The Reverend Dr. William Lowrey 

For over 20 years, Sudan has been ravaged by wars that have stolen two million lives and displaced over four million people. Amid these desperate conditions, the Reverend Dr. William Lowrey fights for peace and reconciliation for the people of Sudan.  His unique approach drew on the rich wisdom of the indigenous Nuer and Dinka peoples, as he integrated their traditional peacemaking methods with modern theories of conflict resolution.

Throughout most of his life, the Rev. Lowrey has been driven to combat injustice. 
It started with his work to promote racial reconciliation in the American South in his Mississippi church and with other social organizations. There, he honed his ability to work across cultures, and became inspired to take his peacemaking skills to work abroad.
           
The Rev. Lowrey first took his family to Sudan in 1991, while working with the Presbyterian Church.  He soon became involved in the complex hostilities of the region—traditionally between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, but
later between the Dinka and the Nuer people in southern Sudan.
           
In the south, he dedicated himself to observing Nuer and Dinka peacemaking methods, and discovering the deep wisdom of their traditional practices.  Becoming part of the community, he came to understand the decentralized nature of leadership for both tribes, and recognized that in their communities, everyone had to be involved in making peace.  “No matter how poor, how uneducated people are,” Lowrey explains, “there is a rich knowledge base in them, and you can only tap into it by listening to them.”

Drawing upon their traditional rituals and shared symbolism, he established a series
of People-to-People Peace conferences through the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC) in 1998.  The results were groundbreaking.  At the end of the conferences, the Dinka and Nuer signed a covenant to end their tribal war and sealed it by sacrificing a bull, which signifies wealth for both of the tribes.  By stepping over the bull, they publicly pronounced their commitment for a new peace.
           
The Rev. Lowrey readily acknowledges his family’s dedication and sacrifices for grassroots peacemaking, which inevitably put them at great risk.  In the mid-1990s,
his wife and daughter barely survived a Sudanese aerial bombing while helping to organize a women’s tailoring cooperative.  “All of our family members have ex- perienced the pain, risk, and difficulty of work in southern Sudan,” Lowrey explains. “We embrace the same sense of calling to someday achieve a full and complete peace.”  
           
Today, the Reverend Lowrey is willing to talk even more openly about the risks.  Indeed, it was after his story was written that the Tanenbaum Center learned of
the death threats made against him personally and, later, against key leaders who participated in the face-to-face conferences.  When we asked him why he had not shared this sooner, he explained simply, that he had opted to keep silent because talking might put some of his compatriots still in the Sudan in danger.  Such risks
are common in peacemaking, and he knew that revealing this information at that
time could have been counterproductive to the larger peace process.

His work continues.  Although he recently took a step back from the frontlines, the Reverend Lowrey’s work today is influential on a global scale.  As the Director of Peacebuilding and Reconciliation at World Vision International, the Reverend Lowrey has supported and trained peacebuilders in more than 30 countries, sharing the wisdom, skills and secrets from a lifetime of religious peacemaking.

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