Reconciling Memories

Abstract

“Every wound leaves a scar and speaks of a hi-story; it reminds you that you are alive.” The wisdom of this Rwandan proverb is so vivid if we consider the Rwandan tragic history that led to the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi and its aftermath, the scars it has left to the whole country and the need for a systematic theology that assesses “the labor of memory.” Since a family which does not remember vanishes, I argue that memory is a theological imperative and at the same time any discourse on God in post-genocide Rwanda must start from the wounds of denial of self and of the other, validating the inextricable link between theological discourse and people’s context. Furthermore, the need for renewal of ecclesial imagination in post-genocide Rwanda cannot be overemphasized. The church as a wounded human story must be committed to memory and new evangelization rooted in self-criticisms and our common and God-shared humanity. If theology is to assist the Church in reconciling Rwandans, it must free itself from captivity to a church that has been shaped, almost from its Rwandan beginnings, by bourgeois and class sensibilities and is marked by concern for respectability, material success, authoritarianism, mere orthodoxy, a weak or facile understanding of the God of Jesus Christ, and lip-service to his Gospel. If theology is to assist the Church in reconciling Rwandans, it must rethink itself in the current broken and scarred Rwandan bodies. Theology must reimagine humanity, Church, and society in light of the memory of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It must take up a critical perspective rooted in “the way” of Jesus––a way of making room for God, a way of making room for all others. This dissertation opines that the wounds of the body of Christ must be a challenge to us. In resurrecting Thomas’ faith by letting him touch the wounds, “Jesus was telling him precisely [this]: it is where you touch human suffering, and maybe only there, that you will realize that I am alive, that ‘it’s me.’ You will meet me wherever people suffer.” In this project, I argue that despite Rwanda’s past tragedies, Rwanda is a mirror to the world and its salvation will only be found in memory.