Although the tragic conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza continue to dominate international headlines, a massive humanitarian crisis has been unfolding in the Republic of Sudan (i.e. northern Sudan) over the last 17 months. After a popular revolution in 2019 finally ousted GeneralʿUmar Bashīr, who was in power for thirty years, there was some hope that the country was moving toward a brighter future under Prime Minister ʿAbdullāh Ḥamdūk. Already by late 2021, the Sudanese military had intervened to bring the country back under direct military rule. In April 2023, two different military factions, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led the country into a catastrophic civil war. Estimates suggest that 50,000 people have been killed or injured. As the following graphic makes clear, millions of people have been displaced by the conflict.

In view of these tragic developments, Dialogue Across Borders is publishing a substantial interview with Reverend Andrew Wheeler, a specialist on Christianity in Sudan, African church history, and the modern history of Sudan. He is the author of Day of Contentment, Day of Devastation: The History of the Sudanese Church across 2,000 Years and Bombs, Ruins, and Honey: Journeys of the Spirit with Sudanese Christians, both published by Paulines Publications – Africa, among other works. The interview touches on aspects of Rev. Wheeler’s personal experience, Sudanese colonial history, environment and geography, the spread of Christianity in Sudan, the two major civil wars, the formal separation of Sudan and the Republic of South Sudan in 2011, Christian- Muslim dynamics, and the present unfolding crisis in northern Sudan, among other subjects.

An excerpt of the interview can be found here.

We are grateful for Rev. Wheeler’s time and his enormous life investment in a part of the world that has too often been overlooked and forgotten.

All the very best,