www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization Mission: Especially Sudan

Friends,

I am a very happy member of our Byzantine Church. But I have a question about something of which I've heard very little. Is it your experience that almost nothing is heard about missions? I've not heard any appeals for help for areas in great need, nor world mission fields opening, nor about new congregations in this country that might use our assistance (except through Eparchical Stewardship campaign), nor about the dreadful situation in Sudan.

Do we participate in mission giving? Do we encourage person toward the missionary vocation? Do we sponsor mission trips, etc.?

If we are lax in practice despite plenty of opportunity, what can be done to change? If we are lax because few opportunities come our way how might we find them?

Here is an article that represents an ongoing atrocity about which the Church has done little up until now. What can be done?

Dan Lauffer

World Ignores Atrocities in Sudan
NewsMax.com Wires

WASHINGTON (UPI) - The liberal National Council of Churches of Christ seems to relish causes that are not theological by any stretch of the imagination. Lately, it concentrated its energies on campaign financing, a topic not covered anywhere in Scripture.

While promoting forcefully the McCain-Feingold bill in public pronouncements, NCCC has been curiously mum about the most burning issue Christianity is facing in the entire world: the genocide perpetrated chiefly against Christians in southern Sudan.

One should ask the question why an organization of 36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations - known for urging the return of Elian Gonzalez to communist Cuba - does not cry out in protest when Muslim militiamen pierce and padlock the lips of black Christians so that they may not talk about the horrors they have seen and endured?

What horrors? How about crucifixion, enslavement, beheadings, systematic genocide with the aid of helicopter gunships and bombers of Soviet, Chinese and Libyan provenance? How about the mass rape of boys and girls?

How about the constant bombing of hospitals, schools, relief centers and market places? How about the forcible conversion from Christianity to Islam, including the compulsory circumcision of men and women? How about a man-made famine threatening the lives of 2.6 million people?

How about the fact that in the longest "uninterrupted civil war in the world - twice as many Sudanese have perished in the last 18 years than all the war-related deaths suffered by Americans in the past 200 years."

These quotes are taken from testimony that Roger Winter, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees, has submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives' subcommittee on Africa.

According to Winter, "more than 2 million Sudanese are estimated to have died of causes directly or indirectly linked to war and repressive Sudanese government policies."

Two million - that's as many as Pol Pot has murdered in Cambodia 25 years ago.

"Sudan's death toll is larger the combined fatalities suffered in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia and Algeria," Winter said.

If help finally gets on the way for "the world's hellhole," as the Washington Post labeled Sudan recently, it will be largely due to a grassroots campaign started by Church Alliance for a New Sudan.

On Monday, Diane Knippers, president of Institute on Religion and Democracy, announced plans for a global Christian operation similar to the one that helped fell apartheid in South Africa. IRD is a major player in the new alliance.

In addition to this group, an extraordinary coalition of conservative and liberal forces has kicked into action: Congressional Black Caucus, Christian Coalition, American Civil Liberties Union, Catholic bishops and Gary Bauer's American Values.

The extremist National Islamic Front governing in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, has an Achilles' heel, Roger Winter suggested. "A strategy that threatens Sudan's oil development can quickly have a strong impact on Khartoum, and can bring the NIF to the negotiating table for serious discussions."

The irony is that rich oil deposits, which should be considered a divine gift to southern Sudan, have become "a source of hell," to quote Roman Catholic Bishop Macram Max Gassis of the El Obeid Diocese.

In a document distributed by the Church Alliance Winter explained that NIF forces and Arab militias were "displacing, slaughtering and enslaving" the inhabitants of the oil-rich areas in central and southern Sudan to "clear" them for exploration.

"The proceeds from the oil are being used . to purchase more advanced and deadly weapons . to implement the 'final solution' in the south."

It so happens that the Sudan's government-owned Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company has international partners, according to Bishop Gassis. They include: Talisman Energy of Canada, TotalFina of France, Lundin of Sweden, Petronas of Malaysia, Chinese National Petroleum Co. and Russian corporations.

And here's the Achilles' heel Winter was talking about. "Foreign oil companies have no commitment to the NIF; they seek the oil and the profits. In doing so they choose to ignore or obscure the political and humanitarian costs.

"If U.S. policy toward Sudan threatens the oil and the profits that the oil firms covet, I believe the foreign oil companies themselves will begin to press the NIF to negotiate seriously for a just peace in the South. Khartoum's oil allies, through this approach, can be transformed into advocates for a just peace."

As Secretary of State Colin Powell said about the war, which has already displaced 4.5 million of southern Sudan's 5 million people,
"There is perhaps no greater tragedy on the face of the earth today."

Nothing can describe this tragedy better than the narrative of people directly affected by it. The Rev. Herb McMullan, a priest at Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Va., brought these tales home from a recent fact-finding trip to East Africa, where he met with southern Sudanese church leaders.

Excerpts from McMullen's notes read: "We will tell you what it is like. It is mutilations, our ears, lips, hands, feet gone. It is another generation without education. It is mass rapes - our daughters, many men. It is slavery, the real thing.

"It is running barefoot . before the utterly incessant tracking of the spraying, hissing, whining bullets spitting at our heels from an helicopter gunship. It is our pregnant women in jails so hot that babies in their wombs are essentially poached and are born, of course, dead.

"They have held us down and pierced out lips so hot and through the bloody perforations forced the locking arm of padlocks, which when shut prevent the tortured ones from speaking or eating.

"Oil has brought 50,000 Chinese and Canadians to our doorstep, in collusion with our killers, to get fuel for their cars and guns for Khartoum. If we say Jesus is God we do not eat. We starve within sight of the U.N. planes filled with food you sent us, denied to us by our government.

"One day, government forces came to my brother's home . They tied his hands behind his back and tied the other end of the rope to their vehicle. They dragged him three miles. His skin was worn off his bones. They poured gas on my brother and set his body on fire."

McMullen, one of the martyred Sudanese Christians' most outspoken advocates in the United States, marveled about the vibrancy of their faith. "All of them expect to die," he told fellow members of the Church Alliance. As so often in the church's history, it flourishes in martyrdom.

"The Sudanese church has interpreted the cross as the sign of victory," McMullen explained.

Is there a more powerful message the church could preach as it commemorates Christ's passion? Those who burn to death, get raped, mutilated, tortured, enslaved and murdered in southern Sudan are for the most part Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and Catholics, and they deserve the concern of their brethren in the developed world.

Their fate is more important than campaign financing or, for that matter, the father of Elian Gonzalez whom the near-bankrupt NCCC jetted from Havana to Washington last summer, doing Fidel Castro a favor.

Half a century ago, the German church had to do penance for having kept quiet in the face of another genocide. History only ever repeats itself in parts, but in this case those parts are becoming clearly visible - in East Africa and over here.

By Uwe Siemon-Netto, UPI religion correspondent.

The reason is very simple, Eastern Christians have been so whipped and beaten by the Moslem East without any protest from the West, they have accepted it as the cross they must bear. The west is too concerned with where they will get their next barrel of oil to challenge the Moslem hoardes.

It is for this reason that Ethopian Christians and some Sudanese Christians tattoo their children at a very young age with the cross of christ on the forhead and wrists. So they will be recognized as the children of the Lord Jesus Christ, fellow members of the body of Christ , even in the forced moslem servitude.

May we pray for the poor and suffering especially at this time of Our Lord's Passion.

Sub-Deacon Thomas

Yes, lust for oil is certainly a deterrent to worship of God and brotherly/sisterly love.

What would happen if Eastern Christians of the US would make a call for missionaries to go to Sudan? What would happen if we could garner 2,000 lay and clergy missionaries and also raise their support and send them to Sudan? What would happen if brought medicine and food with us and educational materials? What would happen if we could convince all Catholics and all Orthodox to begin to lobby Washington not to buy any oil from Khartoum?

I know it seems like so much fantasy but every journey takes a first step of faith.

Dan L

I think Dan came the closest when he said we had to lobby Washington to boycott Sudanese oil. But it goes beyond that. Why should the US get involved in the Sudan? What is the purpose? Of course we'll have the liberal Roman Catholic priests and nuns protesting about "another Viet Nam" (By the way, where were the protestors when the Clinton administration bombed Orthodox Christians in Serbia?) Now we are paying the price. Look at the news today. The Moslems are getting ready to attack Serbia, Croaita, etc. They are taking over the world. The late Archbishop Sheen warned us 60 years ago. Its not the Chinese communists or the Russians we will have the fear, but the Moslems. They already have legislation put forth in Parliment in England to have the name of Jesus or Christ removed from the constitution there. They are forcing cities in the mid-West who have a cross as part of their logo to remove it. Just the other day I saw a city documement that had the words "Allah the most merciful" printed on the top of it. They will soon be taking over the U.S. too. Many blacks are converting to the Moslem faith. (Karem Abul Jabar is a former Catholic. Remember him as Lou Alcinder?) Its not in the US interest to intervene in the Sudan, so why bother? Its a shame. But then, what do you want from a country that promotes abortion????

Hold steady, everyone. If my finger is pointing anywhere it is an the Christian Church. We might be able to influence the American government to intervene. We might not. In either event will it make any difference, except for oil boycotts? However, even if oil is boycotted will that stop the persecution? I sincerely doubt it.

No, no, what I'm asking, and perhaps God is asking us the same question, "What are you prepared to do?" Are there Christians East or West willing to become missionaries to that country?

It's easy to point fingers but the question we must ask is there a way for Christians to go there and help stop the violence in such numbers that there is some hope of actually stopping it?

I'm inspired by the example of St. Francis who went to Egypt unarmed at the height of the Crusades. I'm also inspired by the millions of missionaries over the centuries who have risked theirs lives to share the Gospel and to help people.

Political answers are not nearly enough. Only Spiritual answers given by the Church and God's people will make the difference.

Dan L

Dear Dan,
The major missionary focus of the Byzantine and Ukrainian Churches has, of course, been rebuilding the Church in the "Old Country". I believe OLPH parish in New Mexico works with the Eparchy of Mukachevo and the Ukrainian churches help with the Children of Chornobyl and also have Ukrainian students in the U.S. seminaries.
As far as Sudan is concerned, I've seen a few programs on EWTN and there seems to be a growing awareness of the problem. We need to spread the word where we can and pray that the Holy Spirit guides us in constructive ways. Thank you for bringing up an important subject. The persecuted Churches in places like China, Sudan, and Indonesia are always in my prayers.

Have a Blessed Easter
John
Pilgrim and Odd Duck

Well, friends, I wouldn't be optimistic about Middle Eastern Christians or the Churches over there getting heavily involved in providing aid to the persecuted of Sudan. (nor for the outright barbaric assault on our Serbian brethren and the houses of God over there, anyway; after all the "plight" of those "poor" Muslim Albanians that the media spoonfed us makes a perfect parallel for the nakba of the Palestinians. Why put aside more fuel for the propaganda machine?)

As you know, I am bound by honor and by duty to my country to kiss the butts of Tripoli, Khartoum, Tunis, Baghdad, Cairo, Riyadh, et all. And so, how dare you suggest one of the honorable constituents of the Arab Nation is persecuting Christians? You're probably another Zionist schemer who's trying to sow dissent and division in the body of our one people. Enough of your tall tales; there is no persecution in the Sudan.

Sorry folks, but I find this rant of mine to be perfectly illustrative of the kind of mentality that many of us Christians in the region may harbor. I don't believe we can do so much as lift a finger for these poor souls. Even those who may sympathize, the Copts and Maronites for example would find it difficult. The Churches are under political restraints and can't go traipsing around helping the persecuted if it compromises our image of unity or our standing with the governments. I'm sure the Churches can to some degree offer aid, but prudence and caution is required. Even influential prelates can be silenced, as Sadat did with Pope Shnouda, exiling him to the "dair".

I'm afraid it is the Holy Father we must rely on in this situation; he wields a strong influence and if he would exercise it against Sudan, I would be certain of its benefits. If only the West would only raise the consciousness of people towards the Sudanese. But as was said, many Western "Catholics", are a pathetic hedonistic lot that are more interested in destroying the Church with liberal agendas, securing more guarantees for a woman's right to infanticide, and legitimizing sodomy, among other things, while their martyred brethren in more "uncivilized, backwards" countries pay for their Faith with blood and tears and agonizing pain, and are virtually spat on and ignored by these souless creatures, their so called "brothers in Christ".

Please forgive my harsh tone. But I find this situation very frustrating and the graphic descriptions above are enough to put a man to shame. Pray for me and for these witnesses to Christ.

In IC XC
Samer

The Catholics and Orthodox would spend most of their time fighting one another.


Send in the Society of Friends (Quakers).
They will get the job done and almost everyone respects them.


They are probably the only sincere Christians left in this world.

Or why not send in young and very Western-orientated Bosnian Muslims who, essentially, have a "we are Europeans first, Muslims second," personal world view.


Certainly, Islamic fanatics in Sudan could not accuse them of being agents of the "unbelievers."


After all, as far as I am concerned, the object is to save lives. What difference does it make if the "saviors" are Christians, Muslims, or atheists?

I too am distressed to learn more of what is happening in the Sudan. But this is certainly not new. There was a made for TV movie about an American congresswoman who was 'shamed' by her children and their classmates to go there and see and to 'redeem' a particular child whom they noticed in a news report.

However, it is not just Christians who are being persecuted. It is others -- including Moslems -- who do not toe the line of the current regime. I suspect that this is not really (or only) a 'religion' based holocaust, but rather one based upon money, self-aggrandizement, and power. If we look anywhere in the world where there is civil strife, there are generally other 'issues' (like petroleum, minerals, gems, etc.) that have a major role to play as well as prideful power and hegemony over others.

While I admire Lauffer's proposal about sending personnel and resources to turn things around, the problem is you need a visa to go there. And you can't get one. (Your corporation doing business there can, but you as an individual cannot.)

Could I please ask a question of 'self-reflection' of those who have posted?

I read the descriptions of the persecuted Sudanese by the Episcopal pastor in Fairfax. I nodded my head, since I realized that I had heard of this before. What bothered me very much was the additional 'political' commentary about liberals and conservatives, RCs vs. Byzantines vs. Orthodox that made its way into the posts, seemingly to cast blame upon 'those' people who apparently have screwed up any righteous response to the situation. I would suggest the following reflections: why or how can I justify casting aspersions upon others based upon my own personal 'disgust' at their perceived theological/liturgical/administrative situation?

Secondly: If I personally have done nothing to aid the situation, what right do I have to cast stones at others of whatever class, caste or liturgical persuasion?

"O Lord and Master of my life,.... not to judge my brother...."

Blessings upon all.

(Does anyone know if Catholic Charities is active in Sudan?)

I deal with reality and send money. I am cynical about Christianity in general, and not judgemental. I accept Christianity for what it is and do not engage in delusional dreaming or verbal hyperbole. All I care about is results and could care less from whom any constructive help might come. But, the Sudanese deserve better than being dragged into ideological wars between Catholics and Orthodox, Baptists and Anglicans, Christians, Jews, Muslims, or Buddhists, for that matter.


"You save one life, you save a universe." I don't give a hoot over theological wars. Let others fight those incredibly stupid battles. Not me!


Please, just pray with your money and do not expect miracles. The Sudanese Christians are not "innocents," and have a history of internecine warfare and mutual betrayel. Under these complex circumstances, what else can the average person do?


Whether one is cynical or a true believer, we can all pray with our money.


And blessings to you, also.

Agape,

"The Sudanese Christians are not "innocents," and have a history of internecine warfare and mutual betrayel. Under these complex circumstances, what else can the average person do?"

I'm not an expert on this matter. I'm just a person disturbed enough by the situation to try to find constructive ways to do something to help.

Could you help us all by pointing to the sources of the information that would substantiate this charge of trouble making Christians in Sudan?

Dan L

Before I go on, having come back from praying at church and having read Dr. John's sobering message, I realize the prideful arrogance in my post. Please disregard it, knowing that I feel shame reading it over again.

As for the comment on Sudanese Christians, victims don't have to be innocent; very few individuals qualify for that adjective. The Balkans being the perfect example; neither the Serbs or the Croats are angels, but it's safe to say that nobody deserves this wholesale persecution that both the Sudanese and the Serbs presently go through.

It is also true that other motives factor into these conflicts aside from religion. The southern rebellion does have Muslims and animists on its side as well. But though these motives are cloaked under the banner of a religious jihad, that doesn't necessarily mean that Khartoum is merely a power-hungry entity using a religious cause as a crafty way of legitimizing its ambitions and aggression. The powers that be in Khartoum I think do indeed personally believe this to be a war that is divinely sanctioned and are not just using religion to fool the masses. Don't be fooled into thinking that the world and the political powers that comprise it are entirely secular. In the Middle East and northern Africa, as well as other places, a genuine religious conviction and fervor and the possession of the common lowly human instincts of greed and pride so often abundantly found in governments and states are not necessarily a dichotomy.

In IC XC
Samer

I first read about the conflicts between the various Christian groups in Time. But I have also seen reports on CNN. Not long ago one "war lord" and his faction killed a relief worker.


But these conflicts between the various Christian groups are not new since they parallel clan conflicts which are quite common in that part of the world, not just among the Sudanese Christians, but certainly among the Muslims as well. And I never even implied that the Christians had to be "innocents" in order to "qualify' for aid and succor. I have been sending money for Sudanese relief through the Lutheran Church for four years, so my position is made clear by my actions.


I hope all of us will be able, to whatever degree, pray with our money. There are some very reliable Christian and secular organizations currently at work in the Sudan and they certainly would appreciate our practical help.

Catholic Relief Services (Sudan).

www.catholicrelief.org/where/sudan/index.cfm [catholicrelief.org]


I am sorry to say, but the Christian faction actually killed eight Norwegian relief workers. Like I said, it is a complex situation. But the Christians are definitely the victims.