Sudan, Dubya and Midland: Common Threads
Category: Faith... Local...
Posted Tuesday, December 09, 2003 at 01:08 PM [GMT-6]

My pal Stan Fikes emailed a copy of an article that appeared yesterday on the website of The American Spectator, a "special report" entitled Midland Ministers to the World. The article is extensive and wide-ranging; it focuses on the influence Midlanders are having on the ongoing peace negotiations in Sudan, but it also touches on those same influences on our current President's values and style. It's about as fair a look at our city as I've read in quite some time, and I recommend it.

[Stan and his wife, Deborah (who is mentioned in the article) are some of the "movers and shakers" who are working behind the scenes to bring about peace and religious freedom in Sudan. Deborah is founder and director of BASIC Ministries, International, whose "Sudan Project" funds Christian outreach and humanitarian aid throughout southern Sudan and neighboring Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I have tremendous respect and love for them and the Sudanese people they work with in carrying out this ministry.]

Back to the article...here are a few excerpts to wet your whistle:

The New York Times reported in October that evangelical Christians "sway White House on Human Rights issues abroad." The Times gave Christians credit for spurring George Bush to intercede in Sudan's civil war that has killed and displaced millions. (Bush's 2001 appointment of former U.S. senator John Danforth as a special envoy to Sudan came after Christian groups called on the administration to make peace in the Sudan a priority.)

Not mentioned in the Times report was the influential advocacy of Christians in Bush's hometown. In March 2003, Midlanders city-wide—from Methodist to Baptist ministers, from the Mayor and city councilmen to oil company executives and housewives, from the Catholic bishop to Lutheran and Episcopalian pastors—sent a letter to the government of Sudan, calling for a just peace in the 20-year war between Christians and Muslims.

"Ministerial Alliance of Midland, Texas," read the letterhead. "Hometown of President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush." The letter's underlying message to Khartoum: work towards a just peace or Bush's hometown will put pressure on the U.S. government to enforce the Sudan Peace Act, legislation passed in 2002 which requires that the White House monitor negotiations between the Sudanese government and the rebels in the Sudan People's Liberation Army.

The Midlanders' letter got the attention of Khartoum. Khidir H. Ahmed, the Sudanese ambassador to the United States, told me that Sudan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Mustafa Osman Ismail encouraged him to talk with the Christians from the "village of George Bush" and invite them to visit Khartoum. "We have been talking since that time," says Ahmed.

And this...

"Don't mess with Midland," says a Washington insider who has worked with the Ministerial Alliance of Midland (the group has joined a coalition of human rights groups in Washington, D.C.). "All four parties to the peace negotiations—the government of Sudan, the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the Kenyan mediator, and the U.S. government—have felt the pressure of the Ministerial Alliance of Midland. It has been remarkable."

...

The Midland group has also influenced the State Department, according to this source. "Their level of commitment has allowed me to say to people at the State Department: 'Listen you guys if you treat Sudan as just another piece of business, if there is anything wanting in your effort, you are going to wake up and find the people of Midland coming en masse to Washington and the President will scratch his head wanting to know why people he knows are demonstrating and maybe even getting arrested in protest. I wouldn't want to be you trying to explain your failure of effort to the president,'" he says.

And, finally, this...

John Miller, the State Department's director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, traveled to Midland earlier this year. He spoke before friends and members of the Ministerial Alliance of Midland at the downtown Petroleum Club and attended one of its prayer services. "It was the first time this Jew had been in the middle of a prayer session like that," he says. The meeting was "exhilarating." The Midlanders are the "spiritual descendants of the Church abolitionists of the nineteenth century," he says. "The Midland Ministerial Alliance is picking up where they left off." Miller recalls the group meeting with Senator Sam Brownback at the Monocle restaurant in Washington, D.C. for so long Miller had to call it a night.

There's a lot more; go read it.

I find it refreshing when folks who have a direct pipeline to the highest levels of government choose to use their influence in such positive ways. Face it...there's nothing in a peaceful Sudan that will directly benefit any of these people who are devoting such large amounts of time and personal resources. They're doing it for a plain and simple reason: they love the people of Sudan in a way that can only be explained by understanding Christ's love for us. And that's what makes them so powerful; having a hometown President is just gravy.

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