Ecumenical News

Hostility against the Christians in Sudan has been on the rise following last year’s secession of the southern part of the state and the tightening grip of sharia law on the nation.

On Tuesday, Evangelist James Kat of the Evangelical Church of Sudan was arrested and beaten by police officers for allegedly using his church site as his home, according to Compass Direct News. Kat was released the same day on bail.

On January 3rd, leaders of the Sudanese Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) received a letter from the Sudanese government threatening to arrest leaders if they preached or carried out evangelistic activities.

“We have all legal rights to take them to court,” said the letter, which was signed by Hamid Yousif Adam, undersecretary of the Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowment.

“This is a critical situation faced by our church in Sudan,” the Rev. Yousif Matar told Compass Direct.

The letter came the same day that President Omar al-Bashir proclaimed yet again that Sudan would be fully embracing Islamic sharia law as the foundation for its constitution.

"We are an Islamic nation with sharia as the basis of our constitution," Bashir said. "We will base our constitution on Islamic laws."

Hostilities against Christianity in Sudan have been on the rise since the secession of South Sudan on July 9, 2011, where some 350,000 people, most of them Christians, left to form their own nation.

With the Christian population in Sudan now a severe minority, some Christian leaders have said that the religion is now considered as something foreign.

“Restrictions in Sudan are not new, but we are worried things are getting harder since the secession of the south,” the Rev. Mark Akec Cien of the Sudan Council of Churches told ENInews on Jan. 20. “With Sharia law we expect things to get even harder.”