A Report from the Province of The Episcopal Church in Sudan & So. Sudan

Authored by: The Rev. Clelia Pinza Garrity, LCSW

The Episcopal Church in Sudan and South Sudan has a rich and complex history shaped by missionary efforts, political upheaval, and rapid church growth. Today, the province faces significant challenges amid ongoing humanitarian crises, with communities grappling with displacement, famine, and the lingering effects of conflict. Despite these hardships, the church continues to foster resilience through ministries such as trauma healing, community banking, education, and grassroots advocacy. This report from our diocesan officer for Global Mission Engagement, the Rev. Clelia Garrity, offers an overview of the church’s evolving role and the vital work being carried out across the region.

Background History

The first major Anglican mission in Sudan was founded in Omdurman in 1899 under the auspices of the Church Mission Society. Widespread and aggressive evangelism initiatives led to a rapid conversion to Christianity throughout many communities in southern Sudan. Today, there are approximately 3,500,000 Anglicans in the Episcopal Province of South Sudan and an additional 1,000,000 in the Episcopal Province of Sudan, which has been a separate Anglican province since 2017. 

Missionary activity came first under the Diocese of Jerusalem and then in 1920 as part of the new Diocese of Egypt and the Sudan, with Llewellyn Henry Gwynne as its first bishop. Rapid growth followed and a separate Diocese of the Sudan was formed with its own bishop (Morris Gelsthorpe) 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.

As a result of the rapid growth of the church and internal displacement of thousands due to the Second Sudanese Civil War by 1993 the province had developed 11 dioceses and has subsequently continued to grow. Many of the dioceses are quite small.

At the secession of South Sudan, in 2011 the combined province had 5 large dioceses covering Sudan (Khartoum, Port Sudan, El Obeid, Wad Medani and Kdugli), and 26 dioceses in South Sudan. With an estimated number of four and a half million members, with three and a half million of these in the south the Episcopal Church of the Sudan accounted for almost half of South Sudan's population.

The Episcopal Church of Sudan renamed itself as the Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan at a meeting that took place in Bor, South Sudan from 27 to 30 November 2013. It was decided at the same meeting to divide the Church into nine internal provinces – one in Sudan, and eight in South Sudan. One of these internal provinces would be the Central Equatorial Internal Province whose first archbishop was Paul Pitya Benjamin Yugusuk, son of the late Primate Benjamin Wani Yugusuk, enthroned in Juba on 23 July 2017.[1]

Creation of a new province

At the November 2013 Synod it was resolved to create an internal (or metropolitical) province comprising the dioceses of Sudan, and other internal provinces in South Sudan, but at the same time to maintain the overall unity of the church across Sudan and South Sudan. The Internal Province of the Episcopal Church of Sudan was created, comprising the 5 dioceses situated in Northern Sudan, of which Ezekiel Kondo, the Bishop of Khartoum, was elected the first archbishop on 4 April 2014.

Many in Sudan maintained a longer term view of separating this internal province from South Sudan to full autonomy with the expectation that the metropolitan archbishop would ultimately become archbishop primate of the new autonomous church. In 2016 a formal application was made to the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) for the internal province of Sudan to be granted autonomy and in July 2016 a team led by the archbishop of Adelaide and the vice chairman of the ACC carried out a fact-finding mission in northern Sudan. This team reported back to the ACC and recommended a formal response to the application for autonomy. In March 2017 the ACC agreed that the internal province of Sudan would become the 39th province of the Anglican Communion with Ezekiel Kondo Archbishop of Khartoum, as the first archbishop and primate. The constitution of the new province took place on 30 July 2017 in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Since that date the larger part of the original province has been styled the Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan.    The Episcopal Church of the Sudans

Current Conditions

Please note this abridged story is from the New Humanitarian Feb. 27, 2025.

The Trump Administration issued stop-work orders on 20 January. While exemptions have been issued for some forms of emergency aid, they have been difficult to interpret and cumbersome to apply for – particularly amid the attempt to shut down USAID, which provided 44% of the $1.8 billion of humanitarian funding to Sudan last year.

Aid officials and more than a dozen volunteers from emergency response rooms (soup kitchens) interviewed for this story told The New Humanitarian that the groups have been severely impacted, and that the freeze has escalated the possibility of famine spreading beyond the areas it has already settled.

Hundreds of communal kitchens have gone out of service due to a lack of food supplies.

The emergency response room in the East Nile district of Khartoum doesn’t have enough funds to purchase gasoline to operate a water pump and has closed almost all of its 300 kitchens. Some 111 kitchens have been shut in Jabal Awliya, which is located south of Khartoum. The number of communal kitchens operating in East Darfur state has dropped from 48 to just two, and they are offering only one meal a day.

Volunteers are trying to fundraise to plug the gaps. Some are running online crowdfunding campaigns on Facebook, while others hope that a dedicated website –the Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition – can bring in more public support.

Volunteers said they are also speaking with new institutional donors, including Gulf states and regional organizations, as well as asking their established international NGO partners for more support. Nothing yet.

The emergency response rooms are having to rethink the model of providing emergency aid.

One group is discussing setting up sustainable, agricultural income-generating projects to reduce its reliance on donor-dependent initiatives like the community kitchens.

Ministries of the Diocese of South Sudan

Trauma Healing Groups

Across South Sudan, millions of women and youth have been severely affected by war and conflict.  With limited opportunities to support themselves, they are at risk of hunger, even starvation in some areas, and, particularly for male youths, being drawn into violent militias, further stoking communal violence. Women and girls have been subjected to horrifying gender-based violence.

AFRECS has been partnering with the Mothers Union and the Five Talents organization in providing trauma healing training in Renk, Terekeka and Juba Dioceses.  Young women and a few young men are organized into beginner groups which mature into savings groups after a year of literacy and numeracy training.  The savings groups mobilize funds to enable participants to establish small businesses. Participants in both beginner and savings groups receive trauma healing instruction adapted from the American Bible Society’s Healing the Wounds of Trauma.  As they learn to trust each other in sharing funds, they find they can trust each other with their stories of trauma – the murder of loved ones and sexual violence.  The healing process is enhanced by Christian ritual and “taking their pain to the Cross.” At the end of 2022 more than 50 groups in Renk and 40 in Terekeka had received trauma mitigation training. Our surveys show a majority of group members cite an improvement in both family and community relationships.

Episcopal University of South Sudan

In 2022 the new Episcopal University of South Sudan gained accreditation from the Government of South Sudan, enabling it to confer degrees in law and certificates in theology from its existing campus in Juba.  The stage has been set for adding degree programs in business, agriculture, and nursing.  The infrastructure of a new much larger campus of four-square kilometers is being created in Rokon Diocese, where wells, largely financed by a bequest from the late AFREC Executive Director Richard Parkins, have been dug and funds for fencing have been secured.

The current shortage of university opportunities in South Sudan is depriving more than 12,000 students of the university experience.  The new university is designed to provide training in a variety of disciplines essential for the future prosperity of South Sudan.  Even more significant, it will provide an important Christian ethical foundation for university study.  Students of all faiths are welcome.

Five Talents

Five Talents has been working in South Sudan since 2007. Five Talents focuses its programs on remote, low-income areas where residents lack access to formal financial services of any kind and work to build local capacity, providing training and access to financial services through community-owned and managed Savings Groups. 

To date, Five Talents has helped to establish three community banks in South Sudan – the only three locally owned community banks in the country. Our program in South Sudan has served over 66,000 members and current areas of operation include Renk, Wandi, Terekeka, Juba, and Bahr El Ghazal.

Mother’s Union of South Sudan

The Mother’s Union of South Sudan is a Christian organization that has been supporting families worldwide for nearly 150 years. Started by our founder Mary Sumner in 1876 in her local parish, we have grown into an international charity with over 4 million members in 83 countries.

As a Christian membership charity, we demonstrate our faith in action. This happens as we work towards ending poverty, ending inequality and ending injustice. Our members work at grassroots levels around the world. They bring hope and practical support to millions of people every year through parenting, literacy and community development programs.

As a registered charity, we campaign at local, national and international levels to bring about real change for gender equality and for the rights of women and girls.

We also support our members within the UK and across the world with a vast collection of practical and spiritual resources. In addition, we produce regular publications like Connected and the Prayer Diary to keep members in Britain and Ireland informed and up to date with what's happening around the corner and around the world. 

Every day, we broadcast Midday Prayers live on our Facebook page at 12pm GMT. We believe that the power of prayer is transformational, and it is the heartbeat of who we are and what we do. 

We also run a monthly e-Newsletter, featuring a round up of current events and stories from across the movement. 

Despite our name, we are an inclusive organization and we are very proud to have a growing number of men who have joined us.

AFRECS – American Friends of the Episcopal Dioceses of the Sudans

The American Friends of the Episcopal Church of the Sudans, founded in 2005, is a network of individuals, churches, dioceses, and other organizations that seeks to focus attention on the pastoral and peacebuilding needs and priorities of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan (ECSS) and the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) and to enable American friends to assist both churches in meeting the needs of their peoples.

Partnership is key to AFRECS mission, and we work to build strong, mutually beneficial relationships that encourage peace and development in the Sudans. To learn more about how your church or organization can work with AFRECS, please contact us today.

Current Partners

• Chevy Chase United Methodist Church

• Christ Church Episcopal, Alexandria VA/Diocese of Renk

• Church Association for Sudan & South Sudan (CASS), Bath, UK

• Colorado Episcopal Foundation

• Diocese of Salisbury, UK

• Episcopal Churches of South Sudan & Sudan University Partnership (ECSSSUP)

• Episcopal Diocese of Chicago/Diocese of Renk

• Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia/Province of Sudan/Diocese of Bradford UK

• Episcopal Diocese of Virginia

• Episcopal Parish Network – EPN (previously CEEP)

• Episcopal Relief & Development

• Five Talents

• Global Partnerships & Mission Personnel, The Episcopal Church

• Grace Episcopal Church, Lexington VA

• New Wineskins

• Society of the Transfiguration, Cincinnati OH

• South Sudan Diaspora Network for Reconciliation & Peace (SSDNRP)

• St. Francis Episcopal Church, Great Falls VA/Diocese of Ezo

• St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Annapolis MD

• St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Arlington VA

• St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Barrington IL/Diocese of Renk

• St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Alexandria VA

• St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Rochester, NY

• Women of St. Michael’s & All Angels, Dallas