The Purpose Driven Nation? Rwanda and Rick Warren

While doing my summer scholarship research at Auckland University I came across this 2005 Time article: Warren of Rwanda. And then this follow-up article in 2008.

Time is reporting on North American evangelical, Rick Warren, pastor of the massive 23,000 member Saddleback Church and author of the best selling non-fiction book in US history, The Purpose Driven Life. In the articles Warren's aid programme, PEACE, is discussed as now being committed to 'co-operation' with Rwandan president Paul Kagame in a 5=7 year 'self-sufficiency project'. Kagame, who is not a Christian, volunteered Rwanda to become the very first 'purpose driven nation'. To give you an idea of the scope of this arrangement:

In July Warren and 48 other American Evangelicals, who have backgrounds in areas like health, education, micro-enterprises and justice, held intensive planning meetings with Rwandan Cabinet ministers, governors, clergy and entrepreneurs. One dinner was attended by a third of the Rwandan Parliament.

Warren plans on sending over 'church kits', he calls "school in a box", "clinic in a box, and "business in a box". By the end of 2008, Time reports, 1,750 PEACE volunteers will have visited Rwanda. For Kagame, the attraction seems obvious:

Not only have PEACE volunteers gone to work on health and development, Kagame says, but the more high-powered among them "use their contacts to draw on resources and attract investment. I can't have anything better than this." He admits that he is not a practicing Christian: "I cannot say I am devout, but I have a good sense of what faith is about and the usefulness of it." And in this case, he says, "what Saddleback is doing serves the church and serves us too."

It seems Kagame is more aware of developing such church connections for broader economic development alongside other social development goals. I particularly find Kagame's turn of phrase: 'the usefulness or it [religion]' instructive. Religion has a very real social power. Politically, in can derive allegiance from its members, certain types of religion can help business develop (Max Weber's famous Protestant Work Ethic thesis). Churches can create active, motivated communities and generate money and support for a number of social programmes and goals. But even the exportation of volunteers (or missionaries as some might call them) creates markets and development for businesses. It's an industry in itself and Kagame acknowledges this.

What has happen so far according to Time? :

PEACE is working with the University of Maryland to upgrade the facility and next year will give $500,000 as part of its province-wide $13 million commitment. But so far, aside from a paint job and some tidying up, there is little improvement.

As Laura Hoemeke, director of Twubakane, a USAID-funded Rwandan decentralization and health program, says, it is hard for 'short-termers' to affect long term change. Warren's response is interesting:

When Warren hears that other NGOs in Rwanda repeatedly told TIME that PEACE could offer no working examples of tangible aid-and-development projects, he laughs for 10 full seconds. "You were talking to the wrong guys," he says. Most aid-and-development experts, he claims, depend on Western-style measurements and reports. Rwandan churches, he says, have neither the time nor the obligation to produce them. Moreover, he asserts that executing a program involving spiritual goals through churches initially produces "results that tend not to be programmatic — they tend to be life change." (For instance, PEACE has recorded 10,000 baptisms in Rwanda.) Even when classic development programs are under way, he continues, "we don't sacrifice sustainability for speed. If you go back to my very first message in 2003, I said, This is going to take 50 years." He adds, "My confidence is not that I've got it all figured out. My confidence is, Jesus said, 'Do these five things,' and we've got the people out there." He is comfortable "building the plane as we fly it."

I agree with some of the points Warren makes. Western styles of measuring development are not always useful or appropriate. But that should not be used as a means of evading responsibility. He's also right in claiming he planned that programmes he's helping fund will take 50 years to develop (and that's probably being a little generous). And he is providing ways of help for hundreds of Rwandans. But i find it quite problematic when a church pledges such a broad plan as Warren's PEACE plan and has only just now (2008/2009) started to realise he needs to work with other NGO's. Further and more crucially, I am very skeptical of the short-term mission trip into a completely different culture, hoping to make 'lasting change'. Such mission trips smack of colonialism no matter how altruistic they are. Even the altruism feels like paternalism at best and blatant racism at worst. What makes the situation even more difficult is Kagame's involvement in the Second Congo War and the exploitation and deaths of Congolese for access to its minerals in the early 2000s.. I want to see if Warren has spoken out about this.

For example, (from wikipedia):
A 2002 United Nations report elaborated on the allegations of illegal profiteering by Rwandan and Ugandan forces in Congo:
“ The claims of Rwanda concerning its security have justified the continuing presence of its armed forces, whose real long-term purpose is, to use the term employed by the Congo Desk of the Rwandan Patriotic Army, to "secure property". Rwanda's leaders have succeeded in persuading the international community that their military presence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo protects the country against hostile groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who, they claim, are actively mounting an invasion against them.

The Panel has extensive evidence to the contrary. For example, the Panel is in possession of a letter, dated 26 May 2000, from Jean-Pierre Ondekane, First Vice-President and Chief of the Military High Command for [the Rwandan-backed rebel group] RCD-Goma, urging all army units to maintain good relations "with our Interahamwe and Mayi-Mayi brothers", and further, "if necessary to let them exploit the sub-soil for their survival"...

A 30-year-old Interahamwe combatant living in the area of Bukavu described the situation in a taped interview with a United Nations officer in early 2002:

We haven't fought much with the RPA in the last two years. We think they are tired of this war, like we are. In any case, they aren't here in the Congo to chase us, like they pretend. I have seen the gold and coltan mining they do here, we see how they rob the population. These are the reasons for their being here. The RPA come and shoot in the air and raid the villagers' houses but they don't attack us any more.