Archbishop-elect Daniel Deng Bul(Photo: (c)Episcopal Life Online)Sudan’s Anglicans have elected the chairman of the Church’s justice, peace and reconciliation commission as their new archbishop.
The Rt Rev Daniel Deng Bul, currently Bishop of Renk in the Episcopal Church of the Sudan, used his post-election speech to stress the Church’s leadership role in bringing long-term peace.
“We are Christians. We should lead our people in peace. … We must give a strong message to the people of Sudan that the Church of God is united.”
The Church must not be divided across tribal lines if it is to meet the challenges ahead, the archbishop-elect said.
Bishop Daniel, 58, won the election outright in the first round of voting at an emergency general synod held in Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan.
Despite worries that those tribal differences may affect the election, the Rev Joanna Udal, a CMS mission partner and chaplain to the previous archbishop, the Rt Rev Joseph Marona, said church members were pleased at both the process and the outcome.
She called the new archbishop “dynamic and inspiring” and highlighted the experience he brings to one of the world’s more challenging church leadership positions.
“Bishop Daniel Deng has championed the cause of justice, peace and reconciliation in Sudan.
“His pioneering work as Bishop of Renk has also been an example of what can be achieved at the front line under often very difficult conditions.”
Bishop Daniel was made area bishop of Renk in 1988. In 1995, despite the raging war, Renk became a fully-fledged diocese.
“We have a challenge ahead of us,” said the new Archbishop-elect. “We need to teach our people unity and love. We will do that together.”
The extent of the challenge is vast. The peace accord between north and south Sudan signed in 2005 is holding but progress in rebuilding infrastructure is slow.
Even this week, the UN High Commission for Refugees has announced that it expects to double the number of Sudanese refugees returning from Uganda each week. Fifty thousand will return this year.
They are returning to a Southern Sudan which still has poor roads and a lack of schools and hospitals as a result of the civil war which has dominated that last 40 years of the country’s history.
Instability also resulted from the overspill of the Lord’s Resistance Army’s war with the Ugandan government during two decades. Peace talks on this conflict are taking place now in Juba.
But it is the Darfur conflict that is now the most urgent. Steven Spielberg famously resigned as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics over China’s links with the Sudanese government.
This probably did more to re-focus the world’s attention on the situation than new government-backed violence that left some 58,000 villagers homeless in recent weeks.
In this context, words first spoken by Bishop Daniel Deng in an interview for CMS’s Yes magazine 10 years ago echo across the decade:
“Our culture has been destroyed. Our society has been destroyed. Our people are always on the move. Here is a people in the wilderness.”
Of course, then, at the 1998 Lambeth Conference, he was speaking of the desperation of the people of Southern Sudan.
His stark words then seem to speak poignantly now for the ordinary people of Darfur:
“If the Western world wants to help us it has to know that we are people who have already been destroyed.”