CONTEXT

To understand reconciliation processes, we must begin with an analysis of the history of violence that fractures communities. This takes the form of short-term events like civil wars or acts of genocide, or it can take the form of much longer-term systemic violent oppression of a marginalized population. Reconciliation requires addressing, at some level, the root sources of injustices that fracture communities. The history and geography in which trauma takes place define the type of perpetuated harm it ushers into the present. They also matter a great deal in determining how opposed parties may approach one another (spaces of reconciliation), as well as inform the type of approaches (or attributes of reconciliation) needed to address the rift. I have spent time in post-genocide Rwanda and post-colonial Indigenous Australia, two places where the reconciliation processes have been significant. Both have necessarily required a different approach to reconciliation, but have also provided a framework through which to see racial reconciliation in the church.

Given that the American church is a social group situated within a national identity, and lays claim to a particular kind of reconciliation intrinsic within its fabric of belief, it has a significant role to play in racial relations in the United States. A comparative study of reconciliation between the aforementioned cases (Gacaca tribunals, Australian Indigenous relationships) reveals tremendous overlap with, and therefore much to say to, the complex idea of racial reconciliation in the American church, and the United States more generally. Here I look at two frameworks of reconciliation (racial reconciliation and racial justice) within the American church which highlight the status of racial relations and reconciliation in both top-down and a bottom-up approaches that, in line with the Rwanda and Australia cases, have their places in addressing ongoing racial reconciliation. Figure 1 illustrates key reconciliation attributes and their relationships between contexts.

SPACES (refer to fig. 1)

Spaces for reconciliation depend on the context. The formal mechanisms of tribunals in the Rwanda case, institutional policies and reparations in Australia, and American racial justice in the church are the spaces that enable the reconciliatory processes that instill authentic and lasting healing.

Rwanda: The Rwanda case exhibits reconciliatory action in the wake of a burst of widespread mass violence, undergirded by decades of social fragmentation, second-class citizenry and oppression on ethnic grounds, that left an entire country reeling. Reconciliation achieved through the traditional Gacaca tribunals had localized, grassroots qualities that focused on truth-telling and reparations, and interpersonal and restorative justice, and bottom-up methodologies.

Australia: The research methodologies that contribute to reconciliation efforts in Australia manifest postcolonial frameworks to eradicate Indigenous social disadvantage and improve representation, through both long-term governmental and systemic policy, as well as education reform. They also focus on social and symbolic reforms that largely take form in top-down approaches.

American church: Reconciliation efforts in the American Church take the form of racial justice which acknowledges a need for societal reform, truth-telling and reparations. This is happening at grassroots levels as well as through advocacy for national policy change, and extends into other areas such as immigrant communities.

ATTRIBUTES (refer to fig. 1)

• Temporality: Time is an important consideration in reconciliation, and it helps determine reconciliation strategies and expectations. For example, people having lived with the direct impacts of segregation or the Stolen Generation bear long-term effects on their consciousness. The violence that has been inflicted on them is not simply lifted away by efforts to undo these harms. Likewise, someone who has been taught racism and gone through the motions, thoughts and attitudes that characterize it needs time to process internally transforming reconciliation. However, as I discuss later, the reconciliation process can also take on shorter and more heightened episodes as in the case of the traditional Gacaca tribunals. Rwanda required time-sensitive relief and recovery action to prevent retributive violence and handle the overwhelming number of genocide suspects awaiting trial. Simultaneously, the breadth of the tribunals in substance and number required considerable time and effort to institute, and they bear the marks of careful design and planning. Without the proper understanding of how time relates very personally to the issue and the people involved, the power of reconciliation is lost.

• Grassroots: Locally established and led reconciliation efforts that are grounded in cultural ways of being ensures that processes are effective longterm and are able to withstand unforeseen or unanticipated difficulties. Because reconciliation will not look the same in each context or space, processes need to have local relevance and investment.

• Restorative Justice through truth telling/testimony and reparations: Essential to a reclamation of racial reconciliation lies the acknowledgment and ownership of a truth narrative about our (racial, colonial, etc.) past and present, as well as the need for reparations as a natural follow-on.

• Empathy: In actual practice reconciliation is as infinitely complex, intricate and marked by variability as the people involved in it. A personal cultivation of empathy is imperative to participating in an interpersonal reconciliation process.

• Systemic reform (education, legislative): Breaking down built-in advantages for one group of people over another is critical to true acts of reconciliation. This needs to take place in formal government and national institutions, and also includes elevating the participation and voices of those previously ignored or overlooked to forge a path into the future.