Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (11 page)
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Authors: Donald B. Kraybill,Steven M. Nolt,David L. Weaver-Zercher
BOOK: Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy
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The lack of appropriate emotion, a fatalistic approach to evil, a willingness to forgive the unrepentant, the extension of forgiveness on behalf of others, and its swiftness—all of these critiques of the Amish response echo concerns that some scholars raise about forgiveness more generally. Much has been made in recent years about the virtue of forgiveness, both as a means to heal the victim and, in some cases, as a path to mend the relationship between victim and offender. We explore some of these issues later in this book. At this point we simply note that, in response to those who advocate the virtues of forgiveness, dissenting voices offer caution about extending forgiveness, at least in certain circumstances.
For instance, legal scholar Jeffrie G. Murphy has written that, while he is not an “enemy of forgiveness,” he is troubled by those who are too enthusiastic in their “boosterism” of it. In Murphy’s view, forgiveness is often a legitimate response to being wronged, although it is only valid “if directed toward the properly deserving (e.g., the repentant) and if it can be bestowed in such a way that victim self-respect and respect for the moral order can be maintained.” Sharon Lamb, who collaborated with Murphy on a book titled
Before Forgiving,
applies Murphy’s concerns to domestic abuse against women. In most situations of abuse, Lamb contends, “the idea of offering forgiveness toward unrepentant perpetrators . . . is dangerous and plays into deep stereotypes of women’s ‘essential’ nature.”
Before Forgiving,
applies Murphy’s concerns to domestic abuse against women. In most situations of abuse, Lamb contends, “the idea of offering forgiveness toward unrepentant perpetrators . . . is dangerous and plays into deep stereotypes of women’s ‘essential’ nature.”
By counseling caution, Lamb and Murphy continue a long-standing debate about forgiveness that emerged in the wake of the Holocaust. In his book
The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness,
first published in 1969, Simon Wiesenthal describes a request for forgiveness he received from a dying SS officer when Wiesenthal was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. The officer, haunted by his involvement in atrocities against Jews, approached Wiesenthal in a final attempt to be forgiven for his crimes. “I have longed to talk about [my evil deeds] to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him,” the officer said. “Without your answer I cannot die in peace.” Wiesenthal recounts this event in gripping detail and reports that, in the end, he responded to the man’s request with silence. Was silence the right response? Wiesenthal wonders. He then turns to his readers and asks them, What would you have done? What
should
you have done?
The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness,
first published in 1969, Simon Wiesenthal describes a request for forgiveness he received from a dying SS officer when Wiesenthal was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. The officer, haunted by his involvement in atrocities against Jews, approached Wiesenthal in a final attempt to be forgiven for his crimes. “I have longed to talk about [my evil deeds] to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him,” the officer said. “Without your answer I cannot die in peace.” Wiesenthal recounts this event in gripping detail and reports that, in the end, he responded to the man’s request with silence. Was silence the right response? Wiesenthal wonders. He then turns to his readers and asks them, What would you have done? What
should
you have done?
In Wiesenthal’s concentration camp story, the wrongdoer was repentant, or at least seemed to be, thus overriding one of Murphy’s cautions about forgiveness.
3
Nevertheless, the incident raises two other questions that the critics of Amish forgiveness asked in the wake of the Nickel Mines shooting. First, is it appropriate to forgive someone for evil acts he or she committed against
other
people? Second, are some acts so heinous that they should not be forgiven?
3
Nevertheless, the incident raises two other questions that the critics of Amish forgiveness asked in the wake of the Nickel Mines shooting. First, is it appropriate to forgive someone for evil acts he or she committed against
other
people? Second, are some acts so heinous that they should not be forgiven?
In the second half of
The Sunflower,
a panel of respondents offers a wide range of answers to those questions. “If asked to forgive, by anyone for anything, I would forgive because God would forgive,” writes Roman Catholic priest and educator Theodore Hesburgh. So would I, says the Dalai Lama, although “I would not forget about the atrocities committed.” Radio talk show host Dennis Prager, who describes himself as a “religious Jew,” responds differently: “People can never forgive murder, since the one person who can forgive is gone, forever.” Holocaust survivor Sidney Shachnow offers an even harsher judgment: “I personally think [the SS officer] should go to hell and rot there.”
The Sunflower,
a panel of respondents offers a wide range of answers to those questions. “If asked to forgive, by anyone for anything, I would forgive because God would forgive,” writes Roman Catholic priest and educator Theodore Hesburgh. So would I, says the Dalai Lama, although “I would not forget about the atrocities committed.” Radio talk show host Dennis Prager, who describes himself as a “religious Jew,” responds differently: “People can never forgive murder, since the one person who can forgive is gone, forever.” Holocaust survivor Sidney Shachnow offers an even harsher judgment: “I personally think [the SS officer] should go to hell and rot there.”
The spectrum of responses reveals two pertinent things about Amish grace in the wake of the Nickel Mines tragedy. First, forgiveness is a valued, but disputed, virtue. Some people find forgiveness noble in the abstract but much more complicated when real-life factors—Who is being forgiven? Of what? By whom? In what circumstances?—are added to the mix. Second, forgiveness is defined differently by different people. Indeed, part of the challenge of talking about forgiveness stems from different definitions of what forgiveness entails. Is it
successfully
letting go of anger, or is it simply
trying
to let go of anger? Does it demand positive
acts
on the part of the victim as well as positive
feelings
? Does it mean that the wrongdoer is now pardoned and is therefore no longer accountable for his or her crime? We return to some of these questions in Part Three of this book when we look more closely at the nature of forgiveness as it was expressed at Nickel Mines.
successfully
letting go of anger, or is it simply
trying
to let go of anger? Does it demand positive
acts
on the part of the victim as well as positive
feelings
? Does it mean that the wrongdoer is now pardoned and is therefore no longer accountable for his or her crime? We return to some of these questions in Part Three of this book when we look more closely at the nature of forgiveness as it was expressed at Nickel Mines.
Another question emerged in the aftermath of the shooting, a critique that is unique to the Amish story. Some onlookers, pointing to the practice of shunning within Amish communities, asked whether the Amish were inconsistent, even hypocritical, in their application of forgiveness. How can the Amish be cited as shining examples of forgiveness, some people wondered, when they seem unwilling to forgive their own people? One online newspaper, reporting the experience of an ex-Amish woman a few weeks after the shooting, put it this way: “Her story paints a very different picture of the Amish than the scenes in Nickel Mines.” In a certain sense, the newspaper’s observation was correct: Amish responses to their wayward members differ from their responses to English offenders. But is that hypocritical? We return to that question in Chapters Nine and Eleven, when we look at forgiveness and shunning within Amish communities.
Despite a few warning lights, responses to the grace extended at Nickel Mines were overwhelmingly positive, so much so that pundits lined up behind the Amish to score points for their own causes. Soon both the shooting and the Amish response became raw material for making arguments about issues of national, even international, significance.
As they have after other school shootings in the United States, arguments about gun control and America’s culture of violence emerged quickly. “Why does a tormented, suicidal adult, such as the one who shot ten Amish school girls . . . have ready access to a semiautomatic pistol, a shotgun, 600 rounds of ammunition and a high-voltage stun gun?” asked an editorial from Scripps News. Of course, anti-gun-control advocates saw the school shooting quite differently. “This shooting . . . and every school shooting in the past ten years all had one thing in common,” remarked Alan M. Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. “They all happened in so-called ‘gun-free school zones,’ where students and adult staff are essentially helpless,” that is, unable to use guns to defend themselves.
Arguments for and against gun control drew more on the shooting than on the forgiveness that flowed in its wake. But the idea of forgiveness packed great ideological wallop as well, particularly for people who saw acts of retribution they could not support. The biggest target in this regard was the Bush administration and its war on terror. The Amish response to Charles Roberts was a “blueprint” for how President Bush should have responded after September 11, wrote Doug Soderstrom on the Axis of Logic Web site. If only President Bush had been the “follower of the Lord Jesus Christ” he claimed to be, “the world may have been spared the unfathomable travesty of a ‘nation of believers’ driven insane by an uncontrollable urge to kill in the name of an all-loving God.”
Diana Butler Bass, writing on the Faithful America blog, expressed similar sentiments: “What if the Amish were in charge of the war on terror? What if, on the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, we had gone to Osama bin Laden’s house (metaphorically, of course, since we didn’t know where he lived!) and offered him forgiveness? What if we had invited the families of the hijackers to the funerals of the victims of 9/11?” Acknowledging that it was too late for that, Butler Bass concluded with what she called a modest proposal: Americans should ask the Amish to assume leadership of the Department of Homeland Security. “After all,” she said, “actively practicing forgiveness” is far better than living in perpetual fear.
Other commentators were not quite willing to hand over national security to the Amish, but they still thought the Nickel Mines Amish deserved better grades than Washington politicians in their handling of a crisis. “You respect people who are true to their words,” wrote George Diaz of the
Orlando Sentinel
. While the Amish “are committed to their beliefs,” the Republican congressional leadership “is committed to saving its posterior.” From there Diaz proceeded to flay House Speaker Dennis Hastert and others for their handling of scandals in the Republican-led House of Representatives. Writing just weeks before the 2006 midterm elections, Diaz quoted an Amish man who, in an interview with CNN, said, “In forgiveness there is healing.” Diaz respected the man’s simple assertion but added that it “would be nice if somebody [in Washington] accepted accountability” for all the inside-the-beltway shenanigans. “Then, and only then, can forgiveness and healing truly begin.”
Orlando Sentinel
. While the Amish “are committed to their beliefs,” the Republican congressional leadership “is committed to saving its posterior.” From there Diaz proceeded to flay House Speaker Dennis Hastert and others for their handling of scandals in the Republican-led House of Representatives. Writing just weeks before the 2006 midterm elections, Diaz quoted an Amish man who, in an interview with CNN, said, “In forgiveness there is healing.” Diaz respected the man’s simple assertion but added that it “would be nice if somebody [in Washington] accepted accountability” for all the inside-the-beltway shenanigans. “Then, and only then, can forgiveness and healing truly begin.”
The Religious Right likewise became a target of these Amish-inspired reflections—and so did the Religious Left. “The so-called Christian Right should look closely at the Amish lifestyle for lessons in what is wrong with their approach to faith and politics,” wrote Stephen Crockett of Democratic Talk Radio. Unlike James Dobson and his ilk, the Amish “do not seek to impose their values on others by law or force,” and “hate has no power or legitimacy among them.” David Virtue, writing for “The Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism,” found a different lesson in the aftermath of Nickel Mines. Recalling the bravery of the Amish schoolgirls and the courage of those who offered forgiveness, he observed that their response grew out of “raw naked faith,” not out of the “pathetic liberal gospel” advanced by the U.S. Episcopal Church’s hierarchy. He then invoked the name of liberal clergyman John Shelby Spong, asking his readers if they would “stand up and die” for the theological beliefs held by Spong in the way the Amish girls had stood up for their faith.
It may be stretching things to say that the Amish schoolgirls died
defending
their faith, although they and their surviving community members clearly
demonstrated
their faith in their responses to Roberts and his family. Thus it’s not surprising that the most consistent and wide-reaching discussion after the shooting focused not on politics per se but on the nature of the Christian life. To be sure, many political issues—gun control, school violence, the war on terror, capital punishment, penal reform, and violence against women, among others—were debated along the way, but the most prominent questions were these: What does it mean to live a truly Christian life? Have the Amish set a standard for other Christians to aspire to?
defending
their faith, although they and their surviving community members clearly
demonstrated
their faith in their responses to Roberts and his family. Thus it’s not surprising that the most consistent and wide-reaching discussion after the shooting focused not on politics per se but on the nature of the Christian life. To be sure, many political issues—gun control, school violence, the war on terror, capital punishment, penal reform, and violence against women, among others—were debated along the way, but the most prominent questions were these: What does it mean to live a truly Christian life? Have the Amish set a standard for other Christians to aspire to?
At least for some observers, the answer to the second question was yes. Sister Joan Chittister, writing for the
National Catholic Reporter,
suggested that “it was the Christianity we all profess but which [the Amish] practiced that left us stunned.” The Nickel Mines Amish, Chittister concluded, astounded the twenty-first-century world the way the earliest Christians astounded the Roman world: simply by being “Christian.”
National Catholic Reporter,
suggested that “it was the Christianity we all profess but which [the Amish] practiced that left us stunned.” The Nickel Mines Amish, Chittister concluded, astounded the twenty-first-century world the way the earliest Christians astounded the Roman world: simply by being “Christian.”
Theologically speaking, this may be the case. For centuries Christian theologians have cited the centrality of forgiveness to the Christian faith, not only as something Jesus modeled but also as something he commanded his followers to do. Nonetheless, it’s important to recognize that the Amish are, and always have been, quite unlike most people who call themselves Christians. From a sociological standpoint, they are not simply Christians; they are
Amish
Christians. As Amish Christians, they share a basic set of beliefs with other Christians, but they come to their faith with a unique history, culture, and theology. To really understand the grace offered at Nickel Mines, we must explore the history, the spirituality, and the culture of the people who extended it.
Amish
Christians. As Amish Christians, they share a basic set of beliefs with other Christians, but they come to their faith with a unique history, culture, and theology. To really understand the grace offered at Nickel Mines, we must explore the history, the spirituality, and the culture of the people who extended it.
Part Two
CHAPTER SIX
The Habit of Forgiveness
I forgive them, and I’d like to forget it. We all make mistakes.
—AMISH ROBBERY VICTIM
W
as the grace at Nickel Mines a one-time event, a spontaneous aberration that happened because of the unique circumstances of the crime? The killer, Charles Roberts IV, was a deeply disturbed man. Although Roberts’s action had been premeditated, Amish compassion in the wake of his crime might have been shaped by the fact that they, along with others, understood that Roberts was a mentally sick person who evoked pity alongside horror and anger. Moreover, Roberts was now dead. There was no need to testify in court, press charges, visit him in prison, or control desires for revenge.
as the grace at Nickel Mines a one-time event, a spontaneous aberration that happened because of the unique circumstances of the crime? The killer, Charles Roberts IV, was a deeply disturbed man. Although Roberts’s action had been premeditated, Amish compassion in the wake of his crime might have been shaped by the fact that they, along with others, understood that Roberts was a mentally sick person who evoked pity alongside horror and anger. Moreover, Roberts was now dead. There was no need to testify in court, press charges, visit him in prison, or control desires for revenge.
But what if the killer not only had survived but also had been defiant or lacked remorse? Would the Amish have forgiven such a person? What if the perpetrator had ended up in court? Would the Amish have brushed aside all concerns for justice and punishment? And what if the media had not converged on Nickel Mines after the tragedy? Did the Amish offer forgiveness for the sake of public relations?
All of these questions point to a larger one: How typical was the forgiveness that surprised the public in October 2006? We were familiar with some stories that would begin to answer these questions, but we searched for more. We talked with Amish people, read Amish-authored books and memoirs, and dug into archives and newspaper records. What we found were dozens of accounts that provide a wider context for considering Amish forgiveness, stories that help us assess whether the response at Nickel Mines was typical.
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