SUDAN THE CHRISTIAN DESIGN HASSAN MAKKI MOHAMED AHMED Sudan: The Christian Design A Study of the Missionary Factor in Sudan's Cultural and Political Integration: 1843-1986 HASSAN MAKKI MOHAMED AHMED The Islamic Foundation + Church Preface This study is an effort to look at the roots and dimensions of Christian missions to Sudan, and their impact, in the period 1843-1986. It hopes to throw some light on many problem areas, such as: 1. The role of Mission in the field of education, culture and social services, especially in Southern Sudan and other under-developed areas. Certain areas of Sudan were depen­ dent on such services for a long time. The role of Mission needs to be studied in order to determine its feasibility and usefulness. 2. The effect and significance of the pre-independence National Movement-Mission conflict, and its far-reaching consequences. This conflict still casts its shadow on the State-Mission relationship and on the community. 3. Mission and secular discourse extremism. For the last thirty years (since 1955) Sudan has witnessed a militant brand of secular discourse extremism. It became the norm for such discourse to express itself by raising arms, involvement in guerrilla activities against the right of Islamic culture to exist in the South and to dominate in the North. Many Church organizations and associations embraced the heralds of such discourse, introduced them to the world and blessed their activities. This study comprises six chapters. The first and second deal with the entry of Christianity into Africa in four historical phases: the first being the diffusion of Christianity after the raising of Jesus by his Lord unto Himself. The Coptic Orthodox Church was born and flourished in Egypt, followed by the Christian diffusion in North Africa, Ethiopia and the Nuba Christian Kingdoms. The second phase was ushered in by the Crusade Campaign that struggled in vain 5 to impose European Christianity on Egypt and North Africa. The Crusade was in essence a trial-run of expansionism and cultural domination of the Muslim world, and not simply aimed at capturing al-Quds, 'Jerusalem'. The third phase coincided with the era of geographical 'discoveries' and Portuguese expansionism on the eastern and south-eastern coast of Africa. The fourth phase, the contemporary one, started in the era of the Africa-Scramble and still casts its shadow on present-day Africa. The Church carne either under the protection of the occupying armies or before them in order to pave the way by taming the indigenous population and planting the love of Western superiority in their hearts. In modern Sudan, Christian diffusion consists of two phases. In phase one, between 1843 and 1881, the pioneers were Catholic. The Christian venture flourished under the banner of the secular Turkish elite government. This period was distinguished for its difficulties of terrain and environ­ mental hardships among hostile tribes, difficulties further complicated by cultural and language barriers; scores of missionaries died in the unexplored Sudanese territory while trying to plant the Cross. The Christian contact contributed positively to the out­ break of Islamic Jihad, of the Mahdiyya, when mission stations were demolished and the European missionaries who tried to resist the Mahdiyya arrested. The Catholics, who established the Sudan Church in exile, collaborated with other European Churches and powers to distort the Mahdiyya image, mobilize international public opinion against it and participated in the campaign which led to the destruction of the Mahdiyya Islamic state. The third and fourth chapters discuss the efforts of Christian mission between 1900 and 1956. This period witnessed a flow of missionaries who exerted themselves in the art of planting European Christianity and Western culture. The study investigates the role of the British ad­ ministration in enabling the mission to get a hold in the Sudan, subduing fundamental Islam and encouraging what carne to be known as 'reformed Islam'. Such policies as 'District Closed Ordinance of Southern Sudan' and 'Southern Policy' are discussed at length. The 17 August, 1955 mutiny 6 was a result of such policies and Christian Mission education and culture. The Southern Sudanese mentality was stamped and inflamed for fifty years with a hatred-culture which made the emergence of a unified national identity virtually impos­ sible. The fifth and sixth chapters describe the growth of the National Movement, and Mission suspicion and enmity to that growth. Mission developed a conflict personality against the national venture, like the spread of Arabic language, North-South integration and nationalization of education. The study examines the Church development in Sudan and reflects on how evangelization in the North and the involve­ ment of the American mission in converting an under-aged girl in the 1940s, contributed to the emergence of the Muslim Brothers Movement, lkhwiin al-Muslimun. The study dis­ closes the invisible hand of the Church behind the mutiny scene and mutiny culture. The Mission-European culture, preaching such ideas as that polygamy is an anti-God design, sexual desire and death are essentially an unnatural experi­ ence and the result of human sin, and Africans are the descendants of the damned Ham, forced some of the African elite to seek salvation in the gospel of Marx and Lenin. The process of Church Sudanization, its significance and the contemporary Church are also discussed. The study con­ cludes that Christian diffusion and Church life are in a terminal state in Sudan. The Church culture which prevailed in the last half century has proved insufficient to enable happiness, tranquillity, harmony and integration. The Euro­ pean Church culture being alien, created tensions, strains, anger, lack of drive, to a breaking-point and self-destruction. It failed to provide human values like work-love, responsibil­ ity, co-operation, tolerance, courage, patience, hope and integration. The tragedy was that the alien culture destroyed the old one and community tradition without putting any­ thing in its place. Energy, resources and feelings were diverted towards aggressiveness against the North, Arabism and Islam. To achieve transition to civilization the South needs a new leadership to redress the balance: leadership and people of influence, vision, goodwill and of the Book. The study concludes that Islam at least should be given a 7 chance to show whether it can help in redressing the present human tragedy. For help in making this study I am indebted to many institutions and individuals. Thanks are due to the authorities of the Islamic African Centre, Khartoum, Africa Muslims Agency, Kuwait and the Islamic Foundation, Leicester - without their help and support this study could not have been possible. 19 December, 1988 Hassan Makki M. Ahmed 8 CHAPTER ONE The Entry of Christianity into Africa (with special reference to Sudan) Introduction Christianity was introduced to Africa in four distinct phases. At first it took root peacefully in Egypt, North Africa, Ethiopia and Sudan in the period AD 42-500. In the second phase, Christians interacted mainly with Egyptians and Muslims of the Mediterranean during the Crusades when Pope Urban II declared Muslims were an 'unclean, accursed race of Saracens' .1 But this interaction led to a more enduring and significant result of the increased familiarity with the Muslim and his world and the gradual evolution of a new attitude towards Islam. Instead of 'cleaning the face of the earth', by destroying 'God's enemies? we began to hear, from the mid-twelfth century on, voices publicly denouncing or at least criticizing the violence against the Muslims. These new voices advocated a more humanitarian alternative by which the Europeans were urged to win over the Muslim to the Christian fold. Thus the seeds of the missionary movement which persists even today were sown. In England, this new peaceful orientation in which spiritual weapons were recommended for use against the Muslims was advocated by the founder of English philosophy, Roger Bacon (1214--92). Bacon, who owed much of his thinking to Muslim works, attacked the idea of Crusading which he saw as an attempt to enslave the Muslims rather than to liberate Jerusalem. He called upon his contemporaries to approach 9 the Muslim armed with 'arguments of a superior religion'.3 For all that, the Christian powers - in the third phase - followed in the footsteps of the Crusade. Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. In 1498, Vasco Da Gama, on his famous journey to India, did not hesitate to bombard the Islamic cities on the East African Coast. By 1520, all the Muslim sultanates between Sofala (Mozam­ bique) and Cape Guardaful (East African Coast) had been brutally seized and destroyed by Portugal. Christopher Da Gama came from Portugal to Abyssinia to oust the Muslims from there (1541-43). Then the Portuguese Jesuits entered Ethiopia to introduce Roman Catholicism but failed misera­ bly. All Portuguese were expelled from Abyssinia for their misdeeds.4 In the following three centuries both Roman Catholic and Protestant Christianity were introduced, the former by the Portuguese and the latter through the Dutch and the British and, to a lesser extent through French Huguenot exiles and the Moravians.5 The first European settlers were the Dutch in 1652, and Church attention centred on securing clergy for them rather than for missions to Africa. The first missionary to the indigenous people (the Hottentot) was George Schmidt sent by the Moravians in 1737. Christianity was mostly Roman Catholic and to be found only on the fringes of Africa. With the decay of Portuguese power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it had dwindled. In some areas it had disappeared, in other areas it had persisted but unenergetically. 6 The fourth phase coincided with Europe's abolishing the slave trade and slave traffic for economic and political reasons and the scramble for Africa.