Modern-day Moses? How Biblical narratives influence South Sudan’s freedom struggle

Catholics at a United Nations camp for internally displaced persons in South Sudan in 2016. (Flickr/UN Photo/JC McIlwaine)

In November 2022, I attended the International Fellowship of Reconciliation’s quadrennial meeting, held in Juba, South Sudan. The time in Juba was memorable — not only because of the unique convergence of pan-African and international peace activists and scholars, but also for a brief immersion into the life of the world’s newest nation. In preparation, I read many articles and books about the history and culture of South Sudan. None were as informative and meaningful as Christopher Tounsel’s “Chosen Peoples.”   ^[1][2]

Through meticulous scholarship, including archival research in Europe, Africa and the United States combined with field work and interviews with South Sudanese political and religious leaders, Tounsel tells the story of South Sudan’s complex history of foreign domination and colonialism and its protracted struggle for liberation. In the process, Tounsel narrates the ways in which Christian identity and images from the Biblical narrative were embraced and deployed in the struggle for national independence. Tounsel writes:

Throughout the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st, Sudanese thinkers transformed Christian thought and theology into spaces where racial identities obtained potent spiritual power. Southern Sudanese used the Bible to provide a lexicon for resistance, a vehicle for defining friends and enemies, and a script for political and often seditious actions in their quest for self-determination and sovereignty.

In this time of heightened concern about the rise of religious nationalism and its deeply disturbing ties to authoritarian movements and governments around the world, Tounsel’s account of South Sudanese history is a reminder that some forms of religious nationalism can contribute to the task of liberation and the affirmation of human dignity. In particular, Tounsel notes the historical and cultural links between South Sudan’s freedom struggle and the toppling of apartheid in South Africa. He cites the importance of Black liberation theologians, such as James Cone and Gayraud Wilmore, who saw the struggle against white supremacy — whether in the United States or Africa — as an expression of God’s liberating acts in history.

But Tounsel also foreshadows the shift in the political consciousness of South Sudan after independence by highlighting the work of South African liberation theologian John Mbiti, who criticized Black Power theology for what he saw as excessively weaving race and color consciousness into theology.

Histories of colonial domination and liberation struggle are necessarily complex, nuanced and contested. South Sudan’s experience of colonial domination by several outside actors in various power configurations creates a particularly challenging case. First invaded in 1820 by an Egyptian viceroy of the Ottoman Empire, Sudan was then ruled by a British-Egyptian condominium from 1898 until 1955 when Sudan gained independence from Britain. During this period, the people of Southern Sudan, predominantly Black and Christian, suffered abuse from their predominantly Arab and Muslim neighbors to the north. The abuse included violent exploitation and kidnapping for the slave trade.

Tounsel offers a detailed history of British colonists’ use of Christianity to build a national identity as a bulwark against the spread of Islam in British East Africa. While fully recognizing the ambiguity of this project, he describes the work of the Nugent School to use education in supporting the formation of a Christian character that might transcend tribal identities. The results were ambiguous, but they laid the foundation for resistance by the people of South Sudan who are predominantly Black and Christian against the government in Khartoum that sought to use a politicized Islam to maintain control.

As Sudan won independence from British rule, proposals for a federal system that would have granted some regional autonomy were offered but rejected in favor of centralized control from Khartoum. Two civil wars followed, together with the formation of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement under the leadership of John Garang, widely seen as a modern-day Moses. When Garang died in a helicopter crash shortly after creating a path toward independence in 2005, many saw parallels to the stories of Moses’ life. Both leaders gave their lives for their people yet neither was able fully to enter the promised land with them. The Biblical narrative continued to influence political identity.

Following Garang’s death and South Sudan’s independence in 2011, Salva Kiir, a disciple of Garang, became president and was often identified with the Biblical figure, Joshua. When civil war broke out again between followers of Kiir (an ethnic Dinka) and Vice-President Riek Machar (an ethnic Nuer), ethnic identity became more powerful than race. In this conflict, tens of thousands were killed while two million fled to neighboring countries and another two million were internally displaced. The idea that a Christian identity might create a unifying national consciousness was deeply challenged, even shattered.

Today, the country is still recovering^[3] from its long history of neglect, abuse and war. The South Sudanese Council of Churches, the Roman Catholic, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, and the Islamic Council have played important roles in the peace process and continue to promote reconciliation, together with projects that seek to provide for human needs and build community.

I attended the IFOR and other peace meetings not as an Africanist; indeed, the trip to Juba was my first time on African soil. But I carried with me the concerns of a pastor and practical theologian from the United States, one with years of experience in Latin American solidarity and the struggle for racial justice.

I caught a glimpse of what has been called the Juba moment — the promise that liberation from oppression and reconciliation across lines of difference and ancient antagonism is possible. In an interfaith worship service for peace at All Saints’ Cathedral, Archbishop and Primate Justin Badi Arama spoke of the importance of the work for peace. He suggested that it flows like a river through villages, neighborhoods and communities when people work together for the common good.

When invited to speak as a representative from North America, I added my prayer that the people from the global North — who have not always used their power for the common good — might also see that stream of peace flowing from South Sudan to inspire the work of global community-building. Christopher Tounsel’s book provides important insights into the possibilities and the limitations for employing religious language and imagery in the public square as we do the work of peace, freedom and justice.

References

1. ^{^} meeting (www.youtube.com)
2. ^{^} Chosen Peoples (www.dukeupress.edu)
3. ^{^} recovering (wagingnonviolence.org)