of Sudanese men, and some families, across the US is probably the strongest single motive for most Americans to sustain any concern that may arise in them about Sudan. A question to ponder is how the work of AFRECS may relate to the ongoing work of Richard Parsons and his Migration Ministry program funded by General Convention at the Episcopal Church Center.

6. Communicate regularly with friends of the ECS in other provinces of the Anglican Communion  Frederick Houghton has been looking into websites carrying information about current affairs in Sudan, some of which are based in third countries, including the UK and South Africa.   I do not know how much contact AFRECS members have had with the Anglican Provinces of Kenya, Uganda, and Jerusalem and the Middle East, where many Sudanese currently live and receive higher education.. Here is one example of how delicate relations between Anglican provinces are:  ANITEPAM is the African Network of Institutions of Theological Education Preparing Africans for Ministry. When the South Africa based secretary of ANITEPAM offered to publicize ECS’s need for guest tutors in theological education, Provincial Secretary Enock Tombe replied that the time was not yet right for such an appeal to be launched.  On the other hand, we read in the Sudan Church Review of a delegation of South African church leaders conducting workshops on reconciliation for ECS members at the request of ECS leaders.  It is my hope that the AFRECS newsletter and website will take account of all this communications work already being done in the Anglican Communion on Sudan. AFRECS might adopt the slogan of the New York Times: help share all the information that’s fit to share.

These are some of the first toddling steps AFRECS has taken. Now it is time to look further at our structure, our finances, and above all to reconsider whether we remain committed to these six areas of endeavor which we committed to when we began.