South Sudanese refugees find home, and church, in Syracuse
New York, USA (AP) — On the corner of East Avenue and West Yates Street in East Syracuse, New York, sits Emmanuel Episcopal Church. The quaint building, with its bright white exterior and cherry red doors, is the home to not one, but two distinct congregations.
The first, a modest parish of 25 Americans, meets early on Sunday morning, and the other, a group of South Sudanese refugees, in the mid-afternoon.
Diangdit Episcopal Chapel has been worshipping out of Emmanuel Church for three years. The congregation is made up of refugees from South Sudan who pray in their native language, Dinka. Their success has been fostered by the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York and a local interfaith resettlement agency that found them a place to hold services and supported their integration into the community.
Many of the congregants of Diangdit Chapel have been in East Syracuse for more than two decades. The first to arrive in the area were part of the Lost Boys of Sudan, a group of more than 20,000 Sudanese and South Sudanese boys who were forced to seek refuge on foot in neighbouring countries due to conflict and violence. In 2001, many of these boys were offered resettlement in the United States through a program created by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Shortly after arriving in the United States, the few men who were relocated to the Syracuse area began meeting at University United Methodist Church, said Garang Achiek, senior warden of Diangdit Chapel. On Sunday afternoons, they would sing worship songs and pray in Dinka after the 10:30 am English service at the church was finished.
“They didn’t have any family here,” said Abiei Gai, Diangdit Chapel secretary. “So, they decided to get together and come up with a church.”
There is a large Episcopalian community in South Sudan, said Gai. In 2011, when the country seceded from Sudan, the larger Episcopal Church of Sudan was split in two, creating the Province of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan. According to the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project, the Episcopal Church is the second largest in the country, behind the Catholic Church.
