Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan

by Christopher Tounsel

Overview

On July 9, 2011, South Sudan celebrated its independence as the world's newest nation, an occasion that the country's Christian leaders claimed had been foretold in the Book of Isaiah. The Bible provided a foundation through which the South Sudanese could distinguish themselves from the Arab and Muslim Sudanese to the north and understand themselves as a spiritual community now freed from their oppressors. Less than three years later, however, new conflicts emerged along ethnic lines within South Sudan, belying the liberation theology that had supposedly reached its climactic conclusion with independence. In Chosen Peoples, Christopher Tounsel investigates the centrality of Christian worldviews to the ideological construction of South Sudan and the inability of shared religion to prevent conflict. Exploring the creation of a colonial-era mission school to halt Islam's spread up the Nile, the centrality of biblical language in South Sudanese propaganda during the Second Civil War (1983—2005), and postindependence transformations of religious thought in the face of ethnic warfare, Tounsel highlights the potential and limitations of deploying race and Christian theology to unify South Sudan.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478010630
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	05/07/2021
Series:	Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Christopher Tounsel is Catherine Shultz Rein Early Career Professor in the College of the Liberal Arts and Assistant Professor of History and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction: Winds of Change  1
1. The Nugent School and the Ethno-Religious Politics of Mission Education  23
2. The Equatorial Corps and the Torit Mutiny  44
3. Liberation War  67
4. Khartoum Goliath: The Martial Theology of SPLM/SPLA Update  88
5. The Troubled Promised Land  113
Conclusion: Inheriting the Wind  135
Sources and Methodology  145
Notes  151
Bibliography  177
Index  199

Editorial Reviews

"[Chosen Peoples] is an important text that touches on a new moment in the development of African Christian political thought—a moment when Black Africans drew from discourses of liberation theology to fight for liberation from other Black Africans."

Reading Religion - David Ngong

"Chosen Peoples is a fascinating and engaging book. . . . The book is excellent reading for scholars of Sudan, and of religion, politics, and race regardless of context."

Henni Alava in Africa

"In a study that will resonate with anyone familiar with the political language of medieval Christian Europe or the 19th-century United States, Tounsel shows how biblical and religious language utterly permeated political rhetoric and self-fashioning in South Sudan. . . . Chosen Peoples is richly instructive for understanding the influence of the Bible in societies where it represents a powerful and challenging new presence."

Christian Century - Philip Jenkins

"Chosen Peoples offers novel insights into South Sudan’s religious and political history. By prioritizing political theologies as a question of historical inquiry, it makes an important intervention in both South Sudan’s emerging historiography and in the broader trajectories of African intellectual history."

Journal of African History - Jonathon L. Earle

"The crisp style of writing, the arguments, and the engaging discussions in the various chapters make this book a must-read for scholars, students, and individuals interested not only in African studies and history but also in the application of religious thought in political situations."

Journal of Global South Studies - Kwaku Nti

"An important contribution to scholarship . . . Chosen Peoples offers critical insight into the complex ways in which categories of religion, race and ethnicity work in different contexts, and also raises serious questions about the limitations of Christianity - and possibly religion more generally - as a basis of nation building and as a means of promoting national cohesion and collective identity."

Religion - Adriaan van Klinken

Christopher Tounsel makes a major contribution to the study of South Sudanese political thought. He has drawn on the literature of Black liberation theology in Africa as well as the Americas, giving the South Sudanese a place in the theoretical literature that has excluded them up to now. Chosen Peoples presents unique material that has the potential to shift the way we understand the history of Sudan and South Sudan and the role of religion in politics more generally.

South Sudan: A New History for a New Nation - Douglas H. Johnson

Chosen Peoples is a remarkable achievement, revealing unexplored chapters of South Sudanese history and placing them into a novel analytic frame that will impact how we think about postcolonial liberation for many years to come. In this brave book, Christopher Tounsel does not shy away from asking difficult questions of his material, the reward being that he opens considerable space for thinking anew about the mutual construction of race and religion in the two Sudans and beyond.

For Love of the Prophet: An Ethnography of Sudan’s Islamic State - Noah Salomon

"Chosen Peoples is essential reading for all those seeking to understand Sudan’s and South Sudan’s traumatic journey over the last 100 years in its social, political, and spiritual dimensions."

Sudan Studies - Andrew Wheeler

"Tounsel helps to draw new attention to South Sudan. He unpacks the influence of Christianity on the politics of identity in the country. Rather than providing a comprehensive history of the political and social influences of Christian churches in South Sudan, Tounsel focuses on specific institutions at different points in history that highlight the diverse ways in which Christianity shaped South Sudanese identities."

Sociology of Religion

"This book provides a vivid history of South Sudan. It gives a very clear and concise account of events from the beginning of the civil wars to the aftermath of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and the efforts by the people of South Sudan to liberate itself from the North."

African Studies Quarterly - Lawrencia Baaba Okai

"Christopher Tounsel’s new book is a creative, substantive, and important look at the role of religion in the creation of the world’s youngest nation-state, South Sudan. . . . Tounsel’s prose is beautiful, but its sources really set the book apart."
 

Nathaniel Homewood

"Chosen Peoples is a fascinating and engaging book. . . . The book is excellent reading for scholars of Sudan, and of religion, politics, and race regardless of context."

Journal of Religion in Africa - Henni Alava

"Tounsel helps to draw new attention to South Sudan. He unpacks the influence of Christianity on the politics of identity in the country. Rather than providing a comprehensive history of the political and social influences of Christian churches in South Sudan, Tounsel focuses on specific institutions at different points in history that highlight the diverse ways in which Christianity shaped South Sudanese identities."

Sociology of Religion - Timothy Longman

Christopher Tounsel makes a major contribution to the study of South Sudanese political thought. He has drawn on the literature of Black liberation theology in Africa as well as the Americas, giving South Sudanese a place in the theoretical literature that has excluded them up to now. Chosen Peoples presents unique material that has the potential to shift the way we understand the history of Sudan and South Sudan and the role of religion in politics more generally.

South Sudan: A New History for a New Nation - Douglas Johnson