Rwanda Explains Why It Closed Thousands of Churches. Again.

Rwanda has shut down almost 10,000 places of worship in the past two months, and now its president has proposed making churches pay taxes on their income.

The country’s crackdown on houses of worship comes as part of an ongoing push to protect Rwandans from church corruption and fraud and to ensure that their buildings meet certain physical standards.   

Just weeks after winning his fourth term, President Paul Kagame condemned “mushrooming churches” that “squeeze even the last penny from poor Rwandans.”

“These unscrupulous people who use religion and churches to manipulate and fleece people of their money and other things will force us to introduce a tax,” he said in his first remarks since taking his oath of office on August 11. 

The Rwanda Governance Board (RGB), which oversees the country’s places of worship, found that thousands of churches—many of them rural, Pentecostal congregations—failed to meet legal requirements around theological education, building codes, and sanitation regulations. 

The RGB delineates between churches, which are officially registered with the government, and “prayer houses,” or places where Christians worship and which exist under churches. 

In a statement to CT, the RGB confirmed that it had inspected 14,000 prayer houses in July and closed 70 percent of them “for non-compliance with established regulations including registration, building codes, safety, hygiene/sanitation, and financial or other exploitation of followers.”

“It should be noted that the closure of a prayer house does not necessarily entail the closure of the church the prayer house is affiliated with,” the statement added.  

The board began shutting down houses of worship in July and stated that “relevant authorities will continue to collaborate with religious leaders” to ensure that the legal standards, ranging from degree requirements to garbage cans and parking lots, are met. Places of worship that have been closed can reopen if they demonstrate that the violations have been fixed.

This isn’t the first time Rwanda has taken action against churches for being out of compliance with government regulations. The country closed more than 7,000 churches in 2018 over health, safety, and noise issues. That year, it added further regulations, including banning church leaders from encouraging long fasts and requiring certain financial disclosures from churches and prayer houses.

It also introduced a requirement that each church must have a legal representative who holds a theology degree. Churches had five years, until September 2023, to comply with the law, and after a grace period, the RGB began enforcing the new standard.

Churches registering with the government must submit an organizational chart. Leaders in national positions, as well as those who supervise groups of local churches or regional parishes, must have a university degree with a certificate in theology or a theology degree, according to the board’s former CEO, Usta Kaitesi. (Kaitesi recently left after five years as the RGB’s leader and was replaced on August 16 by Doris Uwicyeza Picard, who formerly worked at the Ministry of Justice.)

Kaitesi emphasized that the education requirement does not apply directly to the leader of each church—a demand that would make it cost-prohibitive for most religious organizations.

“This structure allows the parish pastor to be accountable for what happens at the local church level,” Kaitesi told CT in March. “It doesn’t take our responsibility from the local church pastor, but you want them to know that if this is the doctrine of the church, and the church has told us this is the doctrine, they should have somebody with the capacity for supervising the implementation of the doctrine.” 

Kaitesi believes that national umbrella groups—the Protestant Council of Rwanda, the Evangelical Alliance of Rwanda, the Forum of Born Again Churches for Rwanda, and Association of Pentecostal Churches of Rwanda—have a critical role to play in implementation. 

“We encourage [all church legal entities] to belong to an umbrella, because we believe that umbrellas can do a lot of self-regulation, more than us doing too much regulation,” she said.

The government’s legal standards have largely worked well for historic denominations. 

“What was introduced—not today but five years ago—is good for the church. The government gave us five years to comply and kept giving us reminders. That ended last year in September,” Anglican Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda told Religion News Service. “I think this was enough time to comply. We need to look at this from a positive side.”

It’s been much tougher for independent churches and congregations founded by a single person, many of which are smaller Pentecostal churches in rural areas. 

Traditionally, Pentecostals and independent charismatic churches have said the Holy Spirit and the Bible equip them fully for ministry and that formal training is unnecessary, according to Reuben van Rensburg, a project manager with Re-Forma, a South African-based ministry that educates and trains church leaders.

These pastors “would have to have the right entry requirements if they were going to study at a tertiary institution,” he said. “They would have to pay for it, which most of them can’t, and they would have to leave their ministry or their family for an extended period of time, which they’re not willing to do.”

The legal crackdown has also spurred efforts to make theological education more accessible. The RGB announced a collaboration with Re-Forma last year, agreeing to accept the ministry’s certification as evidence that a pastor has obtained suitable theological training.

After a meeting in June, 31 denominations in Rwanda committed to participating in Re-Forma’s training programs, and RGB officials agreed to honor Re-Forma certification. With the change in RGB leadership, however, Re-Forma is uncertain whether this agreement will be upheld.

Many churches that meet the theological requirements have found it challenging to fulfill all the building-related requirements, which include regulations about the distance of toilets from the church entrance, paved access roads, and painted and plastered inside walls and ceilings. When the pandemic hit and the government closed all churches, it required them to install handwashing stations before reopening. 

One Kigali church was closed at the end of July because it lacked a fire extinguisher, two garbage bins, and a lightning protector. The pastor, who noted that his congregation was previously closed for four months in 2018 because it was not soundproof, said they have since addressed the government’s most recent concerns. However, they are currently meeting only on Zoom and don’t have a sense of when the government will allow them to reopen. 

Other churches were closed because they were not built on the minimum area of land required or lacked a proper waste management system, security cameras, or painted walls, said one denominational leader who asked not to be named for security reasons.

Fulfilling these requirements can seem arbitrary and spurious to some. In addition to the parking requirements, the government also requires greenery.

“Remember, we are in the dry season,” the denomination leader said. “Even if you plant the greening, it will not grow the same day.”

The government wants churches with air conditioning, high-quality sound systems, and accommodations for people with disabilities, seemingly on a par with the US and Canada, he said. Maybe that’s possible for Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic churches, which have operated in the country for more than a century and have their own revenue-generating projects, or for those with connections to outside funders like World Vision, which has implemented handwashing stations at some churches.

But for churches fully dependent on tithes, “You can’t expect it to be done in Africa in a short period,” he said. 

The leader’s denomination is currently asking the churches that have not been closed to contribute to a fund to help reopen the closed places of worship. It is reaching out to contacts who can help them make their case to the government. 

“We need serious prayers. It’s a movement that intends to limit the freedom of worship. And you know the consequences—if people don’t go to church, they will do other things,” he said. 

Though many find the government oversight overwhelming, some Christians still see it as important. 

Harvesters Church in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, was shut down on August 4 because the government was missing verification that its pastor had finished his bachelor’s degree in theology and leadership.

The pastor, Fred Kayitare, is optimistic that his congregation of around 500 will soon reopen and said he “totally agreed” with the theology training requirements. He described them as “for the goodness of the congregation.” 

“I am the living example. I planted a church before I attended theological college. I can witness the change and transformation I acquired from school,” he said. “I’m another person now. And everyone at our church who knew me before can witness that. I even sent four other ministers from our church to the Bible college. We’re now five theology graduates from the same church.”

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