The Sudan Handbook

Religious   PRactice & belief 101

and social integrity to the typical home community, comfortable with

its local hierarchy of social and religious authority. The spiritual powers

associated with a person’s home can catch up with them after they have

left: a diagnosis of possession by ‘free’ divinities or dangerous Powers is

very likely to be made if a person falls ill when they are geographically

displaced and probably detached from kin.

Today, of course, no part of the country can be properly isolated for

study from constant patterns of human movement, resulting in the

cross-fertilization of ideas and practices, the transportation of religious

authority from one place to another, and uncertainties over what had

once been eternal truths. But there is no doubt about the resilience and

power of indigenous religious forms in the upper Nile, nor about their

appeal to scholars prepared to accept them on their own terms. They

have inspired many smaller-scale studies of vernacular religious belief

and practice in the south as well as in other marginal areas of the country,

where a presumption of the strength and autonomy of ‘traditional’ forms

is not always as justified.

The power of older religious experience and convictions deeply held

from childhood can even outlast conversion. In a well-documented case,

the son of a Dinka Master of the Fishing Spear was captured by slavers

in the late nineteenth century, and eventually rescued by a missionary

who brought him to Britain. Sensing his proper vocation, he became

a Methodist lay preacher, living in Wakefield, Barnsley and finally

Scunthorpe, becoming famous as ‘the Black Evangelist of the North’. In

his autobiography, Salim Wilson (alias Hatashil Masha Kathish) ascribed

his religious inspiration to memories of his father, the special qualities

of his lineage, and his Dinka heritage.

Contemporary Civil War, Displacements, and

Religious Ferment

The disturbances and displacements suffered by people during the recent

decades of civil war have fuelled new religious aspirations and commit-

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors ments^ across^ the^ south^ and^ adjoining^ areas.^ They^ have^ created^ new^

(www.riftvalley.net).