Letter from South Sudan

The people of South Sudan face more conflict and uncertainty as elections are postponed. Samuel Enosa Peni records how Christian faith is changing lives amid difficult times.

Samuel Enosa Peni

Samuel Enosa Peni is Archbishop of Western Equatoria in South Sudan.

Outside a church a congregation waits seated while an onlooker rests on a motorcycle by a tree.

South Sudanese Anglicans await the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to their church.

South Sudan as a sovereign state gained its independence in 2011 after experiencing a civil war which lasted for many decades. According to the 2018 International Religious Freedom Report, Christians make up 60 per cent of the population, 33 per cent constitute indigenous religion followers among whom some combine both Christian and indigenous practices.

In 2012 Christian faith in South Sudan celebrated the centenary of sustained Christianity in the land, for both the Roman Catholic church and the Protestants (Episcopal Church of South Sudan - Anglican Communion). There has been a tremendous growth of Christian faith in South Sudan and an increased number of Christian denominations. Lives have been saved and many South Sudanese have received Christ as their personal saviour. The Christian faith has also played a major role through its evangelization in drawing many people of all ages to participate in church activities and more. The church offers psychological and social support, inter-religious peace building initiatives, education, health and care that is changing lives. Christian faith is embedded in the reality and life situations of the people.

What does daily reality look like for people trying to live out their faith?

Life in South Sudan is characterized by war, tribal and communal conflicts. This has left the country facing many challenges, and the people are living in fear. Those who are trying to live out a Christian faith in South Sudan are not excepted from the general challenges and problems. The primary problem the majority face is the cost of living and security.

High inflation in the country is a factor of socio-economic problems and the hit of COVID in 2020. Life has never been the same since. Over 80 per cent of the people in South Sudan live below the poverty line. Despite the living conditions, as Christians, many have not ceased to live out a Christian faith. This is evidence by Christians participating in huge numbers during every Sunday Mass, prayer gatherings, Bible studies and church activities. Door to door and targeted evangelism mission outreach are effective. And a great number of people are called to the ministries such as becoming clergy, being commissioned as youth ministry leaders, Mothers’ Union members, evangelists and lay workers in the church.

What are the pressures and dangers being faced?

Due to lack of political will among the key players to permanently end conflict and bring peace to the people of South Sudan, there is still the danger of insecurity and fear among people in many parts of the country. Politics and socio-economics challenges and differences remain a problem. Christian faith also faces a danger of insurging witchcraft practices. Massive prayer initiatives are the response of the church. The mission to evangelise, teach and disciple remains a burden as a third of the people of South Sudan constitute indigenous religion followers or follow emerging false prophets. Because of the current economic situation, the church is lacking finance for its developmental programs. These range from capacity building, through missions, youth and women programmes, to working with vulnerable groups providing health and education. This poses a threat in the smooth gospel mission and discipleship programs.

How is Christianity fuelling justice?

South Sudan’s independence struggle was often considered a fight for religious freedom for the mostly Christian south against the Islamist government in Khartoum. With the current situation, the church has always been a key advocate for justice. As her role is to fuel justice, the church has been promoting dialogue, healing and reconciliation amid the ongoing political strife and ethnic conflicts. In 2017/2018, the South Sudan Council of Churches and its partners conducted a “Community Conversation” as an Action Plan for Peace aimed at documenting the voice of the people towards peacebuilding and addressing community issues and differences. The church is never silent to speak out against abuses of power and injustices in the Country. On 10 March 2023, the South Sudan Council of Churches released a statement which reads, “Deeper than simply avoiding war, nonviolence calls us to a new way of life which respects the dignity of every person and the integrity of creation. Nonviolence names a core value of the Gospel, in which Jesus combined an unmistakable rejection of violence with the power of love and truth in action for justice and peace. It is much more than the absence of violence and it is never passive. It is a spirituality, a constructive force, an effective method for social force, an effective method for social transformation, and a powerful way of life committed to the well-being of all. It rejects any form of violence and commits itself to a prophetic stance against violence and injustice. This is not a passive approach, not simply submitting to or colluding with violence, but is active and prophetic in responding to all forms of violence, amongst individuals, families, clans, tribes, and political and military factions, and including systemic violence embedded in our cultural, societal, and political life.”

What about the upcoming election?

Every South Sudanese is looking forward to a “free and fair” vote in the upcoming 2024 elections. Church leaders are also urging the government to adhere to the peace agreement it signed with its rivals, and to conduct a peaceful election. From the viewpoints of the current political climate, though the government has shown commitment to conduct elections in December 2024, remember that elections were to be conducted in February 2023 but did not materialize. The certainty of conducting elections in 2024 remains unclear. The facts are that the following measures needed to run an election have not yet been implemented: electoral laws, a census, voter registration and constituency boundaries, safe environments to vote, repatriation of refugees and security arrangements. Revitalized peace agreement protocols are also yet to be fully implemented. Looking at the remaining period to elections, this poses a question whether the election will be viable or not. From a Christian perspective, there is hope, with God nothing is impossible. The church is praying and working closely with the political parties and other community organizations to ensure there are elections in 2024.

Article

Change

Identity

12 April 2024

1 min read

How to be (un)successful

Could busyness really be the counterfeit of significance?

Pete Portal

Pete lives Cape Town, and works with men coming out of gangs and drug addiction. He is the author of How to be (Un)Successful.

A man sits cross legged in a park with a laptop on the grass in front of him. He looks to one side.

Malte Helmhold on Unsplash.

You probably want to be a success.

That’s OK – it’s a very reasonable thing to desire.

The questions ‘Am I successful?’ or ‘What is success?’ are deeply significant and to ask such questions is a normal part of the human experience. The yearning for a life of purpose, as elusive as it can seem, is felt acutely by the majority of those who have ever lived – certainly by more than might admit it. (Those feelings of inadequacy you experience may be more common than you think.) And now more than ever it is understandable that you may feel you are not particularly successful, or not successful enough. We are assaulted by a combination of capitalism and consumerism, social media and cancel culture, polarised ideologies and virtue signalling, topped off by the wounds of our parents passed down – all of which can amalgamate into producing some pretty angsty, pressure-driven people.

It’s not just you; I’m pretty sure we all have a bit of a problem with success (the word itself is so subjective), and our idea of it can often be fuelled by wounds rather than vision, romanticised projections rather than reality. Because we are all somewhat flawed, any worldly contribution we try to make can get precariously entangled with a me-fixated narcissism on a fairly regular basis.

Most of us know that being successful is not simply about money, looks, large numbers or power. That’s just a caricature to which very few reasonable people actually subscribe, right?

Well, sure – at least on the surface.

My social-media feeds are rammed full of early-to-mid-thirties enjoying a kind of spandex-clad transcendence.

The thing is, despite seeing through it and being repelled by it in others (we see it’s all vanity, inch-deep), something in us longs for success on these terms. But much more interesting than skimming along the surface of ‘success’ is excavating deeper into some of the core motivating beliefs we humans have about ourselves, such as mistaken pride in thinking we each control our destiny, or paranoia that tells us there’s an inherent scarcity of everything in the world. These are the swell that carry along the undercurrent of comparison – where we see the lives of others and long for a different reality for ourselves. And comparison – so often eliciting either pride or despondency – rarely ends well.

A cursory glance through the wisdom of online articles on the matter tells us millennials typically understand that material wealth isn’t the marker of success – there are enough old, sad, rich people to show that. Instead, success has now become synonymous with living a life that others want. Chase an experience. Go adventure. Wanderlust. #yolo. To succeed in life is to publicly consume as many unique experiences as you can during your short time on earth.

I don’t know about you, but my social-media feeds are rammed full of early-to-mid-thirties enjoying a kind of spandex-clad transcendence. Success for today’s generation would seem to look a lot less like the overweight suit-clad city trader selling their soul to the system, making shedloads of cash to buy a slice of suburban real estate with a Porsche in the drive, and more like the lithe and mindful global citizen doing ‘life on my terms’. Think coastal living, yoga on a stand-up paddleboard in the morning, slaying the emails in your industrial co-working space, eating a superfood lunch, nailing a couple of zoom calls early evening before smashing some gua bao and margaritas with ‘your peeps’ at the latest pop-up restaurant before taking an Uber home. #squadgoals

There’s no escaping the fact that technology has shrunk the world and as James Mumford notes, ‘global capitalism has brought so many different ways of life closer to us than ever before. We can see vividly a greater number of people who we want to be.’ This can bring up hidden feelings we thought we’d buried long ago.

I often feel unfulfilled. Sometimes completely lost. For years I haven’t been able to admit that. Until fairly recently I would find myself looking at others and thinking: ‘Don’t they ever struggle with life’s big questions? Don’t they ever want to give up? Surely, I can’t be the only one sinking under the weight of comparison?’ Far from freeing me from my broken sense of self, the version of faith I was trying to live by was exacerbating the core wound I recognised in myself. That wound was a sense of feeling a failure, unsuccessful. And like an unwelcome parasite, it fed on comparison to others.

Read any random couple of articles on ‘successful’ people talking about how ‘successful’ they are, and a lot of what’s conveyed is a profoundly angsty relationship with time: ‘You only have one shot at life’; ‘I don’t want to waste my time on earth’; ‘You can never get it back.’

It’s as though we have an inherent recognition – and for some, dread – of the physical limits placed on us by virtue of being mortal and human. But what if unencumbered productivity, unceasing activity and unrelenting progress – however that is defined – are signs less of success than of self-centred insecurity? Could busyness really be the counterfeit of significance?

It’s as if we have, left unchecked, an insatiable appetite for accomplishment. It’s not hard to see where this comes from. Paul Kingsnorth comments that: “Modern economies thrive by encouraging ever-increasing consumption of harmful junk, and our hyper-liberal culture encourages us to satiate any and all of our appetites in our pursuit of happiness. If that pursuit turns out to make us unhappy instead – well, that’s probably just because some limits remain un-busted.” He goes on to suggest that this is a fundamentally spiritual problem, because ‘a crisis of limits is a crisis of culture, and a crisis of culture is a crisis of spirit.’

So far so depressing?

It needn’t be.

Fullness of life – true success, if you like - is found in living to serve others above ourselves.

Despite my continued struggle with all of the above, (neatly summarised by the inner critic’s voice asking me ‘what have you got to show for your life?’), I am beginning to learn that ‘life in its fullness’ (as Jesus once described what he came to offer) is found elsewhere. So, what does this look like and how do we successfully access this fullness of life? This quote can come across – and I’ve heard it used as such – like a marketing slogan, dangling a golden carrot in front of sad or vulnerable people to recruit them into church. Presumably that wasn’t what Jesus had in mind.

Now there’s no denying the fact that Jesus was one of the most influential people who ever lived. Arguably THE most influential. Generally, even those who don’t follow him recognize that what he taught was pretty timeless. (Also evidenced by the 2.6 billion people today who are happy to be called Christian.) All of this suggests he had some fairly wise takes on how to live life well, and that his perspectives have stood the test of time. So, when he is recorded as teaching about how to discover what he described as ‘life in its fullness’, the chances are there is something valuable and insightful for those of us searching for success.

The thing is, in this particular speech, Jesus conceptualized ‘life in its fullness’ as a shepherd who ‘lays down his life for the sheep’. Sure, he was talking about himself, but he was also talking more broadly about the human experience. Jesus’ point is that fullness of life – true success, if you like - is found in living to serve others above ourselves. This flies in the face of much conventional ‘self-help’ wisdom, but it would seem you cannot find true abundance any other way.

We might well think: ‘Well hang on a minute, Jesus claimed to die for the sins of humanity – we can’t all do that!’ Absolutely right, and please don’t try. But in dying and raising to life again, Jesus foreshadowed the journey of surrender and rebirth that each person who chooses true success must go through. As C. S. Lewis said: ‘Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.’ This new life of serving others above ourselves – where we seek to align our desires, loves and motivations, our use of time and energy, words and actions with those of Jesus – comes to resemble the promise of life in its fullness. Discovering that would seem fairly successful wouldn’t it?

How to be (UnSuccessful) is published by SPCK.