Jet den Hollander: Dr Karamaga, your country and church have gone through horrific experiences in recent decades, culminating in the 1994 genocide. Around the world we still cry with you for the victims, for the perpetrators and for ourselves, because through what happened in Rwanda we were confronted with ourselves again. Last year the World Alliance of Reformed Churches together with the John Knox International Reformed Centre set up the Mission in Unity Project to accompany churches which are searching for new expressions of mission in unity. Does a project such as this have any relevance in the current Rwandan situation? Do words like "mission" and "unity", already heavy with historical overtones, make sense for people inside and outside of the churches in Rwanda?

André Karamaga: I would say: yes and no. No, in the sense that we certainly cannot talk of "mission" and "unity" in any easy manner anymore. In a situation where disunity among people exploded to this terrible extent, unity is not a something that seems very real or realistic. And the churches saw themselves as churches with a mission, but ended up being part of the drama, both as victims and as perpetrators. And yet, people do talk of unity again, and the churches are trying to rediscover their mission. Rwanda is known and seen as a broken society within the wider African context. The main challenge, not just for the church but for all actors in society, is how to heal this brokenness, how to deal with the loss of self confidence, the number of orphans and widows, the amount of hatred.

JdH: How has your own church approached this challenge since 1994?

AK: We were very aware that the churches, including the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda, were part of society, and therefore were broken themselves. The facts are, firstly, that among those who have killed were also church members. Second, the churches have historically played a role in dividing the society into Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. It is well known that before the colonization of Rwanda at the end of the 18th century, the three groups were social groups rather than ethnic groups. In the past you were a Tutsi if you had cattle, and a Hutu if you were in agriculture. And so if you changed from herding to farming, you changed from Tutsi to Hutu. But then the myths were brought in that they come from different parts of the region, and so on. So what was very much a social classification was turned into a tribal classification in order to divide and rule, and the churches have been part of that process. And a third painful fact is that during the three months of the genocide the church on the whole was not heard; she was silent.

All of this means that today as churches we approach our mission from a position of weakness, brokenness and humility. The crisis has shown the superficiality of our conversion, our weakness in that sense. We did not have the spiritual resources to fight effectively the evil in our midst. The crisis has also meant that many members and pastors lost their lives. And this is true for all churches: all were implicated and all were victims.

Therefore the first thing was for us to confess our failure. We got together with all the Protestant churches and drew up a common statement. What made the statement credible was that a) it was common and b) it was a confession.

JdH: How did people respond to this confession?

AK: We found that that confession was a very important element in the process of starting again, for all of us inside and outside the churches. I was surprised when I went back to Rwanda in 1995, that people were indeed still going to the churches. That was of course a big question: will they continue to go to church? But the churches were full, though of course there are church buildings which hold such bad memories for people they cannot go back there. As you know, many of the killings actually took place in churches. But we began our witness with a confession, which was important for the victims, and also for the perpetrators of the crimes. And we realized that people were still expecting the church to play a specific role, namely to be - so to speak - the glue in the midst of all these divisions and to build bridges between the different parts of that broken society.

JdH: Following the joint statement, has it been possible to continue working together as churches?

AK: Yes, we have tried to do mission in unity, and for me that has been very important. We need to speak with one voice in the face of the evil that needs to be challenged. We need to distinguish between what is good and what is bad, and this needs to be cross-denominational. For all of us there is the challenge of Deuteronomy 30.19: "I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live." We need to find our common voice as churches, and be clear as to what is good and what is evil; what brings life and what leads to death. Then, apart from speaking out together, we also try to witness in common action. We cannot address, as just one denomination, the enormous problems of orphans, widows and widowers, rape victims, prisoners. We need to work cross-denominationally, and here and there we are making some progress.

JdH: What would you say are major stumbling blocks in this process?

AK: One is that after 1995 many new churches came into being. There was a mushrooming of new Christian movements. Some churches were started in the refugee camps, and when the refugees came back they continued that particular brand of church. Some NGOs which came to help after the crisis also started new churches. Others who had lived in exile abroad returned to Rwanda with the denomination that they had been attending there. So, on the one hand we drew together in the Protestant council and tried to develop a common mission, but on the other hand, unity is not easy with this mushrooming of new groups. It will require a lot of prayer and struggle to learn to operate in a united way, especially as disunity is often a matter of human weaknesses: power games, personality conflicts, ethnic tensions and so on.

Of course, when I talk of unity, I don't mean uniformity. We are not created in series but as individuals and that diversity needs to have space. But I am convinced that the gospel perspective of mission is to have a common vision, directed to common action. We know that as Christians we are going in the same direction and can go hand in hand even if we are different. Besides, we have limited resources so we need to steward these faithfully and make the most of what we have.

But another stumbling block in this process of working together and pooling our resources is that we haven't fully recognized that our denominational divisions are in many cases the result of sinful processes. And for us in Africa these divisions are very serious at this time, because they reinforce the many other divisions we have inherited: ethnic, tribal, divisions because of the colonial languages, the presence of different religions, and several other things that carve up our societies. In Rwanda tribalization has been developed to the extent that being Hutu or Tutsi was more important than being Rwandan or being Christian. So we need to work on our identity, whereby our Christian identity takes into account our identity as African, as Rwandan, as Hutu, Tutsi or Twa, but is stronger than just our tribal identity.

It is such divisions which need to be addressed by the church, but by a uniting church rather than a church which just mirrors the divisions of the wider society. So, mission in unity in my view is vital. When we dream of African unity, of healing the scars, of breaking the barriers and rebuilding our nation, then we need to practice mission in unity, as Protestant churches and as Christians generally. And we hope to share with others in the Reformed family worldwide how we in Rwanda are struggling to make this vision come true, just as we hope to learn from the wider family how mission in unity takes shape elsewhere.

Prof. Dr André Karamaga is the president of the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda and one of the three vice-presidents of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.