Revival and Reconciliation: The Anglican Church and the Politics of Rwanda

Cantrell II, Phillip A.

ISBN 10: 0299335100 / ISBN 13: 9780299335106

Published by University of Wisconsin Press, 2022

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 391268049

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Revival and Reconciliation: The Anglican Church and the Politics of Rwanda
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication Date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299335100
• ISBN 13: 9780299335106
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

When Europe began colonizing Rwanda in the late nineteenth century, the Anglican Church played a significant and long-lasting role in controlling the colony through the Ruanda Mission. This informative volume shows how the church repeatedly aligned with the regime in power and failed to take account of its own history in fomenting ethnic tensions prior to the 1994 genocide. In recent years, the media has depicted Rwanda as a model of unity, development, and recovery, yet Phillip A. Cantrell II argues that not all is as it seems, as he takes a critical look at the church's complicity with authoritarian rule—from the Tutsi monarchy to the Rwandan Patriotic Front.

Drawing from new archival materials as well as on-the-ground field research, Revival and Reconciliation is a Rwanda-centered account of the country's ecclesiastical and national historiography. Cantrell calls attention to the harms the postgenocide church risks doing should it continue to support false narratives about Rwanda's colonial and postcolonial past—with dangerous consequences for the future.

About the Author

Phillip A. Cantrell II is an associate professor of world and African history at Longwood University. His main research area is East Central Africa during the colonial period.