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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
Anglican mission school at Yei, southern Sudan
Courtesy Robert O. Collins
Christianity was most prevalent among the peoples of Al
Istiwai State--the Madi, Moru, Azande, and Bari. The major
churches in the Sudan were the Roman Catholic and the Anglican.
Southern communities might include a few Christians, but the
rituals and world view of the area were not in general those of
traditional Western Christianity. The few communities that had
formed around mission stations had disappeared with the
dissolution of the missions in 1964. The indigenous Christian
churches in Sudan, with external support, continued their
mission, however, and had opened new churches and repaired those
destroyed in the continuing civil conflict. Originally, the
Nilotic peoples were indifferent to Christianity, but in the
latter half of the twentieth century many people in the educated
elite embraced its tenets, at least superficially. English and
Christianity have become symbols of resistance to the Muslim
government in the north, which has vowed to destroy both. Unlike
the early civil strife of the 1960s and 1970s, the insurgency in
the 1980s and the 1990s has taken on a more religiously
confrontational character.
Data as of June 1991
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