Evangelism booms, Catholicism suffers in post-genocide Rwanda
AFP | 09 avril, 2014 07:39
Since the end of the genocide, which left some 800,000 people -
essentially Tutsis - dead, Rwandans have increasingly turned to
pentecostal churches or in some cases to Islam.
Image by: Gallo Images/Thinkstock
Jean-Claude Zamwita's family abandoned the solemn organ music and
stained glass windows of the Catholic church in 2006, eight years
after the genocide in Rwanda, and started visiting an evangelical
church with tambourines and drumming.
Such churches have been springing up across Rwanda, partly because the
traditional churches, notably the Catholic Church, were largely
discredited by the role played by some of their clerics during the
killings.
Since the end of the genocide, which left some 800,000 people -
essentially Tutsis - dead, Rwandans have increasingly turned to
pentecostal churches or in some cases to Islam.
Zamwita, who was 15 when his family changed churches, said it was an
easy decision.
"When we used to attend mass there was no interaction between the
priest and the congregation. I was like a slave, being told what to do
and what not to do. Here I feel free," he said.
The new churches started when Rwandan refugees came back from
neighbouring countries such as Uganda or the Democratic Republic of
Congo, where evangelical churches are already well established.
"These churches are attractive because there is singing, a big display
of emotion and an opportunity for individual expression," explained
Paul Rutayisire, a historian specialised in religious issues.
Inside the Celpar church that Zamwita and his family attend, the
service looks more like a rock concert than anything else.
On a small stage a dozen members of the congregation sing, dance, leap
into the air and then throw themselves to their knees. Others throw
their arms into the air, wipe tears from their eyes before plunging
their head into their hands as if the end was near.
"After the genocide people were spiritually weak. They were sick,"
explained James Nsengiyumva, the 39-year-old preacher and secretary
general of Celpar. "We brought them a new message of empowerment and
reconciliation."
This Ugandan-born Rwandan, dressed in a well-cut suit, has 29 churches
in Rwanda, three in neighbouring Burundi and a further 40 in DR Congo.
The new churches have found post-genocide Rwanda to be fertile ground
as the Catholic Church, while still powerful, no longer has the close
relationship to the government that it enjoyed prior to 1994.
Rwanda is still dotted with the ruins of Catholic churches where the
faithful seeking shelter were massacred, sometimes with members of the
clergy acting in complicity with the killers.
The debate over the role of the Catholic Church was revived on Monday
when Rwanda's representative to UNESCO lashed out at the Vatican.
The Catholic Church, a moral authority and an important institution
remained silent," Jacques Kabale, Rwanda's ambassador to France and to
the UN agency, said on Monday, the 20th anniversary of the genocide.
"Its abandonment was felt all the more keenly in that some of its
members hid criminal actions," he said.
In spite of everything the Catholic Church has not totally lost its
influence, Rutayisire said.
"People go to the Catholics, then to the others. Some people even go
to both... those are spiritual journeys."
"The debate over the role of the Catholic Church in the genocide is
something that is of interest to an elite group of genocide survivors,
for within the majority that was not persecuted (i.e. the Hutu) this
is not an issue," he added.
"We don't see them as competition," said Smaragde Mbonyintege, the
head of the Episcopal Conference in Rwanda, adding that the Catholic
Church had a lot to learn from the preaching methods of the new
churches.
The Rwandan government for its part considers that if the evangelical
churches do not for the moment represent a threat to public order,
they are nevertheless difficult to keep tabs on.
"They are sprouting up like mushrooms," said Felicien Usengumukiza,
deputy director general of the Rwanda Governance Board, noting that
many of those in charge of evangelical churches seem more interested
in making money.
If the evangelical churches get financing from outside the country,
they also depend on contributions from the faithful. Zamwita, who ekes
out a living from odd jobs, gives, like many other member of the flock
who can barely afford it, 10 percent of his earnings to the church.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/2014/04/09/evangelism-booms-catholicism-suffers-in-post-genocide-rwanda
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