I just reread The Bishop of Rwanda; this rereading prompted the following thoughts. I have entitled these thoughts The Double Horrors of Christianized Rwanda, 2007.
I am a Free Methodist. In 1860, Free Methodists took a strong anti-slavery, pro-poor stance. So I was especially dismayed to read on page 107, this statement:
"Bishop Aaron Ruhumuliza, head of the Free Methodist Church, in Kigondo, Kigali, helped the militia carry out a massacre in his own church on April 9, 1994."
If the Free Methodist Bishop had just been one of a few bad apples in the church, that would have been one thing. Unfortunately, this betrayal of the gospel appears to have been widespread in both Protestant and Catholic churches.
I am reminded of Ephesians 2:14-16 where social reconciliation is based on the CROSS: "destroyed . . . the dividing wall of hostility [between Jew and Gentile]." In Rwanda, the western missionaries and the Rwandan church joined in building a dividing wall of hostility between Tutsi and Hutu which previously didn't exist.
Rwandans themselves cannot tell who is Tutsi and who is Hutu by race or language or culture. Widespread intermarriage blurred all this common lines of division. So how did the colonists, missionaries and churches combine to create such enmity that Hutu killed Tutsi in huge numbers? By ignoring biblical teaching on justice and love? What were the fatal flaws? Why? Why? Why?
Again and again and again in the NT, the church addressed the deep divisions between Jew and Gentile, Jew and Samaritan. At the very beginning of his ministry as recorded in Luke 4:25-30, Jesus directly attacks the religio-cultural ethnocentrism of the Nazareth Jews. These Nazareth Jews tried to kill Jesus on the spot for his 'heresy', and would have done so had Jesus not been the Son of God.
The genocide of a Samaritan village because of the religio-cultural ethnocentrism of disciple, James and John, was only avoided because Jesus himself intervened, rebuked James and John for their demonic desire to misuse God' power and authority. The western missionaries and the Rwandan church did not preach and practice justice and love which could have stopped ethnocentrism and oppression in their tracks. But few in the American church have practiced biblical justice and love; so ethnocentrism and oppression have run rampant for 400 years.
The first horror of horrors of the Rwandan genocide---1,000,000 deaths.
The second horror of horrors---worse than the first---is the Western missionary/Rwandan church complicity and partnership in the genocide. For decades, the missionaries and the Rwandan church had actually been teaching ethnocentrism---the supposed superiority of the Tutsi and the inferiority of the Hutu. Evil European colonialism combined in this diabolic teaching and practice.
Every person, every people, seems to enjoy being superior; ethnocentrism is universal. Superiority leads to systems of oppression against supposedly inferior people. Superiority is prized because it leads to privilege. Therefore the church needs a strong biblical teaching against ethnocentrism and oppression. None exists so ethnocentrism and oppression far too often run rampant even in the church.
Next, some documentation of the Rwandan horrors from the pen of John Rucyahana; the genocide was a long time in the planning, but a short time in execution:
"Unfortunately, most of the world is misinformed about the genocide in Rwanda, dismissing it as a civil war or a tribal conflict. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The extremist political parties Paramahutu and MRND, which controlled the government of Rwanda since its independence in 1962, plotted and planned for years the genocide of the Tutsi people [combining ethnocentrism and oppression]. . . . There were mass executions of a particular group of people."
"The government began to talk about what they called the 'final solution', which meant eliminating every Tutsi man, woman, and child. The Hutu extremist government was dependent on the aid of France."
"What happened between 1926 and 1994 that changed a somewhat primitive but peaceful society into the monsters of the genocide?"
"It wasn't just the Belgians who taught these myths; they also were taught in the church schools and in the churches."
"Like all colonial masters, the Belgians exploited African resources. There was very little regard for Africans as human beings."
"Ironically, much of it began in the churches. Church printing presses produced propaganda about how the Tutsis had been favored. Then the radio talked about it, . . . and the brainwashing began."
"In those days, church leaders abdicated their prophetic roles and became as bad as the colonial officials."
In my opinion, the U.S record is much worse than the Rwandan genocide;
* untold millions of Indians eliminated by a combination of human brutality and disease, sometimes the disease was spread deliberately, sometimes crops burned deliberately.
* untold millions of blacks killed during the slave trade and slavery, even an estimated million who died from starvation and disease after emancipation.
* loss of life and theft of Mexican land.
* a million Filipino lives; see Philippine Reader.
* etc., etc.
A final thought. Even after many mass shootings in America, we have done little to stop them. Many righteous rationalizations for doing nothing. The same seems to be true regarding 400 years of unchecked ethnocentrism and oppression. Righteous rationalizations such as Christian nation, Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism but little repentance, restitution or repair by the white American church.
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