Christian Resistance In Rwanda

1615 Words4 Pages

RWANDA Like the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was an act of extreme violence that involved all people from every age group and social standing. After the assassination of President Habyarimana, a Hutu, the Hutu population, led by the Hutu-dominated government, decided on the extermination of the Hutu population. In around 100 days, hundreds of thousands of Tutsi lives were lost to their Hutu neighbors in one of the most violent bloodsheds ever to see Africa. While the forms of rationalization may differ in some ways, there was still a level of Christian involvement in the Genocide. The question is, how could Rwanda, one of the most Christian nations in Africa, be a place of such violence and distaste for human life? What factors …show more content…

By this I mean that, due to the highly centralized government and the tendency to be obedient to authority in Rwanda, that resistance by individual Rwandans was not as widespread as in the Holocaust. Resistance came in the form of general pleas from the Pope to stop the violence that didn't actually address the direct participation of the catholic church in the genocide (Waller, Deliver 10). Another form of resistance came from other church leaders who, when faced with the theological problems of the genocide and the violence, often publicly despaired of murder in general (Waller, Deliver 10). The leaders of both Protestant and Catholic churches wrote a letter calling an end to the violence but did not go so far as to condemn the actions of those participating (Waller, Deliver 10). Based on this overview, the resistance in Rwanda to the genocide did exist, but it proved to do little good to ease or help the situation. Overall, Christian participation in the Rwandan genocide was widespread, common, and expected. The history of the church in Rwanda and it's close ties to the national government, when met with the other factors of the genocidal regime and the centralized authority and tendency towards obedience, makes Christian involvement in the genocide understandable. While the Christian participation is saddening and explicitly un-biblical, it was an almost inevitable product of the factors that were all present in Rwanda in

Open Document