Religion a Powerful Factor in Sudan's North-South Relations, Says Christian Congressman
WASHINGTON – Christians made a strong presence at an intimate Capitol Hill gathering with some of the nation's top religious freedom experts on Tuesday.
At an event aimed at highlighting the upcoming efforts of the Task Force on International Religious Freedom (TIRF) – a working group of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) – to end religious freedom and human rights violations in Sudan, several Christian congressmen and U.S. officials openly shared about their personal faith and the importance of religion in addressing the problems in Sudan.
"Almost since the dawn of reflective thought, religion has been used to justify everything from slavery, war to xenophobia," said Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), who is co-chair of TIRF.
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"I'm not sure if people who even embrace religion understand its power," noted Cleaver. "In fact, next to water, religion is the most powerful thing on earth … anything it touches can be damaged or helped," said the Congressman.
The TIRF co-chair, who is also a United Methodist pastor, said that the problem today is that people have become more religious than God in the sense that people distort religion to fit what "evil" they want to do.
As example, he told a story about a Greek god that would capture people and either stretch or cut his victims to fit his bed to illustrate that many people adjust religion to fit what "evils" they want to do.
"Many times the 'voice of God' is their voice in disguise," said Cleaver.
He pointed to Sudan's government, where almost 500,000 children have been killed in Darfur.
"God wants spiritual fruits not religious nuts," declared the congressman.
Yet the night's main focus was not on the highly publicized Darfur genocide but on Sudan's 2005 north-south peace agreement.
"We want to ensure that this peace agreement that is so historical and so monumental … does not unravel – that the terms of the peace agreement are on track," explained Nina Shea, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom vice chair and the director of the Center for Religious Freedom, to The Christian Post.
In January 2005, a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed between the Khartoum government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). The agreement ended 21 years of civil war – one of Africa's longest and bloodiest conflict – in which 2.2 million people were killed and millions more displaced.
The fighting between the Arab-dominated, Muslim government in Khartoum - which is also accused of sponsoring the genocide in Darfur – and the mainly Christian and animist ethnic African tribes in the south has left some 500 known churches destroyed.
Franklin Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, has publicly vowed to rebuild the hundreds of destroyed churches and has demanded that Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir give $15 million to the rebuilding of these churches.
"There are many Christian believers who focus on human rights and religious freedom because we feel it is an imperative of the Bible that we defend those who are being persecuted and it just so happens that the group being persecuted the most around the world is Christians," explained Faith McDonnell, director of religious liberty programs at The Institute on Religion & Democracy, following the event.
"I think people are starting to realize that to many people – really to the wrong people – that religion is a serious matter. If we don't take religion seriously then we are the one who will suffer because the people who do take it seriously will use it against us," McDonnell said.
Prior to the evening reception, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) – a bipartisan federal body responsible for monitoring religious freedom in the world – sent a letter to President George W. Bush urging him renew U.S. efforts to press Khartoum to comply to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement and use his position to garner international support to press the Sudanese government to implement the agreement.
"If the Comprehensive Peace Agreement is aborted, which I believe is the plan of the government, it will result in genocide throughout Sudan," said Roger Winter, former special representative on Sudan of the Deputy Secretary of State.
Congressman Tom Lantos, founder of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and co-chair of CHRC, and Congressman Trent Franks (R –Ariz.), co-chair of TIRF also spoke. Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and a USCIRF commissioner, was also present.
