World Tour: A hidden fellowship

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour.

A Sudan-born convert is now leading an Anglican diocese of Muslim converts around the world … without restrictions of borders.

WORLD’s Africa reporter Onize Oduah brings us this special report.

ONIZE ODUAH: Bishop Yassir Eric vividly remembers when he lost his childhood. He was eight, and carted away to an Islamic school in Sudan without explanation.

YASSIR ERIC: We were beaten up every single day, because the education system there is not being done by educators.

He learned to memorize the Quran, though he barely understood the text. He waited for two years before his father finally returned to pick him up.

Eric comes from a reputable Islamic family in Sudan, and was trained to also follow the faith.

ERIC: I was not taught to tolerate. I was not taught to accept diversity within our community, but I was taught to hate Jews, to hate Christians, but even other sectors of Muslim, the Shia, because I was a Sunni Muslim.

That began to change after he visited a hospital where his cousin was gravely ill.

There, he met two Coptic Christians who asked to pray over the sick boy. He listened as they prayed with compassion and intimacy with God.

ERIC: I was watching all of this, and the minute they said, Amen, this child opened his eyes for the first time, and life came back into him.

But he says the biggest miracle that day was not the physical healing, but his change of heart.

ERIC: This was 1990 when I gave my life to Christ, and I said to Jesus, if you are really the one that this person speaks about, I would like you to come into my life and change me. And this is what he did.

But his conversion only marked the start of his journey.

Eric describes the Islamic culture as a collective community, or ummah, where one gets identity but also pays the price for defying the norm.

ERIC: So I was cut off from the Ummah, from my family, and then I was also in prison because of my faith. But this is not only my story. This you could say the story of converts across the Muslim world, you know.

Eric eventually left for Kenya to study theology. He met a German family that eventually took him to their home country. He continued his studies there and now lectures at Columbia International University in Germany.

Eric is also tasked with leading a non-geographical province for Muslim Background Believers under the Global Anglican Communion, a group of conservative Anglicans.

The diocese is unusual, without a fixed location or cathedral. Its members run from West African nations like Senegal, to Central Asia and as far as Afghanistan. Some worship in underground house churches for their safety.

Eric says the community has become a spiritual lifeline for the Muslim converts.

ERIC: They would lose the Islamic community, but then the Christian community is not open to receive them for different reasons, sometimes security reasons, sometimes social reasons, sometimes also cultural reasons. And so you leave your ummah, you leave your home, and you belong nowhere. And for those people, God have called us to establish a home.

He says what he’s doing now is a natural extension of what was done for him.

ERIC: I’m talking to you today because of people who opened their homes, people who opened their hearts, people who accompanied me, who discipled me, and who showed me who Jesus Christ is. And what I'm doing now is exactly what I received. I'm just giving it back.

Eric says he isn’t so much leading a church, as he is integrating a family within the body of Christ.

That’s this week’s World Tour. I’m Onize Oduah, in Abuja, Nigeria.

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