“Religious Elements of the Sudanese Civil War” by Christopher Tounsel

Sudanese President Omar al Bashir in Juba, Sudan by Al Jazeera English (CC BY-SA 2.0).

On April 15, 2023, civil war broke out in Sudan between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). That day, in the capital of Khartoum, RSF fighters seized the All Saints Anglican Cathedral and transformed it into an operation base. Archbishop Ezekiel Kondo recalled being in the church office preparing for Sunday service when hell broke loose. “We heard a very heavy sound of gunfire,” Archbishop Kondo shared, “only to get out and find heavy smoke billowing nearby.” 119 years earlier, a ceremony commemorated the laying of the All Saints Cathedral’s foundation stone. There British clergyman Llewellyn H. Gwynne, who later served as the Anglican Bishop of Egypt and Sudan for twenty-five years, beseeched God to bless the work symbolized by the construction of that church:

“Strengthen this stone about to be laid in Thy Name,” Gwynne prayed. “and . . . be, we beseech Thee, the beginning, the increase, and the consummation of this our work, which is undertaken to the glory of Thy Name, Who with the Father, and the Holy Ghost liveth and reigneth, ever one God, world without end. AMEN.” 

Separated by nearly twelve decades of history, the 1904 ceremony and 2023 paramilitary takeover could not appear to stand in more marked contrast with one another. And yet, when considering the evangelical dimensions that fueled Britain’s colonial project in Sudan and the postcolonial state’s attempts to form the country in Islam’s image, no phenomenon stitches Sudanese political history over the last 150 years together more than the state’s political uses of religion. The religious elements and legal ramifications of the war between the SAF and RSF–including the present and future of religious freedom in Sudan–illustrates that this moment is no different.

Colonial History: 1899-1956 

While April 2025 will mark the civil war’s two-year anniversary, the conflict’s historical roots date back to Sudan’s colonial origins. From 1899-1956, England and Egypt governed the country as a virtual colony known as the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. Though Britons often used their ability to spread the “civilizing” light of Christianity to provide moral justification for their global imperialist expansions, they took a more tempered approach to Sudan, which Herbert Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian Army had violently “reconquered” from the Islamic Mahdiya state. As a matter of state security, the new Anglo-Egyptian government temporarily prohibited any mission station operating north of the tenth parallel or any other area that it recognized as Muslim. Though Gwynne was allowed to minister to Khartoum’s population of British soldiers and civilians, Kitchener banned his right to missionize in Northern Sudan. While Christianity has been present in Sudan for over one thousand years, Islam has been the country’s most demographically significant religion since at least the eighth century (today more than 90% of Sudanese are Muslim while Christians represent 4.4%, or a little under two million people). While Northern Sudan has a history of Islamic statecraft dating back to at least the seventeenth century, Southern Sudan was deemed suitable for missionary labor. 

Over the following decades, a state-sponsored bifurcation of the Condominium emerged as the British aimed to separate the mostly Islamic and Arabic-speaking North from the multiethnic, more missionary-influenced South. The government ruled Sudan from its Northern metropolitan center, Khartoum, and instituted a “Southern Policy” in 1930 that restricted movement between the two regions (in part to prevent the spread of Islam in the South). Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Catholics from around the world converged to build mission schools, translate indigenous languages, and evangelize southern Sudan’s diverse populaces. While the British thus never sought to officially Christianize the entire country, religious studies scholar Noah Salomon notes that its colonial project can nevertheless be read as an attempt to establish secular governance; one that later supporters of the Islamic state “as such a powerful episode of secular state-building that its legacy still poses a challenge to the success of contemporary Islamist projects in freeing religion from its limited domains” (32).

On January 1, 1956, Sudan became the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from Britain. The new postcolonial government soon marshalled the law in its attempt to concretize a different state-sponsored religious vision for the country, adding a legal angle to postcolonial conflicts often viewed through a religious prism. 

Southern Sudanese Resistance

South Sudanese were not enthused with their marginalization in the political process that led to independence, and anxieties towards Arabs that were rooted in historical enslavement, combined with contemporary fears at modern oppression from the North, brought tensions to a boiling point. Civil war erupted between the North and South in August 1955 and lasted until 1972. During that conflict—which coincided with the infancy of the postcolonial state—the Khartoum-based government tried to forge Sudan as an Islamic country. Minister of Education Ziyada Arbab began the nationalization of all missionary schools; the state imposed a Friday Law that changed the South’s weekly holiday from Sunday to Friday; and in 1964, the government announced the expulsion of 300 foreign missionaries from the country. 

While the Addis Ababa Agreement that ended that war gave southern Sudan some autonomy, another civil war ignited in 1983 following President Jafaar Nimeiri’s decision to replace the civil penal code with Sharia law. President Nimeiri’s sharia-based “September Laws” imposed mandatory hand and feet amputations for certain crimes and banned alcohol, inflicting economic hardship for women who brewed and sold beer in slums. Over the next two years, President Nimeiri declared that some Islamic laws applied to non-Muslims, multiple persons were publicly amputated for the crime of theft, and, in June 1985, Islamic reformer Muhammad Taha was executed with four others for opposing legal Islamization. Despite Nimeiri’s ouster later that year and Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi’s announcement that sharia would be applied in a way that protected non-Muslims’ rights, state uses of religion took a sordid turn following Omar al-Bashir’s 1989 military coup. In addition to dissolving parliament, banning political parties, and restricting freedom of the press, al-Bashir allied with National Islamic Front leader Hasan al-Turabi. The government imposed a cruel vision of Islamic law that heavily restricted women’s rights and levied amputations and stoning as punishments. 

Religious Dimensions

Within this fraught context of state-sponsored Islamic policies, the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SCBC) produced several letters outlining their vision for church-state relations. The letters condemned the lack of religious freedom in the country, made explicit demands of the Sudanese government, and referenced the Bible to encourage Sudanese Christians. The SCBC’s letters suggested that the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983-2005)—waged by Southern rebels seeking a secular state—was a chance to prove a close relationship to Christ, inferring that one’s faith and citizenship were linked. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement ending the war gave Southerners the option of deciding whether to remain as one country or secede in a referendum. In January 2011, South Sudanese voters decided to secede and create the world’s newest country, the Republic of South Sudan. Despite an indictment from the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur, Omar al-Bashir maintained control over Sudan. Three months after South Sudan’s July 2011 secession was complete, al-Bashir declared that Sudan would adopt a completely Islamic constitution, further evincing religion’s dominating influence on his domestic policy agenda. Attacks on Christians worsened thereafter. 

Before long, however, the writing was on the wall for al-Bashir’s iron-fisted but ever-aging regime. South Sudan pocketed three-quarters of Sudan’s oil revenues when it seceded, injuring Sudan’s economy. Hundreds protested the government’s hike of bread prices amid high inflation in late 2018, and—in a nation-shifting development—a military coup forced al-Bashir from power on April 11, 2019. Al-Bashir’s thirty-year-rule represented both a long chapter in the Sudanese state’s use of religion to create a social order and a painful era for Sudanese Christians replete with intimidation, prosecutions, and destroyed houses of worship. Would regime change usher in the dawn of a legal framework that not only promulgated but practically enforced freedom of religion? What role would Christians have in the fabric and future of a post-Bashir Sudan comprised of approximately 91 percent Muslims, according to the Sudanese government? 

Christian Discrimination

The following years of post-Bashir transition proved duplicitous, entailing both cosmic changes on the political landscape but alarming consistency of Christian discrimination. The period bookended by the April 2019 formation of a transitional government to the outbreak of civil war in April 2023 was lamentably tumultuous given the thrill of hope birthed by the regime change:the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed over 120 people in their attempt to squash a protest for civilian rule, the transitional prime minister survived an assassination attempt, and in late October 2021, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF-leader Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as “Hemedti”) staged a coup. In the midst of these sea changes, the state showed both progress and stasis in its stance towards Christians. On one hand, the transitional government—which wanted to present itself as reformist—pledged to improve the country’s human rights record. A law punishing the act of renouncing Islam punishable by a death, Minister of Religious Affairs Nasr al-Din Mufreh issuing a statement reaffirming the government’s pledge to protect freedom of religion. 

Realities on the ground, however, showed a stark difference between official pronouncements and Christians’ lived experience. In Blue Nile State, three churches were each burned down twice over a three-week period in December 2019-January 2020, multiple churches belonging to the Sudanese Church of Christ were also targeted by arson, and Christians selling alcohol reported being subject to punishment. In addition to such acts of physical violence were those harms wrought by legal means. The Miscellaneous Amendments Act of 2020 ratified by the civilian-led transitional government did not repeal an article of law criminalizing blasphemy . In the area of family law, courts handled custody disputes between Christian and Muslim parents by granting custody to the Muslim if there was concern that the non-Muslim parent would raise their child outside of Islam. And in Gezira State, authorities used the Islamic prohibition banning a Muslim woman from marrying a Christian man to charge a married couple with adultery. Such examples highlighted some of the daily obstacles that Christian citizens had to navigate despite former strongman Bashir’s removal from power. 

In April 2023, another coup threw another wrench into Christians’ present and future well-being in Sudan. With rival leaders Burhan and Hemedti at loggerheads, tensions exploded on April 15 when SAF and RSF forces fired upon one another in Khartoum and strategic military sites throughout the country. While statistics never convey war’s human toll, the numbers are nevertheless sobering: more than fourteen million have been displaced. More than thirty million require humanitarian aid. Estimates vary, but as many as 150,000 have lost their lives. 

The RSF’s takeover of Khartoum’s All Saints’ Church in the early days of the carnage portended future suffering that Christian communities experienced in the months to come. In a brutal manifestation of the African proverb that “when elephants fight the grass gets trampled,” Sudanese Christians have borne the weight of the SAF-RSF war. The RSF has systematically targeted Christians through looting, forcibly evacuating clergy, and desecrating graves. In May 2023, barely weeks into the war, Rapid Support Forces stormed Omdurman’s Mary Girgis Church during a Sunday service. Attacking laity and clergy, the RSF looted valuables and destroyed the century-old institution. The paramilitary force has assaulted at least two other churches in the country’s riverain core, including Khartoum North’s Orthodox Coptic Church and Khartoum’s Dar Mariam Catholic Church. Yasir Zaidan, a Sudanese doctoral candidate in international studies at the University of Washington, notes that the Dar Mariam attack served as a sanctuary for orphans that also provided medical services for surrogate mothers in Khartoum’s Al-Shajara neighborhood. Zaidan stated that the RSF harassed nuns, blocked access to food and water, and shelled the structure. In a cruel twist of irony, church structures have become collateral damage as Sudanese Armed Forces units engage the RSF. In an interview published last October, Ron Boyd-MacMillan, Chief of Research and Global Strategy for the California-based Global Christian Relief, shared that 

They [the RSF] take over church buildings, kill pastors, and then the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on the other side bombards the church because they know rebels are in there. When the army or the RSF enters an area, they look for large buildings with good walls to house the fighters. That’s invariably a church or another type of religious structure. Then they sweep the area with fearful killings. This is why we say that the Sudanese church is under attack. 

However, in a piece for the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, Sudanese human rights lawyer Mohaned Elnour discourages the notion that the Sudanese Armed Forces are exempt from blame. “The SAF has also shown little interest in protecting Christians and other minorities,” Elnour writes, and proceeds to list the military’s bombing of an Evangelical Church in Bahri, the shelling of a Khartoum Christian compound, an Evangelical Church in Omdurman, and the looting of the Orthodox Patriarchate building in an SAF-controlled neighborhood in Omdurman. 

Sudan’s uncertain future

At time of writing, the civil war has entered a puzzling point where both sides appear to have cause to rejoice. At a February meeting in Nairobi, the RSF signed a charter with allies that sets the stage for establishing a parallel government with the Sudanese government–effectively paving the way for partition, rather than unconditional surrender. However, as of March 2025, the SAF had retaken previously-held RSF territory in the nation’s ever-important geographic center. In a major symbolic victory, the Sudanese military announced that it had retaken control of Khartoum’s Presidential Palace from Hemedti’s RSF. When the guns at last go silent, will Sudan emerge as one or two countries? What do the possibilities of a united or partitioned Sudan mean for religious minorities?

As uncertain as the future may be, it is evident that any scenario resulting in practical freedom of religion and legal protections against discrimination must involve fair and free elections resulting in civilian governance. Postcolonial Sudan has experienced a plethora of coups and coup attempts since 1956, placing the country in a dizzying cycle of military and short-term civilian rule. As both the SAF and RSF were formerly involved in Bashir’s regime—one that made life for Christians uncomfortable—it seems unwise to rely on either of those groups to enforce a religiously pluralistic democracy that neither have truly hitherto supported. In constructing a postwar jurisprudence that acknowledges the overwhelming Muslim majority while respecting non-Muslims as equal citizens, lawmakers may look to countries like Indonesia or Jordan as comparative frames of reference for contexts where Christians have enjoyed more freedoms than their Sudanese counterparts.   

By any metric, Sudan stands at an existential moment in its history. In order to ensure a lasting and peaceful future, several objectives need to be met. Formal hostilities must cease, critical health and educational infrastructures must be rebuilt, the courses of humanitarian aid must flow unencumbered, and every resource—domestic and foreign—must be marshaled to support the millions of lives that have been impacted by the civil war. But if the strongest index of a nation’s health is the condition of its minority population, any prosperous Sudanese future will include the full inclusion of Christians in civil society. 

---

---

Recommended Citation

Tounsel, Christopher. “Religious Elements of the Sudanese Civil War.” Canopy Forum, April 4, 2025. https://canopyforum.org/2025/04/04/religious-elements-of-the-sudanese-civil-war/

Recent Posts