Abstract
Christianity and Catastrophe in South Sudan marks a significant study of religious change among the East Nile and West Nile Dinka of South Sudan. Author Jesse Zink serves as principal of Montreal Diocesan Theological College in Montreal, Quebec. Zink presents the reader with the wonderful story of a disinterested agropastoralist group who eventually comes to embrace Christianity into their “sacred landscape.” A religion that had been peripheral and nonconsequential to the Dinka of East and West Nile, Christianity offered truth claims and fashioned an identity for the Dinka that nurtured and sustained them through disruption and calamity (131, 160).
Zink demonstrates how religious change transpired among the East and West Nile Dinka because of the second civil war in Sudan in the 1980s and 1990s. Of course, there were precursors to this change, notably during the first civil war, but it was the second civil war that forced the Dinka people to reexamine devotion to their Jak (traditional gods) and the efficacy of traditional worship and sacrifice. Themes of displacement and migration because of war, coupled with a newfound understanding and appreciation for Christianity, led to the movement of Christian faith and expression from town to village, from head to heart, from book to locally created song, from the educated to the illiterate, from Western paradigms of Christian expression to forms that made “internal” sense to Dinka traditional forms of religious expression. “The God of the students” (40), a diminutive reference to Christianity by Dinka elders, had now entered the sacred landscape of Dinka life, culture, and geography (see ch. 7).
Zink elucidates both the agents and the forms of this transformative process, describing how marginalized groups such as women and young men not only gave shape to this movement by their witness but also provided deep theological reflection and catechesis during the war years, mostly through song (see ch. 5). Zink illustrates how traditional modes of Dinka religious belief such as prophecy were now connected with biblical witness and contemporary Christian prophetic ministry (see ch. 6). Citing the work of Robin Horton, Zink delineates how the Dinka moved from the “microcosm” of smaller gods (the Jak) of clan, village, and cattle camp to the “macrocosm” of a supreme being (4–5, 153), ostensibly connecting them to new and universal horizons.
Though this work would perhaps be strengthened by making more explicit the themes of continuity and discontinuity, for instance by utilizing the Indigenizing/Pilgrim Principles (see Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History [T&T Clark, 1996]), the student of mission history in Africa will be well served by this title, particularly in regards to religious change resulting from war, displacement, and migration. In his conclusion, Zink leaves us with an important missiological question regarding “segmentary Christianity” based on lineage and clan in relation to Christian identity and catholicity. Moreover, Zink invites more studies of Christianity at the grassroots level to better understand the complexity of religious identity and religious change.