Abstract
During the Second Sudanese Civil War, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army published a weekly newspaper entitled SPLA/SPLM Update. This article builds on previous scholarship about the role of Christianity in the Sudanese civil conflict by revealing how the SPLM/SPLA Update was an essential medium of the conflict and contributed to its framing in religious terms. The Update published content that constituted a martial theology pitting the SPLA against the National Islamic Front, the party of the Muslim Brothers under Hassan Turabi's leadership. It interpreted events using biblical and ancient Israelite templates, placed circumstances in a narrative trajectory, and transformed political history into a spiritual chronicle. In so doing, it attracted readers beyond the geographic borders of Sudan, situating Christian Sudan in a contemporary global Sudanese diaspora while also reaching into the ancient past to locate the contemporary struggles of Sudanese Christians in an older story of divine chosenness.
