When Genocide Comes to Church
Several years ago, in about 2009-10, I read three books on the Rwandan Genocide. I can’t remember what prompted me to engage such a grim topic at the time—perhaps it was watching Hotel Rwanda—but I remember the gloom that settled over my soul for days afterwards.
In Rwanda in 1994, from April to July, Hutus rose up with machetes and clubs and brutally slaughtered about 800,000 of their Tutsi neighbours. One hundred days of utter horror.
Beyond the killing rampage itself, what most troubled me was the international community’s wilful inaction. General Roméo Dallaire, who was in Rwanda as commander of a United Nations peacekeeping force, warned the UN authorities of what the Hutus were planning. And when the killings began and the scale of what was transpiring became apparent, he again pleaded for assistance. But, instead, the UN Security Council voted to reduce the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda from 2,500 to 270 soldiers, making it clear in no uncertain terms that Dallaire had no jurisdiction whatsoever to intervene or ameliorate the situation.
I also learned that churches, to which many ran for sanctuary from the militias, became epicentres of violence where thousands of Tutsis were hacked to death. If I remember rightly, at least one church, still strewn with the remains of those who perished, has been left as a macabre witness to the horror. Lest the nation forget. Lest we forget.
1. The Church and the Rwanda Genocide
What I didn’t learn back in 2009-10—How did I miss it? Did the books I read not mention it?—was that churches were not only places of mass killing, but their members helped make up the ranks of the genocidaires. The Christians of Rwanda were not only complicit in, but actively engaged in the slaughter. Extraordinary as that might sound, it is the sorry truth. When the killings started, Christians were on the whole no different to other Rwandans. They too took up machetes and hacked their neighbours to death.
Earlier this year I read Deliver Us From Evil by John Swinton, who drew my attention to this aspect of the Rwandan Genocide. Deliver Us From Evil is about how we are all unavoidably, often unwittingly, caught up in evil’s powerful sway, becoming enmeshed in “webs of falsehood and violence” (p. 14), “systems of sin” (p. 15) that reinforce “racial and cultural stereotypes, misrepresentations, cultural blindness, and depersonalizing misidentifications, such as sexism, disablism, and xenophobia.” (p. 7)
In a chapter on “radical evil” (which is “demonic, dark, unimaginable”, p. 16) Swinton focuses in on the Rwandan Genocide. He draws on the work of the Ugandan priest and theologian Emmanuel Katongole (especially his book Mirror to the Church), who seeks to make sense of the involvement of the Rwandan Church in the genocide, given that “Christians killed other Christians, often in the same churches where they had worshiped together.” (Mirror to the Church, p. 11)
This truth is so shocking that it is tempting to view the Rwandan Genocide as something that happened “over there” in a world far away, as if what took place has nothing to do with us in the here and now. But Katongole argues—and Swinton builds on his analysis—that it is all much closer to home than we might like:
When we … look honestly at the story of genocide in Rwanda, we begin to realize that Rwanda is not as far away as we might imagine. In truth, the story of Rwanda reflects the same patterns of identity formation that are found in the West. (Katongole, Mirror to the Church, p. 78)
2. Politicised Identities
The issue of “identity formation” is key to Katongole and Swinton’s analysis of how the Rwandan church lost the plot and rather than offering resistance to the genocide, became an active accomplice instead.
The opposition between Hutus and Tutsis, contrary to crude Western caricatures, grew out of the politicisation of socio-economic caste identities (the extent to which Hutu and Tutsi are ethnic categories, if at all, is debated). And the politicisation itself came from the Belgian colonialists who elevated and cemented the categories of Hutu and Tutsi for their own ends (including requiring identity cards to that effect) creating the context in which grievances and hatreds could be fostered.
In fact, prior to European Colonialism, the Hutu and Tutsi shared the same language, culture, law, religious traditions, and cultures. They lived and worked side by side and even intermarried. “Hutu” and “Tutsi” were not definitive, divisive identity markers until they became so through the indoctrination that came with colonialism. They became highly politicised identities.
That is the key to why the categories of Hutu and Tutsi are much closer in nature to the thin, fractious, politicised identities of our Western culture than we like to think. The “polarizing identity politics” (Swinton, p. 79) with which we are now so familiar in the West, and the opposition between Hutu and Tutsi, are not as different as we might imagine.
Katongole’s thesis, on which Swinton draws, is that the Rwandan Church was fully complicit in the genocide because “the blood of tribalism ran deeper than the waters of baptism” (Mirror to the Church, p. 22, 45, 67). By the word “tribalism” he is not implying that the opposition between Hutu and Tutsi is an ancient ethnic one. He is using the word generically to speak of the strong sense of group identity that inspires cohesion and loyalty and which leads to division and polarisation.
Katongole notes that,
Instead of softening the divisions between Hutu and Tutsi, the church in Rwanda amplified, intensified, and radiated them. But this was not only true of the established Catholic Church. From 1930 onwards, a powerful revival swept through the region and attracted many followers. Significant as this revival was, it never offered any revision of Hutu/Tutsi categories (or Rwanda politics). (Mirror to the Church, p.60)
The church offered no alternative to the Belgian colonial project. Nineteenth-century missionary work was a great success and the country was well evangelised, but the church offered no distinctive Christian anthropology that challenged the notions of “Hutu” and “Tutsi”, identity markers that were just assumed to be natural.
In other words, by 1994, Hutu and Tutsi identities were politically super-charged, and powerful enough to neuter any distinctive Christian identity. If there was such a thing as Christian identity in Rwanda, it was of no practical value in subverting or challenging the Hutu-Tutsi divide.
3. Hyper-Moral Zealotry
If Swinton’s first lesson from Rwanda concerns how similar Hutu and Tutsi identities are to the political and social identity politics that shape Western cultures (and churches!) today, his second lesson concerns how radical evil gains a foothold within such a politically charged, divisive environment.
Acts of radical evil don’t just happen, as if people suddenly decide to act extremely wickedly. Swinton points out that, in a sense, the opposite is the case. Radical evil occurs in a particular context where people are utterly convinced that they have a cause that is right and just. They become hyper-moral, zealous to carry out what in their eyes is righteous and just.
Swinton quotes psychologist Tage Rai,
Across practices, across cultures, and throughout historical periods, when people support and engage in violence, their primary motivations are moral. By ‘moral’, I mean that people are violent because they feel that they must be … Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations. (Swinton, pp. 63-64)
In genocides, as Swinton puts it, “the issue is not that people lose their morality. It is very often the exact opposite. People become overly moral.” (p. 63)
Earlier in Deliver Us From Evil, Swinton lays the groundwork for understanding the nature of evil through a discussion of the apostle Paul’s analysis in Romans 1. Swinton places a strong emphasis (as the apostle Paul also does) on the cognitive distortions that result from no longer acknowledging and worshipping God. Our cognitive confusion can be so great that we can perpetrate, or facilitate, great evil while taking the moral high ground, being utterly convinced we are in the right.
Swinton, aptly, quotes John 16:2:
They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God.
This is why when a particular tribe, nation, or group frames a project in highly moral terms, we can’t simply assume that their plans are noble. In fact, within a context of highly fractious, politicised identities, when people become zealous for “perceived moral rights and obligations”, such moralising easily segues into denigrating, devaluing, and even demonising the other side. At which point, powerful leaders are able to persuade people that they have a moral project that is “worth fighting for, dying for, torturing for, raping for, murdering for” (Swinton, p. 64). That is what happened in Rwanda.
To summarise:
The Rwandan Church offered no practical vision of Christian identity that relativised the super-charged politicised, tribal opposition between Hutu and Tutsi; and
Evil became defined by those in power in terms of that tribal division, with the line between good and evil mapping onto the Tutsi-Hutu divide. Tutsis were seen as unclean “cockroaches” and needed to be treated as such for the good of the nation. In short, good and evil became a zero-sum equation between Hutu and Tutsi.
4. Israel’s Response to October 7
The same groundwork for the exercise of radical evil—(1) a highly politicised tribal polarisation, and (2) the use of extreme, hyper-moral rhetoric —was present in the immediate build-up to Israel laying siege to Gaza.
Before Hamas’ horrific attack of October 7 last year, the Israeli-Palestinian division was already about as fractious as it is possible to get. The atrocities of October 7 only further inflamed that divide. And within that highly-charged, polarised context, Netanyahu framed Israel’s response as a battle of goodness against evil, of human civilisation against barbarity, of humanity against the law of the jungle, of Israel against bloodthirsty monsters.
On October 7, Netanyahu said that Israeli soldiers stand ready “to defeat the bloodthirsty monsters who have risen against Israel to destroy us.” On October 16, he spoke of Israel’s struggle as being “between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” On December 25, he said, “We’re facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in front of their parents … This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle of civilisation against barbarism.” On December 28, he said, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our holy Bible, and we do remember.”
This sort of extreme, dualistic (and dehumanising) moralising quickly became widespread discourse. For example, as early as October 12, Israel’s Ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, said that “This is civilization against barbarity. This is good against bad. This is people who basically act as animals and do not have any, any respect for children, women.”
Along with this hyper-moral, dualistic, good-vs-evil framing, there were many comments that clearly presaged trouble for the civilian population. For example, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, spelling out that this meant “no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed … We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” On October 13, Isaac Herzog, the Israeli Prime Minister, said that “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible.”
Not only was a complete siege imposed, but the first week of Israel’s bombing campaign was so brutal that it killed over 2000 Palestinians and injured about 9000 more.
If Katongole and Swinton’s analysis of radical evil and the Rwandan genocide is on track, then presumably the use of extreme, morally dualistic and dehumanising language, the imposition of a complete siege, and a ruthless bombing campaign, all within the context of arguably the most fractious of all modern-day political divisions, would have rung alarm bells?
Indeed it did. On October 15 over 800 experts in international law, conflict, and genocide studies warned of the clear prospect of genocide in Gaza.
5. Western Evangelical Responses
Contrast the response of legal experts and historians of genocide with that of many Western evangelical leaders.
Take, for example, Russell Moore’s Christianity Today opinion piece written on October 7 itself, within hours of Hamas’ violent attack, entitled “American Christians Should Stand with Israel under Attack”. There can be no “moral confusion” about “who is right and who is wrong”, since “Hamas attacked the state of Israel in unspeakably brutal ways”. Israel, on the other hand, are “a fellow liberal democracy.” Not only that, but since “Jesus was and is a Jewish man from Galilee”, “rage against the Jewish people is rage against him, and, because we are in him, against us.”
In short, there is a great moral disparity between the parties to the war, Hamas have raged against Jews, Jesus, and us [talk about raising the moral stakes!], and “a forceful response” is necessary and just.
Or, consider Bernard Howard’s and Ivan Mesa’s article written on October 10, 2023 for the Gospel Coalition, entitled “Israel’s 9/11: The Need for Moral Clarity”. There is no moral fog, since Hamas deliberately murdered civilians, committing “butchery”. “Unsuspecting partygoers [were] slaughtered.” Christians must not “make defenses for the indefensible, intentional slaughter of civilians.” [I certainly agree with that sentiment and its application to all, regardless of the identity of the perpetrators or victims] In short, moral clarity is both possible and necessary, since one side is “hell-bent on terrorism” and the other (presumably) is not.
Unlike Russell Moore, Howard and Mesa did not specifically valorise Israel, but they did reduce any of Israel’s past misdemeanours (whatever they might be) to a passing acknowledgment that “the state of Israel hasn’t always acted blamelessly in its conduct toward the Palestinian people.”
Or, consider Moore’s follow-up piece for Christianity Today written on October 12, 2023 entitled “‘Bothsidesism’ About Hamas Is a Moral Failure”. Again, his aim was to sweep away any moral ambiguity. The subtitle of his article is, “Israelis and Palestinians are equally beloved of God. But there’s no moral ambiguity about the genocidal evil of Hamas.”
The article continues in this vein, with comments such as, “saying who is to blame—and who is not—is not factually or morally difficult at all,” and “Hamas targeted innocent civilians. Hamas butchered young people dancing at a music festival. Hamas murdered elderly people and toddlers and babies reportedly in the most sadistic ways imaginable. There is no ‘contextualization’ needed to condemn that.” In short, “bothsidesism” is a moral failure, and moral ambiguity is swept aside, since it is clear that Hamas is “genocidally evil.”
The important thing to note with these responses (and there were others like them from others) is that their authors were not just seeking to highlight how horrific and reprehensible Hamas’ actions were (which indeed they were), but that their actions reveal the stark moral disparity between Hamas and Israel, a disparity posited as self-evident. Note the choice of language—“butchery”, “genocidal”, “sadistic”, “hell-bent”, “terrorism”, “rage”, “slaughtered”—used to characterise one side alone as despicably evil, to sweep away “moral fog”, and leave the impression of a moral chasm between Hamas and Israel. Moore stacks the deck even further by saying that Hamas’ “rage” was against Jews and Jesus.
Unfortunately, these sorts of responses—only slightly less stark versions of the reductionistic good-vs-evil framing coming from Israeli officials—were not restricted to American evangelicals. I observed similar sentiments here in Australia among many Sydney Anglican ministers and leaders, who passionately jumped on the bandwagon of affirming Israel’s moral nobility and Hamas’ moral depravity, complete with cartoons and tropes on social media that dehumanised Hamas as Nazis, and valorised Israel as a nation of peace and good-will for all, Palestinians included.
The tragedy and folly of such responses is:
How tribally partisan they are in rubbing our noses in Hamas’ violence, while winking at Israel’s well-documented history of human rights abuses and war crimes; and
How similar in type (if not quite degree) they are to the dangerous and distorted moral antitheses of Israeli officials that place Israel on the side of good, and Hamas on the side of evil. (Does not the Bible—quite apart from a less blinkered view of history—lead us to a less simplistic moral analysis? In the Bible, radical evil is never restricted to a particular group or people. When Satan, sin, and the powers of darkness raged against Jesus and hounded him to his death, did they not find willing accomplices among both secular and religious people, Jew and Gentile, individuals and crowds, brutes and bureaucrats?)
Over a year has now passed, a year in which, according to the UN, Israel has committed numerous massacres in Gaza (93 since March alone), and in which a truckload of genocide scholars have added their voices of concern to those referenced above (including such experts in the field as Amos Goldberg, Omer Bartov, and Martin Shaw).
And yet these evangelical leaders (in both the USA and Australia) have, at best, fallen silent. Such a lengthy silence in the face of Israel’s crimes, after such an immediate rush to judgment in the wake of Hamas’ crimes, represents an extraordinarily partisan bias. What horrors would Israel have to perpetrate in Gaza to warrant condemnation from these men?
In short, it would seem that the same worldly tribal captivity and painful moral naivety that was so evident in Rwanda is very much with us in our evangelical churches in the West, at least in the USA and Australia. Many of our leaders irresponsibly used their influential voices to “amplify, intensify, and radiate” (Katongole) the highly politicised, super-charged division between Israelis and Palestinians.
6. An Evangelical Tribal Captivity
That is, to put it mildly, an extremely serious problem. What if genocide were happening in our midst? Would we oppose it? Would we find a way of giving a distinctly Christian voice? Would we be able to discern evil in all its guises? Would we be alert to sin’s deceptive use of moral rights to unleash great evil?
But actually, it’s not sufficient to ask about hypothetical scenarios given that none of us in our hyper-connected world are more than a few people (or a couple of mouse clicks) removed from what is happening right now in Gaza, Lebanon, and Israel.
We need to take seriously that our participation in “webs of falsehood and violence” (Swinton) involves little more than just accepting the consensus narratives and caricatures that drive our society’s divisions. We can’t take any solace from the fact that while someone shoots an innocent civilian in the head, we are only shooting off a few pejoratives online.
Our tribal biases are extremely damaging to Christian witness. However much we throw in the odd acknowledgment that everyone is precious in God’s sight, and that we are to weep with those who weep, Palestinians have seen that whereas we weep and rage at the slaughter of Israelis, we keep scrolling as we watch video after video of Palestinians picking up the scattered remains of dead relatives.
Katongole suggests that,
The deepest tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is that Christianity didn’t seem to make any difference. Rwandans performed a script that had shaped them more deeply than the biblical story had. (Mirror to the Church, p. 85)
A plausible genocide has touched us, even if from a safe (for us in the West) distance. And many of us have blindly, foolishly been performing a script that has only served to lend legitimacy to that plausible genocide. That should frighten us and wake us from our complacency.
The fact that we have done so shows (1) that we are very naive about the power of evil, and (2) that we are enslaved to what the apostle Paul calls “the elements of the world” (Gal 4:3, 9; Col 2:8, 20), namely those
Rules, ideas, values, prejudices, and divisive categories (like ‘slave versus free,’ ‘male versus female,’ ‘Greek versus barbarian,’ ‘Jew versus Greek’) that … guide, limit, and constrain human beings in their thoughts, behaviors, and interactions, keeping them in a form of ideological and systemic bondage. (David deSilva, NICNT, Galatians, 351-53)
There is so much that could be said about this, but this post is already too long. Safe to say, we won’t begin to free ourselves from our tribal captivities until Christ’s sufficiency and supremacy captivates us.
The elements of the world enslave us; they blind us to the values and priorities of Christ’s kingdom and rule. They distort how we see people, deaden us to spiritual realities (like the power and deceitfulness of sin), and make us unwitting, robotic pawns of their ideological, nefarious agendas.
God’s kingdom is not of this world. It is from above, not below; its king is a servant, not a tyrant; its power is the cross not the sword; its law is love not revenge; its enemies are reconciled not annihilated; its leaders are meek not ruthless; and its citizens are peace-makers not warmongers.
Jesus came to make the desert bloom and the waste places glad, to heal the sick and raise the dead, to make the blind see and the lame dance for joy.
It is unthinkable that those who belong to such a glorious king would advocate for those worldly powers (whether Hamas, Israel, or anyone else) that rampage through this world decimating and destroying, torturing and murdering, and leaving death, ruin and misery in their wake.
Share this post: