Sudanese Bishops Plead for their People

From Rev. Michael W. Ridgway, St. Thomas – Sunnyvale via The Living Church:

People of the Nuba Mountains region in Sudan are under armed assault from government forces, said the region’s Anglican bishop June 17 during an annual meeting of the American Friends of the Episcopal Church of Sudan.

“As many people have heard, it is really a genocide,” said the Rt. Rev. Andudu Elnail, Bishop of Kadugli and the Nuba Mountains for the Province of the Episcopal Church of Sudan. “There is no food for the people of Kadugli. There is no water.”

President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, a Sunni Muslim who came to power in 1989, wants Christians in the border region to migrate to the southern half of Sudan, which is more hospitable to Christianity and which will establish an independent government July 9.

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Christians in the Middle East - Archbishop on World at One

From Rev. Michael W. Ridgway, St. Thomas via The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Website:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has expressed his deep anxiety for Christians in the Middle East, but also cautious optimism about possible outcomes of the Arab Spring.

Speaking during an interview with Martha Kearney on BBC Radio 4's "World at One" programme, the Archbishop expressed his continuing concerns about the fragile situation of Christian minority populations across the Middle East  where in places life for Christians was "becoming unsustainable".  The situation had been, and remained, most serious in Iraq.  He also spoke of "the haemorrhaging of Christians" from parts of the Holy Land.

He also said he was "cautiously hopeful" about the possibility of an emerging "pluralist democratic future" in the wake of the Arab Spring.  "Hopes were too vivid" for repressive regimes to revert to type: "change will have to come"

Read it all here.