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Sudan: Amid hope of less Christian persecution, church tent is burned down 5 times and congregants threatened

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Islamic terrorists in Sudan have burned down a church’s worship tent five times and have threatened to kill congregants if they put up another tent and continue to worship, Morning Star News reports. Sudanese Christians hope that Islamic persecution against them will diminish as dictator Omar al-Bashir was deposed in Apr. 2019 and Sudan has a new transitional government led by Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok.

This month police arrested nine out of the 14 radical Muslims who destroyed the temporary worship structure of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) in the Dar El-Salam area of Omdurman near Khartoum, Morning Star News reports.

Although SCOC has been an established presence in the area since its founding in 1993, the church’s building was burned down in 2019, Morning Star News said. The 150-member congregation set up tents instead, but these, together with books and Bibles, were each destroyed in arson attacks on Jan. 19, 2019, and on Jan. 4, Jan. 19, Jan. 28, and on Aug. 7 this year.

As the new Sudanese government has progressed religious freedom in the country, the US State Department recently removed Sudan from its blacklist of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom.” Sudan was put on a US government watch list instead.

While progress has been made, Sudan still ranked 7th on Sudan ranked 7th on the Open Doors’ 2020 World Watch List of the countries where it is hardest to be a Christian.