Mirror to the Church

Written by an African Catholic Bishop and releasing on the 15th anniversary of the genocide, Mirror to the Church is the story of the church in Rwanda, but is also a mirror to Western Christians, especially evangelicals.

Rwanda is often held up as a model of evangelization in Africa. Yet in 1994, beginning on the Thursday of Easter week, Christians killed other Christians, often in the same churches where they had worshiped together. The most Christianized country in Africa became the site of its worst genocide.

With a mother who was a Hutu and a father who was a Tutsi, author Emmanuel Katongole is uniquely qualified to point out that the tragedy in Rwanda is also a mirror reflecting the deep brokenness of the church in the West. Rwanda brings us to a cry of lament on our knees where together we learn that we must interrupt these patterns of brokenness.

But Rwanda also brings us to a place of hope. Indeed, the only hope for our world after Rwanda’s genocide is a new kind of Christian identity for the global body of Christ—a people on pilgrimage together, a mixed group, bearing witness to a new identity made possible by the Gospel.

Emmanuel M. Katongole is associate research professor of theology and world Christianity in the Divinity School at Duke University and the co-director of the Duke Center for Reconciliation. He is a Catholic priest of the Kampala Archdiocese, Uganda.

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, the author of several books, directs the School for conversion and lives with his family at the Rutba house, a new monastic community in Durham, North Carolina.