c. 2000 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Sprinkled liberally throughout the books of the Bible are reminders of the virtue of forgiveness: The New Testament book of Ephesians, for example, tells Christians “Be ye kind to one another … forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you,” and even at Jesus’ death the theme is reiterated. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do,” he says.
Religious leaders have long been the primary town criers touting the virtues of forgiveness and repentance, but within the past decade apologies have blossomed into quasi-political chic as clergy and political leaders from Brazil to Benin embrace the “forgiveness movement” _ seeking forgiveness from those whom their countries and institutions have injured in the past.
To wit:
_ In the late 1980s the U.S. government formally apologized for the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and offered each survivor $20,000 in reparation.
_ Two years ago National Sorry Day was launched in Australia to apologize for the forced removal of thousands of Aboriginal children from their families.
_ In March, Pope John Paul II apologized for sins committed by members of the Roman Catholic Church against, among other groups, Jews, African-Americans, women, and those who had been sexually abused by Roman Catholic clergy.
_ In April, Rwanda’s Hutu prime minister sought forgiveness for his party’s role in the genocide of Tutsis and Hutus six years ago. That same month, the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil apologized to the nation’s blacks and Indians for “sins and errors” committed against them by Catholic clergy.
_ In May, Emperor Akihito of Japan expressed regret for the pain that World War II caused people in the Netherlands, while officials from the west African country of Benin apologized for their role in African slavery.
“I think what we have entered is a decade of reconciliation,” said Everett Worthington, chairman of the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University and executive director of the Virginia-based Campaign for Forgiveness Research, which sponsors studies about the effects of forgiveness. “We have a real social hunger for forgiveness right now _ politically and at the personal level. We’re really yearning for reconciliation.”
That yearning is partly the offspring of the social and political climate of the past 15 years, said Worthington, particularly the fall of the Berlin Wall and the work of organizations like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu and created to investigate the human rights violations of South Africa’s apartheid regime.
“When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and communism collapsed, all of a sudden countries that were enemies had to reconcile with each other, so there was this worldwide interest in how do you get past these hurts,” said Worthington. “And when (South African black leader Nelson) Mandela was released from prison, he chose to promote reconciliation and forgiveness instead of retribution _ and that was of great interest to people throughout the world. Forces like that got people talking about reconciliation and forgiveness.”
The movement is also propelled by an international desire to crawl from beneath centuries-thick layers of hurt and anger caused by historical injustices, said Michael Henderson, author of “Forgiveness: Breaking the Chains of Hate” (BookPartners Inc.).
“I think we’re in a mood now where we want to face up to certain things in the past, to examine our consciences,” said Henderson, whose book features interviews with dozens of survivors of atrocities _ including Holocaust victims and prisoners of war from Poland, Ethiopia and Vietnam _ who all forgave their tormentors. “We’re growing up, and now we have the capacity to be honest about what happened in the past.”
That honesty can be liberating for a nation, said Worthington, helping to pave over rifts between groups by placing recognition of past hurts on the public record.
“I think when a leader makes an apology, it helps people reconfigure the past,” said Worthington. “It puts a healing note into a story that often is marred by just a never-ending story of incriminations back and forth across the sides.”
Far from “letting someone off the hook,” forgiveness is a step toward freedom for those who have been wronged, said Johann Christoph Arnold, author of “Why Forgive?” (Plough Publishing).
“In forgiveness we don’t exonerate anyone, we just let the hurt and the pain go,” said Arnold, a veteran pastor and elder of the Bruderhof (“place of brothers”) Christian community. “Our culture thinks forgiveness is a weakness when it is actually a strength _ forgiveness lets you move on. Forgiveness heals _ it breaks all kinds of barriers between nations and cultures.”
When those barriers aren’t removed, nations remain frozen in a sort of social suspended animation with bruises of the past never fully healed, said Henderson, as when Emperor Akihito of Japan visited England two years ago. Henderson’s book describes how former British prisoners of war turned their backs on the emperor and Queen Elizabeth as the two rode through the streets of London.
“People who have been wronged need to feel they have a part in the country, and they don’t always feel that until they have an acknowledgment of their pain,” said Henderson. “When people are honest about the past, they can share together the pain of the past rather than the guilt of the past. Otherwise, there can be a seedbed of bitterness.”
Worthington agreed.
“Without forgiveness you have a kind of social inertia with hatred lying beneath the surface waiting for an opportunity to be justified and turn into violence,” he said, pointing to the breakup of the former Yugoslavia as one example.
“You had tension and hatred that was lying just beneath the surface and when Yugoslavia fell, those things were a stimulus to cause all the old hurts to pop up,” he said. “No one had tried to ease some of the pain.”
But for every official who apologizes, others remain silent.
“I think some people interpret an apology as weakness,” said Henderson. “And it is the case sometimes that people are afraid _ Australia has been unwilling to make a formal apology to Aborigines because the government fears it could be sued. Then, too, the case has been made that one person cannot speak for the whole church or an entire government and make an apology.”
Nor is forgiveness always offered.
“I don’t say everybody has to forgive _ what I do try to show in my book is that even in the most extreme circumstances people have been willing to,” Henderson said. “Jews do not have to forgive Germans for the Holocaust, but I do know Jews who have. I don’t say all whites should apologize for slavery, but I do know whites who have. Not everybody is ready to walk the road of forgiveness, but I think it’s been a blessing to those who have.”
Often words alone cannot bridge decades of division, said Worthington.
“When an injustice happens, it’s not just the emotional books that get unbalanced, it’s also the social books,” said Worthington. “There has to be consideration of what it might take to rebalance the social books _ Japan did it by making financial reparations to people harmed in World War II, and some German companies have made reparations to Jewish people. But both books have to be balanced before the past is resolved _ making apologies alone will never close the past by itself.”
Nor is an apology an instant salve for a nation’s wounds.
“Obviously forgiveness isn’t a panacea because not everybody is going to embrace that and sometimes there will be criticism,” conceded Worthington. “So then the question becomes `Can forgiveness help?’ And there is no question that it does.”
Still, apologies “get the ball rolling,” said Arnold, opening a portal to a future reconciled with the past.
“You can’t please everybody,” he said. “Probably in the next 50 years people will realize there are things we’re doing wrong now that need to be put right. But someone has to take that first step. If we don’t, there’s no way we can progress.”
DEA END DANCY
