Our bishops in Sudan

by Michael Shackleton · January 21, 2004

Achieving peace on earth should be as much a goal of politics as it is of religion. Peace is the fruit of a justice system that assures all men and women in society their basic rights before God and their individual rights before the law. In today’s world, basic rights and civil rights are generally contained in the constitution of a particular country.

For a long time religion and politics have been spoken of as oil and water; they do not mix, and churchmen had to stick to religious affairs, leaving politicians to get on with the important task of running a country. However, it is essential that we note that the contemporary democratic State is, to a large extent, willing to listen to what the Church has to say about gaining a universal peace, where citizens have their rights respected.

From the time that St Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century wrote the classic analysis of the relations between Church and State in his treatise The City of God, there was a plain dividing line between the independent responsibilities of churchmen and those of kings and governments. St Augustine starkly likened the City of God to a heavenly city peopled by the just, and the Earthly City peopled by the wicked. They were like oil and water, and could not be reconciled.

In successive centuries, popes and kings found themselves acting out this confrontational model in a pendulum-like way, so that Church and State alternately won and lost control of people’s minds, often with devastating results in lives, property and ideas. This has been found unworkable in a free democratic order.

Last week we reported that the Southern African bishops had taken steps to promote good governance, democracy, human rights and a strong civil society in Sudan. This might have been an unimaginable turn of events in the past and that is why the role of our bishops here deserves emphasis. It is at an international level, combining the influence of the United Nations, the World Council of Churches and others. Its object is peace, stability and economic upliftment.

In Sudan, much of the problem lies in the attempts by the predominantly Muslim north to impose Islamic Law on the entire nation, especially at the hands of President Bashir in 1991. Islamic Law, or Shari’ah, sees little or no distinction between politics and religion. It holds that Islam is paramount, to the detriment of non-Muslims, and therefore of democratic principles. The Sudanese constitution, in fact, was not formally approved until 1973, that is, 17 years after independence, and now it is in tatters.

The result of this mess in Sudan’s complicated web of disparate ethnic groups, religions, languages and ideologies, is that the economy is stagnant, the nation is debt-ridden and the standard of living is deplorable.

The Southern African bishops, along with their cooperators, want inclusivity, transparency, and dialogue to ease the stresses among the differing parties and factions. From the point of view of achieving lasting peace, perhaps the essential element in all of this is the acceptance of a constiution for Sudan that all will respect. Any constitution must show the exact limits of political regulation, and bind universally. Otherwise, the law could be applied arbitrarily. Dictatorship would be no different from majority rule.

Law implies morality, and morality implies God and his Church, in this case through the agency of the Southern African bishops.