Fewer to Celebrate Christmas in Sudan After South’s Split
6 min readBy ISMA’IL KUSHKUSH
KHARTOUM, Sudan — Hanging from the wall of Bishop Ezekiel Kondo’s living room — a few blocks from a silver-coated dome marking the tomb of Sudan’s 19th-century Muslim leader, the Mahdi — are a cross, pictures of fellow clergy members and a photo of him with the former archbishop of Canterbury above a small plastic Christmas tree.
Much has changed for Bishop Kondo, and for the nation, since the holidays last year. Though he presides over one of Sudan’s largest churches, he is more in the minority than ever. South Sudan, with its large Christian population, became an independent nation over the summer, making for a Christmas of mixed emotions.
“This Christmas, since Southern Sudanese have gone, we don’t know what the attendance will be, but I would say people will celebrate with mixed feeling of joy and fear,” said Bishop Kondo, who is the bishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan and the former chairman of the Sudanese Council of Churches.
South Sudanese voted overwhelmingly in a referendum early this year to separate from Sudan, the culmination of a peace accord to end decades of war and hostilities with the largely Muslim north. But while South Sudanese Christians constituted the majority of what was the Sudanese Christian community, they are not all of them.
“There is an idea that Southern Sudanese have gone, therefore, the church has gone. That is not true,” Bishop Kondo said. “Sometimes, I am asked, ‘When will you go to South Sudan?’ ‘But I’m not from the south,’ I reply!” he said.
Bishop Kondo is from South Kordofan, a state dominated by ethnic Nuba, who are divided between Islam, Christianity and African traditional religions. Fighting erupted there last May between government forces and rebels allied with the party that now governs South Sudan. Thousands fled, including Archdeacon Hassan Sudan.
“I called friends in South Kordofan, and they say they’ve prepared for Christmas but found some difficulties because of security concerns; there were some harassments,” the archdeacon said.
Christian leaders in Sudan have long complained about devastating bureaucracy, discrimination in jobs, restrictions on outreach and the difficulty of constructing churches. Nabil Bolis, 41, a teacher at the Episcopal Savior’s Church in Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city across the Nile, said the annual March for Jesus this year faced challenges.
“We first started the march in greater Khartoum back in 1997, but this year there are more bureaucratic restrictions,” said Mr. Bolis, a nephew of the late Christian Nuba leader Phillip Ghabboush.
More pressing, however, is the expected drop in overseas donations for churches in Sudan now that the larger group of worshipers, administrators and teachers has moved to South Sudan.
“We definitely think this is going to happen,” said Pastor Milla Longa, 49, of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Khartoum.
While concerns weigh heavily on the minds of many Sudanese Christian leaders, Bishop Kondo pointed out that Sudanese government officials had expressed a keenness to work with them.
“The Ministry of Religious Guidance and Endowments have approached us to know what the timetable of services and celebrations are this Christmas, to come and congratulate, but to also make sure people celebrate peacefully,” he said. “I think this is a good gesture.”
Safwat Fanous , a University of Khartoum political science professor and a member of the Coptic Church, agrees that the government is still reaching out to Christians to some extent. But he said it was no longer recognizing Christmas as a general holiday, but as a holiday solely for members of Western churches.
“It is important to see government officials continue to participate in Christian celebrations as a sign of religious coexistence,” Mr. Fanous said. “Dec. 25 used to be a public holiday for all; now it will be a holiday only for members of Western churches.”
Tayeb Zein al-Abidin, a professor at the University of Khartoum and a former chairman of the Sudanese Inter-Religious Council, does not think that the Sudanese government will take aim at Sudanese Christians for religious purposes. But it may not “give them the same political considerations” it did when the south was part of Sudan, he said.
“It is a now a matter of numbers, not religion,” he said.
But numbers are also debatable. The Sudanese government puts the new percentage of Christians in Sudan at just 3 percent, a figure Bishop Kondo contests.
“We don’t know how this number was arrived to, but as churches, we are working on this,” he said. “We believe it is closer to 10 to 15 percent now.”
Among the Nuba of South Kordofan, it is not uncommon to find members of the same family who belong to different religions, something that Mr. Bolis believes makes Christmas in Sudan special.
Despite the concerns, a Khartoum Christmas will go on this year.
“We won’t have turkey for dinner, but lamb, groundnuts, dates and baobab juice to drink,” Mr. Bolis said with a smile.
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