As We Forgive contains 21 chapters of various vignettes, outlining in rich detail the experiences of ordinary Rwandans during the genocide. Though the book at times is overburdened with repetition, and overwhelming verbosity, it does try to tackle a penetrating moral question. How do survivors and murderers live with each other?

{sa 0310284899}For Rwandans, it’s a predicament writ large. Since 2003 their government has released 60,000 accused genocide attackers from prison. About a thousand of those were placed in a “solidarity camp” where they received instruction from government officials on how to be good citizens, then set free.

According to the author, the backlog of cases would have taken two centuries to sort through. To wit: a smattering of lawyers and judges remain, innumerable Hutus are in exile and the landscape remains a forensic nightmare.

One can only imagine how mortifying it would have been post-Holocaust for Goebbels to have run the local newspaper next to a synagogue. Or Mengele running an outpatient clinic next to the kosher bakery.

A survivor’s choice is unenviable: live amongst murderers or flee and hope to become established and welcome in another country. As We Forgive posits that one may discover hope in a people who forge lives anew, despite the breathing reminders of their nationwide massacre.

{sa 0310287308}For them, a turning point may begin with a traditional Rwandan reconciliation ritual, known as gacaca, where trusted members of the community hear cases under fig trees, called umuvumu. The goal is to create a place for the guilty to offer apology, some form of restitution — such as build homes for survivors — and vow comprehension of their crime. Many have participated. The author lauds such gestures.

“If Rwandans can find the courage to forgive,” writes Larson, “then perhaps there is hope for us in those problems that seem to pale in comparison.”

But it is inapt to characterize as an act of courage the forgiveness of someone who butchered family members. To say such implies a lack of courage, or even laziness, on the part of they who seek justice. As noble as it is to forgive, the truly brave man willingly owns up, and rightly pays for his misdeeds.

The author speaks of an apparent national rapprochement, a country working together once again. Did they have much choice? Perhaps it was less an all-embracing absolution but a suppression of anger and grief by necessity — a faking of normalcy for survival’s sake.

The author warns of a “vindictive future” (read: violent) in the absence of forgiveness. Yet, Holocaust survivors — very few of whom forgave their tormentors — never took justice into their own hands. Until his death recently, Simon Weisenthal hunted Nazis for prosecuting, never offering an inch of forgiveness, for which he was never criticized.

The author’s oft-repeated bury-the-hatchet lessons (literally and figuratively) often sound more like a huggy, hand-holding Kumbaya circle than realistic life. In fact, the book is a bit patronizing, with its bullet-point, hammered-over-the-head, school-like assignments, listed after certain chapters, including, “make a list of ways you are holding on to forgiveness.”

Catholic priest Fr. Emmanuel Katongole, a son of immigrants from Rwanda, and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, are less forgiving in Mirror of the Church. One sentence sums up the book’s premise: “Maybe the deepest tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is that Christianity didn’t seem to make any difference.”

They submit that nowhere else in Africa was Christianity so well received. Yet, scores were murdered by fellow churchgoers.

Tutsis often fled to churches for sanctuary in the hope their pursuers, who professed faith in Jesus, would not be so bold as to murder in God’s house. But clergy locked them in to allow the militia to lob in grenades or fire bullets through windows. Clergy turned a blind eye or became willing executioners.

Archbishop Vincent Nsengiyumva Kigali, for example, participated in the government’s council during the genocide. One Fr. Wenceslas Munyeshyaka handed over refugees in his care when the authorities came for them. To add insult, in August 1994, 29 Catholic priests wrote a letter to Pope John Paul II in which they denied Hutu responsibility for the genocide. So too, Fr. Athanase Seromba consented to bulldozing his church, with 2,000 souls trapped inside.  

The book’s flaws are where it detours into a screed against materialism and finesses Scripture too easily, too often, to prove grand themes.

Nonetheless, one burning question is addressed: How does is the reputation of Christianity rebuilt in light of genocidal complicity?

“Without lament, we move on too quickly to reconstruction,” say the authors, adding that amends must include “the honest admission of failure.”

For Katongole and Wilson-Hartgrove, recovery is less about a want for forgiveness, but more about the fulfilment of atonement.

(Gordon is a freelance writer in Toronto.)