If Rwandan Anglicanism is broadly known outside the country, it is likely for two reasons: as the birthplace of the so-called East African Revival in the 1930s and for the role of its archbishops in sponsoring new Church structures for dissident Episcopalians in the United States in the 1990s and onwards. Phillip Cantrell’s new book situates both these well-known facts and much else in an important and welcome scholarly treatment of Rwandan Anglicanism.
As the subtitle makes clear, this is a book about politics and there is much description of the country’s political context. Church history is developed in conversation with and in the context of politics. Cantrell begins with an extensive analysis of the emergence of Hutu and Tutsi as social descriptors and argues that the terms pre-date colonial arrival but were deepened and further reified by Belgian officials. His depiction of the history of the pre-colonial Rwandan kingdom and its interaction with the colonial presence is assured. His history of Anglicanism in the country is heavy on the history of the Ruanda Mission, including its at times difficult relations with the Church Missionary Society, its uncertain place in a country under Belgian colonial rule, and its ties with Anglican missionaries in Uganda. Above all, he is interested in the way in which Anglican missionaries refrained from political engagement, did not challenge the Hutu and Tutsi divisions, and remained focused on converting Tutsi, whom they perceived as having higher social status. The East African Revival resulted in more Christians, but also in a church that remained poorly prepared for much, besides a ‘naïve and uncritical support for those in power’ (p. 89). Throughout the book, Cantrell accurately draws a picture of a Church that fails to confront government power, even when government power is directed towards genocide, and which, after the genocide slides back into the role of supporting the government, this time Tutsi-led.
At times, however, the book is more the history of an Anglican mission and less a history of an African church. We learn about the tenures of British missionaries and when they left the country. But we learn almost nothing about the transition to indigenous leadership. The name of Adonia Sebununguri – the first Bishop of Kigali and the first church leader native to Rwanda – does not appear in the book, nor does the name of Sebununguri’s rival and Bishop of Butare, Justin Ndandali. The story moves quickly through these early decades of an indigenous-led Rwandan Church before settling at length on the ministry of the first post-genocide archbishop, Emmanuel Kolini. Cantrell’s account largely ends there, though there have been at least two archbishops since Kolini, including one, Onesphore Rwaje, who is Hutu, which complicates the argument of a Tutsi-led church aligned with a Tutsi-led government.
Cantrell’s focus on politics, both colonial and postcolonial, means that he hardly discusses Anglican Christianity beyond an elite or missionary level. He writes that ‘field research by myself and others has demonstrated that the rural population is very much aware of the church’s alignment with the RPF’ (p. 162) but does not elaborate. Some study of what Anglicanism at a grassroots level looks like would have strengthened the analysis of the book and added texture. Cantrell’s focus on an elite level is surely the result, at least in part, of his archival resources, which are concentrated in Belgium and England. His use of archives located in Rwanda is more limited, and he does not seem to have used the extensive archive collected by the Diocese of Kigali. It is also likely due, in part, to the fact that Cantrell’s last visit to Rwanda was in 2007. After that, he was not invited to return, owing to the uncomfortable questions he was asking about the Church and its relationship to the State in a post-genocide environment.
Cantrell’s key (and correct) conclusion is that Anglican Church leadership is now so closely allied with the government that it is involved in actively misrepresenting Rwanda’s history and reality, including to foreign supporters in the United States and elsewhere. Cantrell writes, ‘the first generation of indigenous Anglican leadership was disinclined and ill-prepared to confront the oppression and violence occurring in their midst in the years between independence and genocide. Much the same can be observed and said of the new, postgenocide generation of Anglican leaders’ (p. 150). It is a striking conclusion, and one that deserves greater prominence in Anglican scholarship.
