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Revival and Reconciliation
The Anglican Church and the Politics of Rwanda
Phillip A. Cantrell, II
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
“This refreshingly honest account offers compelling perspectives on colonial mentalities, missionary schisms, and church-state relations in Africa. As an essential history of the Anglican Church in Rwanda, it will certainly find its way to many scholars’ bookshelves. Written in graceful prose, it may also become a staple for course readings.”
—David Newbury, Smith College
When Europe began colonizing Rwanda in the late nineteenth century, the Anglican Church played a significant and long-lasting role in controlling the colony through the Ruanda Mission. This informative volume shows how the church repeatedly aligned with the regime in power and failed to take account of its own history in fomenting ethnic tensions prior to the 1994 genocide. In recent years, the media has depicted Rwanda as a model of unity, development, and recovery, yet Phillip A. Cantrell II argues that not all is as it seems, as he takes a critical look at the church’s complicity with authoritarian rule—from the Tutsi monarchy to the Rwandan Patriotic Front.
Drawing from new archival materials as well as on-the-ground field research, Revival and Reconciliation is a Rwanda-centered account of the country’s ecclesiastical and national historiography. Cantrell calls attention to the harms the postgenocide church risks doing should it continue to support false narratives about Rwanda’s colonial and postcolonial past—with dangerous consequences for the future.
Phillip A. Cantrell II is an associate professor of world and African history at Longwood University. His main research area is East Central Africa during the colonial period.
Praise
“A sweeping history of the Rwandan Anglican Church. . . . Sure to be controversial, Revival and Reconciliation is grounded in solid original research that makes it a must-read for people interested in Rwanda, church history, religion, and violence.”
—Timothy Longman, author of Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda
“Essential reading for anyone who is working to understand the dynamics of colonialism, postcolonialism, religion, and globalization in their impact on international Anglican life.”
—Richard Mammana, Medium
“Required reading for anyone interested in Rwanda or in church-state relations in Africa more broadly. . . . Essential.”
—CHOICE Reviews
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Larger images
January 2021
LC: 2021010993 BX
248 pp. 6 x 9
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