The Bishop of Rwanda

Bishop John Rucyahana, an ethnic Tutsi refugee, was a leader in the Anglican Church of Uganda during the genocide of his people in Rwanda. He moved back in 1997 with his family to lead the largest and most devastated diocese there. The bulk of his narrative recounts the same story that others have told of the incomprehensibly brutal extermination of nearly one million Tutsis in 100 days. What this powerful, if unevenly edited, book adds is a deeper understanding of the role of the churches in the genocide. Although many Hutu pastors died protecting the Tutsis of their flocks, often religious clergy participated in the abhorrent violence, killing or betraying members of their congregations. The people of Rwanda have lost trust in authority of any kind, including religion, and so Rucyahana notes that the healing work that must now be accomplished can only be done through integrity and pure love. Bishop John has built ministries for both genocide survivors and perpetrators, releasing the pain from both sides and acting as a beacon for other communities suffering from their own destructive divisions. To anyone who has ever struggled to forgive or felt too far gone to repent, this book plumbs the depth of God's grace and finds no bottom. (Mar. 6)
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When Rwanda exploded in April 1994, Rucyahana and his family were in Uganda, whence they had fled the gathering storm some time before. Ordained the Anglican bishop of Rwanda's Shyria diocese after the slaughter subsided, Rucyahana went home to spearhead an astonishing work of reconciliation. More than a million had been murdered on the pretext that the Tutsi, aka Watusi, minority had long oppressed the Hutu majority. That grievance was manufactured, Rucyahana convincingly argues, by Belgian and French colonial overlords and then exploited after independence by unscrupulous politicians (as well as French economic "advisors": France bought the machetes for the bloodbath). Mostly physically indistinguishable from one another, Tutsi and Hutu lived together peaceably long before colonialism and, through ongoing public and private confession and forgiveness, shall again. There is more to the healing, of course, including unparalleled advocacy for the people and promotion of social justice by the church. Apart from the grace of God, however, it wouldn't have happened, Rucyahana says. To read his account of holocaust and revival is to believe him. Ray Olson
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