To claim, as some have, that the 1994 slaughter of Tutsi in Rwanda was a brainchild of Christianity is probably an overstatement. Nevertheless, while apologists for the churches have ‘denied institutional responsibility, blaming the participation of Christians in the genocide on individual sinfulness’ (p. 7), Longman's book offers a provocative yet dispassionate narrative of how and why even church-going, God-fearing types ‘came to mass each day to pray [and then] went out to kill’ (p. 3). For answer, Longman turns to the ambivalent role of religion in public life: ‘if religious institutions become too closely tied to state power,’ he hypothesizes, ‘they have the capacity to legitimize abhorrent states’ actions' (p. 323). Translation in context: ‘The churches in Rwanda helped to set a moral climate in which participation in genocide was an acceptable behaviour. … As the genocide unfolded, church members heard nothing from their leaders that would contradict the established belief that targeting Tutsi ibyitso was consistent with Christian belief’ (p. 322).
Longman, who stayed in Rwanda for ‘two extended periods’ (p. 27), first in 1992–3 and then in 1995–6 as head of the Human Rights Watch office, develops his argument into ten chapters grouped into two main parts along with a long introduction and a short conclusion. The introduction sets the stage by recalling how the 1994 ‘carnage in Rwanda clearly qualifies as genocide by even the most restricted definitions’ (p. 4, fn. 1) and how, in this ‘overwhelmingly Christian country’, ‘the church buildings … served as Rwanda's primary killing fields’ (p. 4).
The first part of the book revolves around the contention that, from the earliest days, instead of ally[ing] itself with the ‘poor and disenfranchised’, church leadership ‘repeatedly reiterated the commitment to alliance’ with the powerful state ‘patrimonial structures’ and ethnic politics (chapters 3–5). In Part 2 of the book, the author turns to a more localized account embedded in empirical findings from a comparative study of two Presbyterian parishes: Kirinda and Biguhu. The Kirinda chapter ‘aptly demonstrates the historically dominant disposition of Rwanda's churches as instruments of the powerful’ devoted to ‘helping to create a local elite and maintain its dominance over the general population through a patrimonial network’ (p. 201). In contrast, the Biguhu chapter illustrates the ways in which ‘the church presented a challenge to the dominance of local elites’, resolved as it was to ‘ally itself with the less powerful, to seek to create opportunities for the marginalized and to break the local system of patronage and privilege’ (p. 201). It thus comes as no surprise that, as the author strives to show in Chapter 9, ‘the church in Kirinda was at the centre of the genocide there, while the church in Biguhu was regarded as a hindrance and targeted by the genocide’ (p. 201).
In the final instance, Longman concludes that the involvement of Christian churches in the Rwandan genocide finds its explanation in Gramsci's prediction according to which a period of crisis allows alternative configurations of power to attempt to assert themselves within civil society. For the Rwanda flock, the outcome was straightforward: ‘The ruling classes sought to reconfigure their power and reassert their dominance by co-opting some people who were challenging them, which they did using ethnicity as a wedge, and by using coercion, using violence against not only Tutsi but also some moderate Hutu’ (p. 300).
Overall, Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda is a book that deserves to be widely read. It is both an insightful account of past failures and a call to the very churches that stood by while a million were slaughtered in 1994 to now rise to the occasion and make sure that it never happens again.
Still, there are a few areas of concern that readers should keep in mind when reading this book. First, while the contrasting experiences of the Kirinda and Biguhu parishes are fascinating and important, Longman's presentation of such a clear-cut line between the two masks the complex and ambiguous nature of the maelstrom of genocidal violence that Rwandans went through in 1994. This is of concern since it may add weight to the popular yet simplistic view of the Rwandan tragedy as one between the good guys and the bad guys, and extremists versus moderates.
Second, unlike a good many ‘experts’ on post-genocide Rwanda, Longman has by and large not fallen prey to the trap of received wisdom and misinformation – a phenomenon theorized by Johan Pottier in Re-Imagining Rwanda (Cambridge University Press, 2002) as the construction of knowledge ‘for beginners, by beginners’. Nevertheless, church proponents may blame Longman for invoking the case of two priests of Nyange parish who were sentenced to death in 1998 as evidence of the claim that ‘church personnel actively participated in the killing’ (p. 5), and for not telling readers that the two priests were later found innocent by an appeal court. Such an omission is unfortunate because, given the reality of politically motivated anti-church discourses prevailing in post-genocide Rwanda, it may lead honest church-goers to take the book's conclusions with a grain of salt.
Another general concern that applies to many books on Rwanda and Africa in general has to do with misspelling of local names and Kinyarwanda or French words – a problem that should urge editors to take native speakers' input more seriously.
These concerns aside, Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda is an enlightening and enthralling account of the Christian churches' failure at both institutional and evangelical levels in Rwanda before and during the 1994 genocide. Well-written and easy to read, the book is a wonderful tool for teachers and students as well as policy makers and social change advocates in various disciplines from religion and genocide studies to civil society and peace building.
