Religion in Rwanda
Encyclopedia
Rwanda
Rwanda or , officially the Republic of Rwanda , is a country in central and eastern Africa with a population of approximately 11.4 million . Rwanda is located a few degrees south of the Equator, and is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo...
n government reported on November 1, 2006, that 56.5% of the Rwanda's population is Roman Catholic, 26% is Protestant, 11.1% is Seventh-day Adventist, 4.6% is Muslim
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
, 1.7% claims no religious affiliation, and 0.1% practices traditional indigenous beliefs
African Traditional Religion
The traditional religions indigenous to Africa have, for most of their existence, been orally rather than scripturally transmitted. They are generally associated with animism. Most have ethno-based creations stories...
. This study indicates a 6.9 percent increase in the number of Catholics and a 17.9 percent decline in the number of Protestants (which can in large part be explained by breaking out the growing Seventh-day Adventist church separately) from the 2001 survey figures. The figures for Protestants include the growing number of members of Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism, convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual...
(about 14,000) and evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
Protestant groups. There is also a small population of Baha'is
Bahá'í Faith in Rwanda
The Bahá'í Faith in Rwanda begins after 1916 with a mention by `Abdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, that Bahá'ís should take the religion to the regions of Africa. The first specific mention of Rwanda was in May 1953 suggesting the expanding community of the Bahá'í Faith in Uganda look at...
. There has been a proliferation of small, usually Christian-linked schismatic religious groups since the 1994 genocide
Rwandan Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass murder of an estimated 800,000 people in the small East African nation of Rwanda. Over the course of approximately 100 days through mid-July, over 500,000 people were killed, according to a Human Rights Watch estimate...
, as well as substantial conversion to Islam.
Current context
Foreign missionaries and church-linked nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) of various religious groups operated in the country. Foreign missionaries openly promoted their religious beliefs, and the Government welcomed their development assistance.The Constitution of Rwanda
Constitution of Rwanda
The Constitution of Rwanda was adopted by referendum on May 26, 2003. It replaced the older Constitution of 1991.The Constitution provides for a presidential system of government, with separation of powers between the three branches. It condemns the Rwandan Genocide in the preamble, expressing hope...
provides for freedom of religion
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
, and the Government generally respected this right in practice. Local government officials sometimes detain Jehovah's Witnesses for refusing to participate in security patrols. In 2007, the US government received no reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious belief or practice.
Colonial period
Although the ethnic divisions and tensions between HutuHutu
The Hutu , or Abahutu, are a Central African people, living mainly in Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern DR Congo.-Population statistics:The Hutu are the largest of the three peoples in Burundi and Rwanda; according to the United States Central Intelligence Agency, 84% of Rwandans and 85% of Burundians...
and Tutsi
Tutsi
The Tutsi , or Abatutsi, are an ethnic group in Central Africa. Historically they were often referred to as the Watussi or Watusi. They are the second largest caste in Rwanda and Burundi, the other two being the Hutu and the Twa ....
predate the colonial era, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) report on the genocide states,
In the colonial era, under German and then Belgian rule, Roman Catholic missionaries, inspired by the overtly racist theories of 19th century Europe, concocted a destructive ideology of ethnic cleavage and racial ranking that attributed superior qualities to the country's Tutsi minority, since the missionaries ran the colonial-era schools, these pernicious values were systematically transmitted to several generations of Rwandans…
When the Roman Catholic missionaries came to Rwanda in the late 1880s, they contributed to the "Hamitic" theory of race origins, which taught that the Tutsi were a superior race. The Church has been considered to have played a significant role in fomenting racial divisions between Hutu and Tutsi, in part because they found more willing converts among the majority Hutu.
1994 Genocide
An estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed during intertribal violence over the brief span of 100 days, between April and June of 1994. Most of the dead were Tutsis, and most of those who perpetrated the violence were Hutus.The genocide was sparked by the death of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down above Kigali airport on 6 April 1994. The full details of that specific incident remain unclear; however, the death of the president was by no means the only cause of the mayhem. Ethnic tension in Rwanda is not new. Disagreements between the majority Hutus and minority Tutsis are common, but the animosity between them grew substantially after decolonization by Belgium.
The most detailed discussion of the role of religion in the Rwandan genocide is Timothy Longman's Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda. He argues that both Catholic and Protestant churches helped to make the genocide possible by giving moral sanction to the killing. Churches had longed played ethnic politics themselves, favoring the Tutsi during the colonial period then switching allegiance to the Hutu after 1959, sending a message that ethnic discrimination was consistent with church teaching. The church leaders had also long had close ties with the political leaders, and after the genocide began, the church leaders called on the population to support the new interim government, the very government that was supporting the genocide.
At the same time, churches were not uniformly supportive of the genocide. In the period leading up to the genocide, 1990-1994, major splits emerged within most churches between moderates who promoted democratic change and conservatives allied with the Habyarimana regime. Many of the clergy were Tutsi, and they generally supported democratic reform, but many moderate Hutu within the churches supported reform as well. Churches provided major support to the formation of the new human rights groups that emerged in the early 1990s. When the genocide began, some clergy and other church leaders opposed the violence, even at the risk of their own lives.
Some individual members of the religious community attempted to protect civilians, sometimes at great risk to themselves. For example, Mgr. Thaddée Ntihinyurwa of Cyangugu
Cyangugu
Cyangugu is a city and capital of the Rusizi district of Western Province, Rwanda. The city lies at the southern end of Lake Kivu, and is contiguous with Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, but separated from it by the Ruzizi River...
preached against the genocide from the pulpit and tried unsuccessfully to rescue three Tutsi religious brothers from an attack, while Sr. Felicitas Niyitegeka of the Auxiliaires de l’Apostolat in Gisenyi
Gisenyi
Gisenyi is a city in Rubavu district in the Western Province of Rwanda. Gisenyi is contiguous with Goma, the city across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The population of the city is about 106 000 .-Description:...
smuggled Tutsi across the border into Zaire
Zaire
The Republic of Zaire was the name of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo between 27 October 1971 and 17 May 1997. The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the Kongo word nzere or nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".-Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation:In...
, until she was executed by a militant militia in retaliation. In her book Left to Tell: Discovering God in the Rwandan Holocaust (2006), Immaculee Ilibagiza, a Tutsi woman, describes hiding with seven other Tutsi women for 91 days in a bathroom in the house of Pastor Murinzi - for the majority of the genocide. At the St Paul Pastoral Centre in Kigali, about 2,000 people found refuge and most of them survived, due to the efforts of Fr Celestin Hakizimana. This priest 'intervened at every attempt by the militia to abduct or murder' the refugees in his centre. In the face of powerful opposition, he tried to hold off the killers with persuasion or bribes.
Post-genocide conversions
Reports indicate the percentage of Muslims in Rwanda has doubledor tripled since the genocide, due to Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
protection of Tutsi
Tutsi
The Tutsi , or Abatutsi, are an ethnic group in Central Africa. Historically they were often referred to as the Watussi or Watusi. They are the second largest caste in Rwanda and Burundi, the other two being the Hutu and the Twa ....
s and to Hutu
Hutu
The Hutu , or Abahutu, are a Central African people, living mainly in Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern DR Congo.-Population statistics:The Hutu are the largest of the three peoples in Burundi and Rwanda; according to the United States Central Intelligence Agency, 84% of Rwandans and 85% of Burundians...
s' wanting distance from the people who murdered. Although the growth of Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
stabilized after a few years, it is still attracting some converts. Conversions to Evangelical Christianity also increased after the genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
, while attendance in Catholic churches has decreased. Observers believe this is due to the participation of some Catholic priests in the genocide.
External links
- "Rwanda's resurrection of faith" by Mary WiltenburgMary WiltenburgMary Wiltenburg is an award-winning print and multimedia reporter based in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author and producer of The Christian Science Monitor project "Little Bill Clinton: A School Year in the life of a New American," which industry watchers say "could change storytelling for...
, The Christian Science MonitorThe Christian Science MonitorThe Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...
, April 12, 2004 - "Rwanda: How the genocide happened", BBC News, December 18, 2008