Christopher Tounsel on theology in South Sudanese Political Thought and Rhetoric

Lecture with Christopher Tounsel, Assistant Professor of History and Africa Studies, Pennsylvania State University. Presented by the Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs After two lengthy civil wars with concerted Christian-Muslim dimensions, South Sudan seceded from Sudan to become the world’s newest nation in 2011. Within three years, however, it was embroiled in an internal conflict drawn along ethnic lines. What became of the Christian liberation theology that supposedly reached its conclusion with political sovereignty? In “After the Exodus”, Christopher Tounsel explores the ways in which South Sudanese have infused theology into their political thought and rhetoric in the post-independence era. Though the traditional Northern Sudanese enemy has been absent, religious thought has still functioned as a political technology despite the changed scope of who and what constitutes good and evil.