ABSTRACT
More people were killed in churches and parishes than anywhere else. Combined with the fact that over 90 percent of the Rwandan population consider themselves Christians, this begs the question of what role religion—and more concretely: Christianity—played before and during the genocide. Different from other ethno-religious conflicts, for instance, in Northern Nigeria or Sri Lanka where varying religious traditions are a major factor, the genocide in Rwanda took place within one and the same religious community. Christians were killing Christians. Divisions were not even along denominational lines such as in the Northern Ireland conflict between Protestants and Catholics. Yet despite the apparent prominence of ethnicity, the nexus of religion, community and Christian identity is more complex. Religious identity was recreated on a different level as ethnic identities became sacralized into pseudo-religious identities.
