Despite this year’s vote by South Sudan for independence, churches in Sudan and South Sudan have decided to remain united, mainly to help denominations in Muslim-majority Sudan.

Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church on 28 October approved maintaining one conference covering the two states, alluding to shared history and existing “very real practical human links.” In July, the Episcopal (Anglican) Church decided to remain one body for the next two years and the Sudan Council of Churches has also said it will not split.

“It’s more about solidarity,” observed John Ashworth, an advisor with the Sudan Ecumenical Forum, which enhances churches’ work for peace in Sudan, on 3 November.

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The Primate of the Episcopal Church of the Sudan has called upon Muslim leaders in South Sudan to set aside sectarian concerns and work towards building a free and tolerant nation.

Speaking at a dinner held by President Salva Kiir of South Sudan at the State House in Juba on 20 August for Muslim leaders in Africa’s newest nation, Archbishop Daniel Deng called upon Christians and Muslims to work together for the common good.

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Witnesses told a House of Representatives subcommittee on Aug. 4 that the Sudanese border state of South Kordofan is descending into racial and religious violence, as the world looks on.

“The Nuba people fear that we will be forgotten, that the world will stand idly by while mass killings continue without redress,” said Anglican bishop Reverend Andudu Adam Elnail, of Sudan’s Episcopal Diocese of Kadulgi, in his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights.

“Our hope,” Rev. Elnail said, “is that the United States will lead the international community in taking prompt, effective action to protect tens of thousands of displaced people, including an untold number of civilians being killed house-to-house and bombed by their own government.”

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Less than a week after South Sudan celebrated its long-awaited independence, Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail of the Episcopal Diocese of Kadugli has said it is “devastating and saddening” to learn that his people of the South Kordofan region, “friends, brothers and sisters, children, my flock, have been killed mercilessly and are lying now in mass graves in Kadugli.”

Elnail was responding to the Enough Project’s Satellite Sentinel report that revealed the extent of the atrocities committed along the north-south border in recent weeks and identified what it says are three vast excavated sites used to dump the bodies of those who’ve been slaughtered.

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