Mirror To The Church

Walt Mueller:

The book I finished reading in bed last night is probably not very well known or very widely read. To be honest, I would most likely never have picked it up if I hadn't gone to Rwanda myself. . . and if someone from Compassion hadn't recommended it to me as post-trip reading. The book is titled Mirror to the Church: Resurrecting Faith after Genocide in Rwanda, and it's written by Emmanuel Katongole, a Catholic priest from Uganda who is an associate research professor of theology and world Christianity at Duke University. It's one of those short books that packs a powerful punch. Katongole offers a clear and insightful history of what happened in Rwanda before the genocide, including the fast advance of Christianity. He then offers compelling analysis of what happened during the genocide, particularly amongs Christians, who were using machetes to violently kill one another. But Katongole doesn't stop there. He challenges us to learn lessons from this ugly history. He challenges us to never think that "I'd never do that!" or "That will never happen here!"

Last night I read these words in Mirror to the Church: "Maybe 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. Behind the silences of the genocide, Hutus and Tutsis alike were shaped by a story that held their imagination captive." Then, Katongole goes on to offer this challenge: "Paying attention to history helps us to see that this was not just Rwanda's problem. The story that made Rwanda is the story of the West. When we look at Rwanda as a mirror to the church, it helps us realize what little consequence the biblical story has on the way Christians live their lives in the West. As Christians, we cannot remember the Rwandan genocide without admitting that the gospel did not seem to have a real impact on most Rwandan's lives. Seeing this, we have to ask: does Christianity make any real difference in the West?" Wow.