Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy

2007, 237 pp
Borrowed Items Ship free with Membership

On Monday morning, October 2, 2006, a gunman entered a one-room Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He ordered the boys and the teacher to leave and prepared to shoot the girls with an automatic rifle and four hundred rounds of ammunition that he brought for the task. He opened fire on all of them, killing five and leaving the others critically wounded. He then shot himself as police stormed the building. His motivation? "I'm angry at God for taking my little daughter," he told the children before the massacre.

It was barely over when Amish parents brought words of forgiveness to the family of the one who had slain their children.

Amish Grace explores the many questions this story raises about the religious beliefs and habits that led the Amish to forgive so quickly. It looks at the ties between forgiveness and membership in a cloistered communal society and asks if Amish practices parallel or diverge from other religious and secular notions of forgiveness. It will also address the matter of why forgiveness became news. "All the religions teach it," mused an observer, "but no one does it like the Amish." Regardless of the cultural seedbed that nourished this story, the surprising act of Amish forgiveness begs for a deeper exploration. How could the Amish do this? What did this act mean to them? And how might their witness prove useful to the rest of us?

(13 sessions)

Also see a related DVD.

TypePrint
GenreHistory, Item with Questions
TopicAmish, Murder and Violent Crime, Forgiveness
AudienceAdults, Leaders
LanguageEnglish
PublisherWiley
ISBN9780787997618

Reserve for:

Please provide your contact information. We will check this item's availability and get back to you soon with the price and expected time of delivery.

Our apologies, we are not able to process special orders shipped to your country.