What is J.J. Carney reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: J.J. Carney, author of Rwanda Before the Genocide: Catholic Politics and Ethnic Discourse in the Late Colonial Era.

His entry begins:

Although my specialization lies in modern African Christianity, I like to read broadly within the fields of history, philosophy and theology. Recently I've been tackling Charles Taylor's massive 800-page tome A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard Belknap, 2007). The book grew out of the prestigious "Gifford Lectures" that Taylor delivered at the University of Edinburgh. What intrigues me about Taylor's argument is that he shifts the conversation away from the culture war argument over whether or not Western secularism is a good thing. Rather, he examines how we ended up in a world in which a broadly secular outlook is the social and cultural norm. The historical, religious and philosophical breadth of Taylor's work is truly magisterial; one can see why...[read on]

About Rwanda Before the Genocide, from the publisher:

Between 1920 and 1994, the Catholic Church was Rwanda's most dominant social and religious institution. In recent years, the church has been critiqued for its perceived complicity in the ethnic discourse and political corruption that culminated with the 1994 genocide. In analyzing the contested legacy of Catholicism in Rwanda, Rwanda Before the Genocide focuses on a critical decade, from 1952 to 1962, when Hutu and Tutsi identities became politicized, essentialized, and associated with political violence.

This study--the first English-language church history on Rwanda in over 30 years--examines the reactions of Catholic leaders such as the Swiss White Father André Perraudin and Aloys Bigirumwami, Rwanda's first indigenous bishop. It evaluates Catholic leaders' controversial responses to ethnic violence during the revolutionary changes of 1959-62 and after Rwanda's ethnic massacres in 1963-64, 1973, and the early 1990s. In seeking to provide deeper insight into the many-threaded roots of the Rwandan genocide, Rwanda Before the Genocide offers constructive lessons for Christian ecclesiology and social ethics in Africa and beyond.

Read more about Rwanda Before the Genocide at the Oxford University Press website.

Writers Read: J.J. Carney.

--Marshal Zeringue