wfn.org | UMNS# 05086-Sudanese church leaders meet to consider future

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Sudanese church leaders meet to consider future

Feb. 10, 2005	 News media contact:   Linda  Bloom * (646) 3693759*  New
York {05086}

NOTE: Editors using this story must keep the ENI credit. Photographs,
including a picture of the Rev. Mvume Dandala, are available at
http://umns.umc.org.

By Fredrick Nzwili*

NAIROBI, Kenya (ENI) - A meeting of Sudanese Christian leaders in
Nairobi has ended with a warning that churches risk being marginalized
if they cannot draw up a clear strategy after an agreement by the
Sudanese government and rebels to end a long-running civil war.

"Sudan is at the most dangerous stage now," said the Rev. Mvume Dandala,
a Methodist and chief executive of the Nairobi-based All Africa
Conference of Churches, which hosted the two-day meeting that ended Feb.
8. "The churches must unite to fortify the peace."

The 21-year-long civil war, in which predominantly Christian and animist
southern Sudanese struggled for autonomy from the mainly Islamic north,
also led to the formation of two ecumenical church groups for the
country.

The Sudan Council of Churches, based in the capital, Khartoum, formally
represented all of the country's churches, but the civil war prevented
it from operating outside government-controlled areas.

A separate body with headquarters based in Nairobi, the New Sudan
Council of Churches, was set up for the south of Sudan.

Still, leaders of the two groups cautioned against hasty action to unite
their councils.

"It could confuse communities at this critical juncture," said Haruun
Ruun, executive secretary of the New Sudan Council of Churches. "It
therefore calls for a gradual and smooth approach."

The chief executive of the Khartoum-based council, the Rev. Paul Chol
Deng, said churches were united even with two groups to represent them.


Melaku Kifle, an official of the World Council of Churches, said the
Sudanese churches needed to articulate a clear vision of how they would
work together in the future or risk marginalization.

"The major challenge is how to further strengthen our ecumenical working
relationships at the local, national and continental levels," he told
Ecumenical News International.

Isaak Kongur Kenyi, executive secretary of the justice and peace
commission of the Sudan Catholic Bishops' Conference, urged churches in
other parts of Africa to provide support to Christians in Sudan.

Solidarity from African churches lagged behind that received from Europe
and North America in the wake of the Sudan peace agreement signed Jan.
9.

The conflict between the largely black, Christian and animist south and
the Muslim north displaced up to 5 million people. The peace agreement
does not deal with the unrelated strife in western Sudan's Darfur
region, where tens of thousands of people have died of malnutrition and
disease in the past year and hundreds of thousands have been left
homeless.

# # #

*Nzwili is a writer for Ecumenical News International, which distributed
this story.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

********************

United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org