Episcopal Church of the Sudan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anglicanism portal

The Episcopal Church of the Sudan is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion in Sudan. The province consists of twenty-four dioceses, each headed by a bishop. One of the diocesan bishops is elected to serve as Archbishop of the Sudan, and represent the province to the rest of the Communion as its primate. In February 2008, the Episcopal Church of Sudan elected the Rt Revd Daniel Deng Bul of the Diocese of Renk to serve as its next Primate. Bishop Deng will succeed Archbishop Joseph Marona, who retired on 31 December 2007 after serving eight years as Sudan's Primate.^[1]

The first major Anglican mission in Sudan was founded in Omdurman in 1899, under the auspices of the Church Mission Society. The mission led to widespread conversion to Christianity throughout southern Sudan. Missionary activity came first under the Diocese in Jerusalem, and then, in 1920, as part of the new Diocese of Egypt and the Sudan, with Llewellyn Henry Gwynne as its first bishop. As the pace of growth continued, a separate Diocese of the Sudan was formed with its own bishop in 1945. In 1957, oversight for the Diocese of the Sudan was transferred from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Archbishop in Jerusalem. In 1974, when the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East underwent structural reform, Sudan became an independent province of four dioceses.

Due to continued growth and displacement due to the Second Sudanese Civil War, the province had eleven dioceses in 1993 and has twenty-four today. Most of the dioceses are small (due to poor transportation) and clustered around the south of the country. The Episcopal Church has played a prominent role in the peace process in Sudan. Today, four large dioceses cover the north of Sudan (Khartoum, Port Sudan, El Obeid and Kdugli). The other twenty dioceses cover Southern Sudan.