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The 1994 Rwandan genocide ranks among the most shocking episodes in modern African history. In just 100 days, soldiers, police, and militia from the majority Hutu ethnic group systematically slaughtered over 500,000 members of the Tutsi ethnic minority. A civil war that the genocide reignited killed tens of thousands more, drove over half the population from their homes, and led to the downfall of the government that organized the genocide. 1 The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the predominantly Tutsi rebel group that took control of Rwanda at the conclusion of the genocide, used substantial force against the civilian population to establish its authority, arrested tens of thousands of individuals on genocide charges, and launched two invasions of the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) justified in part by continuing security threats from the genocidal forces. At the same time that they exercised coercive rule, the RPF also embraced a language of national unity. Since 2000 in particular, the RPF-led government has undertaken a massive program of transitional justice, ostensibly to promote reconciliation and national healing, while also launching an ambitious program of economic and social development that involves substantial reorganization of rural livelihoods and massive urbanization (Longman 2017; Thomson 2013).

As one of the most Christian countries in Africa, 2 Rwanda’s Christian churches should be expected to be integral to the processes of promoting reconciliation, healing, and unity. Yet the possible contribution of the country’s churches to reconciliation has been undermined by the fact that the churches were …