2018 International CURE delegates from 18 nations

Wayne Northey: The idea of “Rwanda Dispatches” came from my friend Flyn Ritchie, editor of the online journal, Church for Vancouver, who asked me to reflect a bit on our trip to Rwanda.

Once we decided to attend the 2018 International CURE Conference described in my first reflection below, we thought that a 25-hour trip from Vancouver Canada warranted not returning almost immediately at the conclusion of the Conference.

The details of our stay unfolded from the initial choice to fly to Kigali:

• Stay until July 12.
• Contact three Church-based agencies in Rwanda that work with the poor and marginalized of which two responded: Good News of Peace and Development for Rwanda (GNPDR), and Prison Fellowship Rwanda (PFR).
• Offer our volunteer services even if significantly circumscribed by language. (Kinyarwanda is the language spoken by all Rwandans. Swahili is an international trade language (lingua franca) spoken by 50 to 100 millions in the Great Lakes region of east/southeast Africa, namely Rwanda, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Somalia, Mozambique (mostly Mwani), Burundi, Uganda, Comoros, Mayotte, Zambia, Malawi, and Madagascar. Before the 1994 genocide, French was taught in all the schools, and I have used it widely enough with older people. But post-genocide schools have compulsory English classes – language immersion therefore. Of interest is a very widespread use of French first names for children born, a practice that continues into the present.
• Attempt to see through the eyes of the agencies, and in turn see through the eyes of the poor and marginalized to whom the agencies reach out.

As it turned out, we did in fact become involved with one other Church-based ministry, Transformational Ministries, subject of the first reflection below, “Rwanda Bound”.

Before continuing, it is worth airing dirty laundry first, by quoting top Irish literary critic Terry Eagleton, that

Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs.  For the most part, it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology (Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, Terry Eagleton, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009, p. xi). My (long) interactive book review is here.)

If one disputes this (well, maybe legitimately “for the most part”), one is hopelessly naïve and uninformed. Or just plain doctrinaire.

On the other hand (there is always a dialectic) one can cite award-winning, retired Canadian journalist Brian Stewart of the Canadian Broadcasting Commission (CBC), who in “On The Front Lines” remarks:

“I’ve found there is NO movement, or force, closer to the raw truth of war, famines, crises, and the vast human predicament, than organized Christianity in Action.”; and again: “I don’t slight any of the hard work done by other religions or those wonderful secular NGO’s I’ve dealt with so much over the years…  But no, so often in desperate areas it is Christian groups there first, that labor heroically during the crisis and continue on long after all the media, and the visiting celebrities have left.

It seems that “religion” when it is bad can be as evil as it gets. When it is good however, it produces towering saints as good as they get, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mother Teresa – to choose some 20^th-century examples. There are myriad others, one of whom you will meet if you read on, is retired Anglican Bishop John Rucyahana of Rwanda; and a vast multitude of the self-deprecating unsung to whom Brian Stewart alludes.