Bishops discuss division of Episcopal Church of Sudan

November 28, 2013 (BOR) – Leaders from the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) began a six-day meeting in the Jonglei capital, Bor, on Wednesday to decide on whether the institution will separate as a consequence of South Sudan’s independence from Sudan in 2011.

Church-goers march to welcome the Sudanese bishops to the Jonglei state capital, Bor, in South Sudan on 27 November 2013 (ST)

Reverend Peter Amidi, the diocesan bishop of Lianya in South Sudan’s Central Equatoria state, says the meeting will cover a number of issues currently facing the church, including whether the 31 dioceses in South Sudan and Sudan are too many to be managed by one archbishop.

He described the Church’s possible split as “not separation as such but an arrangement within the Anglican communion where you devolve power from the mother provincial authority to the area of clusters of dioceses”.

Queues of church-goers lined the road from Bor town to the airport to welcome the bishops when they arrived on Wednesday. Bor was chosen as the venue for the meeting as it was the location of the first Christian mission to South Sudan in 1905.

Bishop Nathaniel Garang Anyieth speaks to reporters in Bor, Jonglei state, on 27 November 2013 (ST)

Reverend Nathaniel Garang Anyieth, the retired bishop of Bor diocese, said that if the two administrations were to be separated at the meeting’s conclusion, it would be evidence that the Church has grown.

“There were four dioceses before in Sudan [including southern Sudan], but there are more than 30 dioceses today”, Garang said.

“The Church of Sudan here can separate to [a] province in Sudan and [a] province in South Sudan. We are not separating but we are developing. The Church is one in the world, but it is a growing Church”, he added. .

The meeting to decide on the future of the ECS will conclude on 2 December.

(ST)