Bishop Anthony Poggo to be next Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion
by Ed Thornton, Church Times, London
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s adviser on Anglican Communion affairs, the Rt. Rev. Anthony Dangasuk Poggo, has been appointed the next secretary-general of the Anglican Communion.
Bishop Poggo, who is 58, will take up the post at the start of September, and will succeed Dr Josiah Idowu-Fearon, who is due to retire at the end of August after serving a seven-year term.
The secretary-general leads the staff at the Anglican Communion Office in London, which serves the four Instruments of Communion: the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primates’ Meeting, the Anglican Consultative Council, and the Lambeth Conference.
Before taking up his post at Lambeth Palace six years ago, Poggo was the bishop of Kajo-Keji in the Episcopal Church of South Sudan.
At the age of one, he moved with his family from what is now South Sudan to Uganda to escape the first Sudanese Civil War. They returned in 1973, when he was aged nine.
Bishop Poggo was ordained deacon in 1995, and priest in 1996, before which he worked for Scripture Union, ministering to Sudanese refugees in Uganda. He graduated from Juba University with a degree in Management and Public Administration, and also holds an MA in Biblical Studies from the Nairobi International School of Theology, in Kenya.
Bishop Poggo’s wife, Jane Namurye, coordinated follow-up to Women on the Frontline, maintains contact with the Mothers’ Union of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, and facilitated the 2018 AFRECS conference in Denver. Dr. Josiah Idowu-Fearon was archbishop of Kaduna, Nigeria and founded the Kaduna Centre for the Study of Christian-Muslim Relations.
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2022/17-june/news/world/poggo-to-take-over-from-idowu-fearon-as-the-communion-s-next-secretary-general
Director’s Update
The big news in South Sudan this past week has been the cancellation of the Pope’s visit scheduled for July. The decision was based on the advice of the pontiff’s doctors who cited the undesirability of interrupting therapy for his knees. Recent photos have shown him in a wheelchair. According to the Vatican, the visit will be postponed “to a later date to be determined.”
The State Department is required to report on religious freedom in countries around the world. The most recent report on South Sudan points out that the transitional constitution provides for separation of religion and state, prohibits religious discrimination, and guarantees freedom to worship and assemble. It notes, however, that in January the military detained and killed five Episcopalians worshiping in Central Equatoria State. Two bishops were detained but later released at Bor airport in connection with the dispute over the appointment of the internal Episcopal Archbishop of Jonglei Internal Province. The report also mentions the killing of two Catholic nuns on the Juba-Nimule road and the shooting of the Catholic Bishop-designate of Rumbek, who survived. The perpetrators of the latter incidents have never been identified.
Overshadowing this violence targeting religious figures in South Sudan, intercommunal conflict in Abyei, Northern Bahr al-Ghazal, Western, Central, and Eastern Equatoria has killed over 200 in the last few weeks and has displaced 150,000, according to a church official.
In Sudan the international community has launched a “tripartite initiative” by the UN, the African Union and IGAD aimed at overcoming the political deadlock. Talks began June 8 led by UN Special Representative Volker Perthes. However, the Forces of Freedom & Change, the major civil society group which has been heavily involved in popular demonstrations, refused to take part. The group criticized participation of the military leadership and Islamist elements and the failure to release all political detainees. Observers fear that Gen. Burhan and his supporters are pushing a plan to formalize the entrenched power of the military, while providing only enough civilian window dressing to induce the international community to resume economic support. Massive street protests continued this past week.
Episcopal Church officials in both Sudan and South Sudan have warmly welcomed news of planned travel by AFRECS Vice President Steven Miles, Board member Rev. James Hubbard, and me August 12-24. We look forward to renewing our contacts with church and Mothers’ Union leaders in both countries, and in South Sudan visiting the Glow MAPS school, our trauma healing program, and the new campus of the Episcopal University. We intend to report back our adventures to all of you.
Executive Director
Scholar of Middle East Joins AFRECS Board
We were delighted in June to welcome Rachel M. Scott to the Board of AFRECS.
On joining the Board, Dr. Scott wrote:” I am particularly drawn to the initiative that bridges trauma healing with community savings. I believe firmly in the power of financial independence and the transformation such independence can bring. Christian-Muslim relations in Sudan and South Sudan, and the growth of Christianity in South Sudan, really pique my interest.”
Dr. Scott is an Anglican and has lived and done research in Egypt. She studied Arabic and Islamics at Oxford and took a Ph.D in Islamic Studies from the University of London in 2004. Now a professor in the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, she teaches on Islam, religion and law, secularism, and Coptic Christianity. Her second book, Recasting Islamic Law: Religion and the Nation State in Egyptian Constitution Making, was published by Cornell University Press in spring 2021.
Dinka Cam Translation of the Old Testament Nears Completion
by Lorelei Mah, Senior Philanthropy Advisor, Wycliffe Bible Translators USA
Editors’ note: In the combined territory of Sudan and South Sudan, over 115 languages are spoken, including Arabic, English, and Dinka. Sudanese church leaders count 26 Bibleless languages in Sudan and 11 in South Sudan. There are three major dialects within the Dinka community: Dinka Cam, Dinka Padang, and Dinka Rek. Each has developed its own hymns and books and translated the Bible. A Dinka Rek Language Committee was established to lead on the translation of the Bible, collect Christian songs, and write stories for books in the Dinka Rek dialect.
The Dinka Cam team of Wycliffe Bible Translators, USA, in Juba is making progress. By March of this year all the books of the Old Testament had been published in trial edition form for community checks among the Dinka Cam congregations. All that remains is the completion of the consultant check, plus harmonizing and updating their translation of the New Testament done a long time ago. Then follow the read-through and typesetting.
The Juba team is led by Awan de Gak, who joined the team in 1993, and Ayeil Deng Ayel, a computer/paratext expert who joined in 1992. In addition, Guot Bul Mayuon, a Scripture engagement and literacy specialist, joined the team in 2018 and is learning Greek and Hebrew., but is on a short leave right now.
The Juba team has used daily Skype calls to South Africa with university professors of Hebrew Jacobus A. Naudé and his wife, Cynthia Miller. (She previously worked on the Murle Bible. The Corona virus lockdowns in South Africa forced the professors to teach their regular classes online, which meant extended periods when they were not available to the Dinka Cham team. An undersea fiber cable that they relied on for Skype internet connectivity was severed for a time. Miller’s mother in the USA passed away unexpectedly, taking her out of the work for several weeks. These disruptions delayed the work for a month.
Keep in mind that I have not met in person with these folks since 2008.
Instrumental in encouraging this translation project has been Joseph Garang Atem, a graduate of Seabury-Western Seminary in the US and Principal of Renk Theological College, who is now Bishop of the Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Malakal and Archbishop of Upper Nile. Donors in the USA continue to provide financial support.
For more news: lorelei_mah@wycliffe.org, www.wycliffe.org, or 810.772.9196
Hymns People Sing: North America and South Sudan
by Joan Huyser-Honig, Grand Rapids, Michigan
That so many Dinka Bor people became Anglican during the Second Civil War (1983-2005) is due partly to a decision by Bishop Nathaniel Garang Anyieth to stop requiring literacy as a condition of baptism.
For generations the Church Missionary Society (CMS) required baptismal candidates to study for a year or more to prove they knew enough about Christianity. Growing up in an oral culture, the Dinka were very good at memorizing. Missionaries suspected that they were “cheating” by memorizing, rather than reading, the necessary passages and answers. Missionaries worried that without literacy baptized Christians wouldn’t be able to deepen their faith.
For five years during the Second Civil War, however, people in the Bor region were cut off from the rest of the Anglican Church. Bishop Nathaniel was the only bishop in the region, and thousands of traumatized Dinka Bor were ready to switch allegiance to a God more effective than their local jak. The bishop decided to baptize first and catechize later.
These baptisms led Dinka women to meet and encourage each other through worship, church meetings, and shared learning. Among them was Mary Aluel Garang Anyuon, who was called by the American missionary Marc Nikkel “a natural theologian”. Nikkel heard, then recorded, and eventually wrote a doctoral dissertation about her songs. These new Christians’ preferred medium was singing.
Songs from Scripture
Meditating with scripture, Mary Aluel was inspired to compose hymn texts. In 1985, the year after her conversion, she wrote two songs that quickly spread. The songs spoke to people as warring groups stole their cattle, burned their homes, destroyed jak shrines, raped and killed their relatives, and forced them to flee.
Mary Aluel Garang
Mary Aluel’s first song was “Death has come to reveal the faith”
The first of four long verses begins: “Death has come to reveal the faith.”
Verse three gives voice to suffering and pleas:
God, do not make us orphans
of the earth.
Look back upon us,
O Creator of humankind.
Evil is in conflict with us.”
The final verse begins:
Let us encourage our hearts
in the hope of God,
who once breathed wei [breath and life] /
into the human body.
His ears are open to prayers: the Creator of humankind is watching.”
When this song was published, the Dinka Anglican editors gave the scripture reference as John 11:25–27 (“I am the resurrection and the life.. Do you believe…? Yes, Lord, I believe…”).
Her second early song, also spreading quickly, was “God Has Come Among Us Slowly”
The first of five verses begins:
“God has come among us slowly,
and we didn’t realize it.
He stands nearby, behind our hearts,
shining his pure light upon us.”
The song explains (v. 2) that God, not jak, created all people and all things, even the insects. It asks for the Lord’s power and “Guiding Spirit of truth” to reach everyone. It muses:
We receive salvation slowly, slowly,
all of us together, with no one left behind.
Gradually, gradually it will succeed,
until the day when it will be grasped
by the Dinka who sacrifice at shrines.
Mary Aluel created these two early songs in Kongor, which had a brief flurry of Christian revival in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Prior to 1983, other people groups in southern Sudan had responded far more enthusiastically to Christian missionaries than did the Dinka.
Here is an exercise for an American staff meeting or worship committee seeking to make church music relevant to real-life issues:
- Describe your knowledge about or connections with Christians in or from the Sudans.
- Which songs in your congregation’s repertoire speak specifically about joys and problems in your culture or subculture?
- How can you tell when your political or cultural identity overrides your “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” identity? Which of your worship songs address this issue?
More at https://worship.calvin.edu/search/new-search#s=Dinka%20 or joan@hhcreatives.com
Meet AFRECS at New Wineskins Conference September 22-25, near Ashville, North Carolina
Dane Smith and Board members look forward to welcoming visitors at our exhibit at the once-ever-three-years New Wineskins gathering of Anglicans and Episcopalians engaged in international cross-cultural mission. Our guest on Friday and Saturday will be Bishop Grant LeMarquand, editor of the letters of Marc Nikkel Why Haven’t You Left?, recently Bishop of the Horn of Africa in Gambella, Ethiopia, and professor of New Testament at Trinity School for Ministry.
Register now at https://www.newwineskinsconference.org. For details , contact 800-588-722, 828-669-8022, or Richard Jones at 703-823-3186.
AFRECS is grateful for the recent donation from the Women of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, Dallas, Texas.
We give thanks for your continued support in prayer and generosity
We are deeply grateful that contributions from you, our supporters, continue to nurture AFRECS in expanding our impact. You make a difference in the essential peacebuilding work of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, so needed in these challenging times. We hope you will make a contribution to support our work with the people of the Sudans and offer a prayer for their nations. You can contribute online at https://afrecs.org or send a check made out to AFRECS to P.O. Box 3327, Alexandria, VA 22302.This issue was prepared by Board members Ellen Davis and Richard Jones.