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Failing to Meet Christ's Highest Ideals? Psychology professor asks tough questions about the institutional church's response to genocide
Edited by Julie Riddle, '92

Jim Waller believes the institutional Christian church has shirked its responsibility in confronting genocidal violence. In his current research Waller, Whitworth Professor of Psychology and Edward B. Lindaman Chair, is exploring how religion, which has wielded such a tremendously civilizing effect on human society, can shape a culture in which genocide may occur, and how the church responds to such a culture both during and after genocidal violence. Waller hopes his research will help spur the institutional Christian church to begin redeeming itself –and the world – by becoming involved in post-genocidal reconciliation.

Waller is serving his final year as the Lindaman Chair, an endowed chair with a four-year term for senior Whitworth faculty engaged in significant academic initiatives. In March, he received a First Voice Humanitarian Award from the Chicago Center for Urban Life & Culture. Waller collaborates with the center on his groundbreaking Prejudice Across America off-campus study program. Also in March, Oxford University Press released the revised and updated second edition of Waller's book Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing (first published in 2002), which is used by universities worldwide in courses on Holocaust and genocide studies.

In the following Q&A, Waller discusses his findings on the institutional church and genocide, as well as his newest Whitworth study program, Religion, Peace and Conflict in Northern Ireland.

Q. (Whitworth Today) According to your research, the general rule of recent history is that religious institutions have been silent, even complicit, in the face of genocidal violence. Your analysis of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and ethnic-cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina suggests there are three stages of institutional Christian response to genocide. What are they?

A. (Waller) While subject to occasional exceptions, my preliminary analysis of institutional Christian responses during the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, and ethnic-cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina suggests that there are three stages.

First, pre-genocidal responses include the fusion of religious belief systems with ethnic, national and political identities. The church loses its critical role as a voice of the voiceless when it becomes married to other social identities that privilege the church among power holders, and mobilize the church to preserve, rather than challenge, the status quo. It is, as theologian Miroslav Wolf describes, an "idolatrous shift of loyalty" in which faith is "employed" as a weapon in an ethnic, national or political struggle.

Second, genocidal responses include sins of omission (silence and denial) and sins of commission (accommodation and active participation in killings). In the Holocaust, church hierarchies followed their own narrowly defined best interests, particularly that of protecting their own institutional autonomy within a totalitarian state. Such interests were best advanced by silence and denial, rather than by protest or heroism. In Rwanda, for instance, many of the worst massacres occurred in churches and mission compounds where Tutsis had sought refuge. It is very likely that more people were killed in church buildings than anywhere else in the Rwandan genocide.

Finally, post-genocidal responses include the self-protective accentuation of the church's persecution and resistance, often marked by the appropriation of the victim groups' suffering and the glorification of individual heroes and martyrs. In addition, we see the church issuing official declarations of contrition that avoid direct acknowledgment of institutional guilt; the church admits only passive complacency rather than active complicity.

Q. After genocide occurs, why do some Christian institutions draw attention to their own persecution and resistance and declare contrition without directly acknowledging institutional guilt?

A. To me, those are both strategies of institutional self-protection. The church should be asking the hard questions of what they did (theologically or otherwise) to sow the seeds that would lead, with a host of other factors, to genocidal destruction, or where the church was during the genocide itself. How can a force – religion – that has wielded such a tremendously civilizing effect on human society, foster institutions that, in the words of David Gushee, "guarantee nothing" in the context of genocidal violence? (Editorial note: Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy and Senior Fellow, Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership, at Union University).

Instead of looking at these questions, the church chooses to turn a blind eye and focus its energy on inserting itself in the narrative as victim and protecting itself as an institution by avoiding shining a spotlight on the dark recesses of Christian institutional actions.

In short, both of these responses allow the Christian church to reallocate its resources (cognitive, rational and otherwise) away from self-critical analysis of their institutional response to genocide. The problem is not a cognitive simplification or ignorance, but a willful hemorrhaging off of attention elsewhere.

Q. As a post-genocide response, the church sometimes singles out Christian individuals who have acted heroically in the face of mass destruction. Can you give an example?

A. For me, one of the clearest examples is Corrie ten Boom. What many Christians throughout the world know of the Holocaust is what they know through her story. As recounted in her bestselling book The Hiding Place, ten Boom's story is a moving testament to a family of devout Protestant Christians who offered their home as a refuge and hiding place for fugitives and those hunted by the Nazis. The efforts of the ten Boom family are reported to have saved the lives of an estimated 800 Jews. Eventually betrayed, Corrie and her sister Betsie were sent to Ravensbruck camp, where Betsie later died. 

One cannot take issue with the heroic activities of Corrie ten Boom and her family. At issue, though, is the way in which Christian institutions have appropriated the victim group's suffering (specifically, Jews) as their own, and singled out ten Boom as a Christian heroine, through a widespread embrace of The Hiding Place as their point of interface with the Holocaust. In this instance, what matters is the representation of an event, rather than the event itself. The representation of the Holocaust as an event of Christian suffering to generations of Christian readers is problematic – particularly to Jews, the targeted group of the Nazi extermination policies. (This explains in part why ten Boom's story is so little known among American Jews and has been virtually ignored by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.) 

Q. Why is this a problem?

A. For me, it is problematic to inordinately, and sometimes inaccurately, accentuate the exceptional individual actions of Christian heroes and martyrs in the face of mass destruction (whether it be ten Boom, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller, etc.). It's a misdirection of attention away from the complicity of the dominant social structure of an institution (the church) and to the exceptional actions of individuals. At issue is not necessarily the veracity of their lives and witness. The issue is how the Christian church has used the lives and witness of exceptional individuals to deflect attention from a self-critical analysis of the churches' institutional response during genocide. Rather than focusing on the silence and neglect of the many and, particularly the institution, there is a glorification of the individual actions of the few. 

Q. How have your colleagues in academia responded to your research?

A. Within academic circles, criticisms of the institutional church, especially during the Holocaust, are widespread. What I hope is unique about my work is the comparative analysis of responses from the institutional church across three case studies of genocidal violence. I think patterns of behavior tell us a lot about how behaviors are made and, in this case, can be unmade. Only with that understanding can we begin to redeem the role of the institutional church in the life of states and in international affairs.

Early responses from the church, and, to some degree, from the general public have been more defensive and apologetic. There seems to be a tendency to do what my work describes as a post-genocidal response: avoid the patterns of institutional behavior and focus, instead, on the heroic and good actions of a few individuals. I certainly want to learn from the challenge of the exceptions of Christian defiance and resistance in the face of mass murder. Rather than inaccurately holding up these men and women as typical of institutional responses, however, I want to keep asking how institutions can foster cultures that encourage such voices and protect the integrity of religious identity.

Q. What results do you hope your research on genocide and the Christian church lead to?

A. I want my research to challenge the institutional Christian church with the same challenges that I, as an individual Christian, must respond to daily, however poorly I do so. To be more inclusive rather than exclusive; to love rather than judge; to be active in the face of injustice rather than passive; to resist evil rather than be complicit; to bring together rather than to divide; to speak truth to power rather than to be silent; and to heal rather than to hurt. 

I want to understand how the institutional Christian church can begin to redeem itself –and the world – by being involved in post-genocidal reconciliation. To do reconciliation most effectively, however, we can no longer avoid asking tough questions of why the church was silent, or complicit, in the face of mass destruction. We can no longer avoid asking why, in the name of God, Christianity has been at the front of defining the "other" throughout human history. It is only in facing such questions that Christianity can begin to fulfill its promise and foster periods of tolerance. 

Q. According to recent estimates, at least 300,000 people have died in Darfur since genocide began there in early 2003. The ongoing conflict-related mortality rate is expected to be between 10,000-15,000 deaths per month. What have Christian institutions' responses within Darfur and worldwide been thus far? What should their responses be?

A. Darfur is a unique situation because it was Christian churches in America, particularly from the evangelical side, that first began to call the world's attention to the ongoing violence, human-rights abuses, and deprivations in Sudan (the larger country of which Darfur is the western region). So, while a cynic would question if this were simply because the evangelical community had inroads in southern Sudan and saw the people as their own simply because of faith identification, it must be recognized that the church – for whatever reason – was among the first institutional forces to blow the whistle on the crisis in Darfur. 

Today, churches around the world remain at the front of humanitarian efforts in Darfur. What churches both within and outside of Darfur must continue to reach for, however, is that prophetic institutional voice that calls for the direct actions necessary to stop genocidal violence – even if those actions involve international military intervention.  And the churches must find this moral voice, regardless of whether its adherents are numbered among the victims, perpetrators, or bystanders.

Q. In January 2006 you launched a new Jan Term study program, Religion, Peace and Conflict in Northern Ireland. What is the focus of the program?

A. The three great laboratories of inter-group conflict have been, for decades, the Middle East, South Africa and Northern Ireland. While Whitworth has outstanding study programs and on-campus courses related to the Middle East and South Africa, it's been years since we've done anything related to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Given my general interest in inter-group conflict and, particularly, the role of religion, it just made sense for me to develop a study program in Northern Ireland. The program became feasible after I spent two summers teaching on the University of Ulster campuses in Northern Ireland and made several related research and speaking trips to Northern Ireland, as well as the Republic of Ireland.

When it seemed like I had enough background to responsibly bring students along, we made the first trip in January 2006 with a diverse group of peace studies, psychology, theology, political science, social work, art, sociology and business majors. The focus of the program is built around the recognition that the real "museum" of the Troubles in Northern Ireland are the people themselves – people who lived through those times, who lost loved ones, who killed (often in the name of religion). We spend as much time as possible with these people, hearing their stories. In addition, we spend time with peacemakers who are trying to take the next step in reuniting a country ripped apart by sectarian violence.

Q. What is the most important thing you hope your students will gain from their cross-cultural immersion experience in Northern Ireland?

A. In addition to seeing how religion can divide, I want my students to see the potential of religion to reunite, to be more inclusive rather than exclusive, to sustain life rather than trivialize it. As divisive as it has been, religion has also been a powerful, unifying force throughout human history. So, I want students to recognize the abuses of religion, when wielded without grace, as well as the promise of religion, when lived with humility.

Q. What are some of your upcoming publications and speaking engagements?

A. In addition to completing the book-length manuscript, tentatively titled Deliver Us from Evil: Genocide and the Christian World, I am completing an essay on social science and the Holocaust to be included in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies. 

This summer, I'll be one of the teachers for the 2007 Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. I am a "graduate" of the first summer institute, in 1996, sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation, and am very excited to return as an instructor. The seminar enrolls about 25 academics and graduate students from around the world. My section will focus on social science and the Holocaust. 

Later this summer, I'll deliver a paper on perpetrators of genocide as part of an invited presentation at the biennial meeting of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. To give that presentation in a place that is only recently recovering from its own genocidal past will be an incredibly rich experience. In addition, I'll also be part of a pre-conference seminar to be held on the grounds of the former Auschwitz death camp in Krakow, Poland. 

With the release of the second edition of Becoming Evil in March 2007, I'm assuming that next academic year will find me, as have the past several years, on the campuses of about a dozen colleges and universities delivering invited lectures about perpetrators of genocide and contemporary genocide (particularly Darfur). 

Q. What are some of the notable books you've read in the last year?

A. In preparation for my July trip to Bosnia, as well as my ongoing research project, I've been very much challenged by Michael Sells' The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia. Along those same lines, perhaps the most disturbing book I've read recently was Slavenka Drakulic's S.: A Novel About the Balkans, a searing account, based on actual case studies, of rape as a tool of ethnic cleansing used by Serbian soldiers during the Bosnian genocide. 

To lighten things a bit, at least relatively speaking, I've been enjoying re-reading Taylor Branch's three-volume history of the Civil Rights Movement, America in the King Years, which will be essential to some of the curricular revisions I have in mind for the next few years in Core 350. I can think of no clearer way to illustrate to our students the capacity of ordinary individuals to make extraordinary changes in society than through the stories of the incredible men and women who took their citizenship seriously and made the Civil Rights Movement a reality. To me, their story may be the greatest story of all in American history.