RWANDA: GOVERNMENT SHUTS DOWN NEARLY 10,000 CHURCHES IN 3 MONTHS

RWANDA: GOVERNMENT SHUTS DOWN NEARLY 10,000 CHURCHES IN 3 MONTHS

Voice of the Martyrs Korea CEO Pastor Eric Foley recalls meeting Paul Kagame in Denver, Colorado when the President of Rwanda visited the United States in 2003.

“My wife and I were working with a Bible distribution ministry at that time, and President Kagame told us his country needed Bibles,” says Pastor Foley. “It was about a decade after the Rwandan genocide in which more than half a million Rwanda Tutsis were killed. President Kagame said he believed his country needed as many Bibles as possible.” 

Now, Pastor Foley says he and his wife regret supplying the Bibles to Kagame. Kagame’s government has shut down nearly 10,000 churches in the past 3 months, citing building code violations, hygiene dangers, noise pollution problems, and leaders without theology degrees. The closures, which affect mainly small independent and Pentecostal churches, are in addition to 7,000 churches the government shut down for similar reasons in 2018, when it passed a series of laws requiring church leaders to meet minimum education standards, limit the length of church-mandated fasts, and disclose financial information. 

According to Pastor Foley, that early ministry experience is one of the reasons why his organization does not work with governments but only partners directly with local Christians in places where the practice of their faith is restricted. 

“Kagame has created regulations that may sound like reasonable ways to protect the public, but anytime governments define what the church should be and look like and do, and who can lead it, then the church becomes an organization that is created in the image of the government, serving the government’s purpose,” says Pastor Foley. He says he is disappointed that Rwanda’s state-sanctioned churches have stood with the government and against the churches the government is closing, and that churches around the world have mostly been silent about the crackdown. 

“The national and denominational associations of churches in Rwanda have pointed to the government’s giving churches five years to comply with the new laws as a sign of reasonableness,” says Representative Foley. “They’ve been urging the independent and Pentecostal churches to meet the government’s educational requirements and to stop meeting in places like caves and riverbanks. But Jesus and his disciples themselves would not meet the Rwandan government’s educational requirements, and the book of Hebrews even talks about the faithful believers living in caves who we should emulate. The issue is not whether governments make reasonable legal requirements for churches but rather who can call the church into existence, set the standards for church leadership, and determine when and how and by whom the gospel is preached. The Bible is clear that those decisions belong to the Lord alone.”  

Pastor Foley notes that President Kagame continues to call for a tax on church offerings, accusing churches of trying to, in Kagame’s words, “squeeze even the last penny from poor Rwandans”. The President also noted that Kigale, Rwanda’s capital city, had more churches than water boreholes or factories, calling the proliferation of churches a “mess”.  

Rwandan President Paul Kagame (Photo: World Travel & Tourism Council).

Kagame, who has ruled Rwanda since ending the 1994 genocide, has been widely cited for violations and restrictions on religious freedom, including in a 2023 US State Department report, which raised concerns over his negative comments about pilgrimages by Rwandans to Catholic holy sites, a practice Kagame called “worshiping poverty”. The State Department report indicates that about 40% of the Rwandan population is Catholic, 21% Pentecostal, 15% Protestant, and 12% Seventh Day Adventist. 2% are Muslim, according to the report. 

Pastor Foley says that while international religious freedom watchdogs are well aware of Rwanda’s ongoing crackdown on Pentecostal and independent churches, ordinary Christians around the world often know little or nothing about the situation. 

These kinds of persecution situations, where government-sanctioned churches say nothing while other Christian groups in a country experience restrictions, often happen without Christians in the rest of the world raising their concerns and prayers about it,” says Pastor Foley. “Often Christians around the world think, ‘Well, if some Christians in a country are free, then how bad can the situation be?’ So, faithful Christians in countries like China, Vietnam, and Eritrea experience a ‘double-suffering’: their sufferings are ignored by Christians in their own country, and also by Christians around the world.” 

Pastor Foley says Voice of the Martyrs Korea is continuing to monitor the situation in Rwanda and to consider ways to directly serve and strengthen the local believers there, rather than working through the government or mission agencies. He urges Christians in Korea to pray for the Rwandan Christians facing restrictions. “Pray for the Rwandan Christians in the government-sanctioned denominations to stand up for their brothers and sisters in the restricted churches,” Pastor Foley says. “Pray for winds of revival to blow from the caves and riverbanks where faithful Rwandan Christians have been meeting, into the air-conditioned government sanctioned church buildings led by government-approved leaders. Pray also for Paul Kagame to read and take to heart the teachings of the Bibles he received from us twenty years ago, teachings that make clear that the word of God cannot be bound to the times, places, and people approved by governments.” 

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