It is in this vein that future comparisons of the Itsembambaga and Shoah need to examine the role of established churches in countenancing, if not fostering, genocide. While (in)action of the Vatican during the Holocaust is still roundly debated in ecumenical circles, German Protestant complicity is less commonly debated. Even more relevant to the apparent aberrational participation of Hutu clergymen in the Rwandan genocide is the first full-length exploration of the German Christian Movement, chillingly self-described as “a people’s church as a community of race and blood” and comprised of ‘storm troopers for Christ.’ Students of genocide await comprehensive, scholarly treatment of the role of the church during the Itsembambaga, harbingers of which can be found in journalistic accounts. Radical Hutus’ ‘Ten Commandments’ of racial extermination (their chosen expression) is paradigmatic of the dangers of para-theology. It is important to recall the foremost pre-Darwinian account of The Origin of Species—Genesis—not because it embodies any scientically useful anthropogeny, but because racist-driven genocides are compulsively steeped in ancient, mythic notions of blood lines and national origin. This is as true for Kosovo today as it was six decades ago for Nazi Germany and five years ago for Interahamwe-led Rwanda. The truth value of primordial myths is irrelevant to their mobilizational potential. In fact, the less subject to verification the belief, the more unshakeable it may be. Regrettably, Adolph Hitler may indeed have been correct when he wrote that ‘The broad mass of a nation … will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.’ When it comes to state-sanctioned mass murder, scholars and academics need to suspend their usual bias of analysis through logic and reason, and stretch to understand both the supernatural and the superevil.
—William F.S. Miles, from "Hamites and Hebrews: Problems in 'Judaizing' the Rwandan genocide," in the Journal of Genocide Research
