What do we mean by forgiveness and reconciliation?
ForgivenessForgiveness is the principled decision to give up your justified right for revenge; it also requires the forgiver to recognize that the offender is “human like myself.” As the British philosopher and poet David Whyte has written: “It is that wounded…un-forgetting part of us that…makes forgiveness an act of compassion rather than one of simple forgetting.” Following hurt, pain, or atrocity, forgiveness can potentially bring resolution and freedom. It is a practical way of preventing the pain of the past from defining the path of the future.
Categories
Forgiveness is often categorized as having two distinct forms:
- Unilateral forgiveness: This requires nothing in return. It is an act of generosity on the part of the victim(s). There can be many different motives; for instance, it may stem from compassion for an offender, the wish to free oneself from pain, or simply a pragmatic means of moving forward.
- Bilateral forgiveness: This involves an exchange. It is a contractual relationship between people or groups, dependent on apology and remorse. It is often tied up with justice, as it involves the paying of a social debt.
Some Key Points about Forgiveness
- Process: Forgiveness is not a single magnanimous gesture in response to an isolated offense, but a longer-term, fluid, and ever-changing process where people work towards repairing broken relationships, or broken hearts.
- Recognition: Forgiveness is about recognizing that life is messy and unpredictable – that we are all fallible human beings capable of messing up. It requires a broad perspective.
- Empathy: Forgiveness is more than just accepting or letting go, because it requires a degree of empathy or compassion. It is the ability to place yourself in someone else’s life (empathy) and to act according to this empathic connection you feel towards your fellow human beings (compassion).
- Reconciliation: Forgiveness is different from reconciliation, which requires some kind of peace process and the coming together in unity of two or more formerly hostile sides.
Common Themes in Forgiveness
It would be a mistake to impose a false uniformity onto highly diverse forgiveness perspectives. Forgiveness can be viewed as a cognitive process, a narrative or journey, a philosophical position, or a combination of these. However, definitions of forgiveness have tended to express some commonality. Sells and Hargrave (1998) conducted an extensive literature review of empirical and theoretical forgiveness studies. They found that every definition or theory of forgiveness they encountered contained each of the following underlying principles:
- There is an injury or violation with subsequent emotional or physical pain.
- The violation results in a broken or fragmented relationship between parties.
- Perpetuation of injury is halted.
- A cognitive process is pursued where the painful event or action is understood or reframed with a fuller context.
- There is a release or letting go of justifiable emotion and retaliation related to the event.
- There is a regeneration of the relationship.
Reconciliation
Reconciliation refers to the restoration of fractured relationships by overcoming grief, pain, and anger. It is, as Karen Broenus has written, “a societal process that involves mutual acknowledgment of past suffering and the changing of destructive attitudes and behavior into constructive relationships toward sustainable peace.”
The path toward reconciliation can also be described as a lifelong journey going in two directions: inward, towards self-discovery and reconciling with suffering, and outward, toward recognizing and perhaps forgiving others. It is both an intrapersonal and an interpersonal exercise, each aspect advancing the more deeply a person discovers that reconciliation is possible both within and without.
Some Key Points about Reconciliation
Reconciliation can be seen as a five-step process, including:
- Developing a shared vision of an interdependent and fair society
- Acknowledging and dealing with the past
- Building positive relationships
- Facilitating significant cultural and attitudinal change
- Enabling substantial social, economic, and political change.
Typically, this also has key elements and steps, often including:
- Understanding the threat to people’s identity
- Seeking to move individuals from singular affiliation to multiple identity; e.g., away from “I am a Serb” to “I am a Serb, a European, a civil rights activist, a trade unionist…etc.”
- Deconstructing or reconstructing an individual’s identity frames
- Separating group and individual identities
- Dismantling of enemy images and misrepresentations that demonize the “other”
- Looking for a common vision or threat around which to unite.
What is the importance of forgiveness for Community Building?
For some, forgiveness is a personal decision as part of their own self-healing process: Forgiveness liberates people from the resentment and anger that they have carried with them. Some feel inspired to forgive, because they experience compassion for those who have hurt them; others see a spiritual value in forgiveness, because they recognize that we are all connected and are therefore each individual is in some way responsible for the pain in the world.
When it comes to the specific role forgiveness may play in community building, we can offer these propositions:
- Forgiveness can contribute to creating a foundation for dialogue.
- It can help release bitterness and anger, and facilitate the re-humanization of the “other.” This is key to the reconciliation process, which cannot happen without eradicating dehumanization.
- It can induce a shift in mindsets and transform harmful attitudes.
- It can build bridges between opposing parties, and help repair fractured relationships.
- It can help break the cycle of violence, aid post-traumatic reconciliation, build a more peaceful common future, and ultimately sustain peace.
A first step in community building is recognizing that we are all capable of harm, given the right circumstances. The Russian author and dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Solzhenitsyn. 2003, p. 75).
Case Example: Bosnia
When Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the notorious Omarska concentration camp in Bosnia, returned to Bosnia some years after the end of the war, he recognized the cruellest of his former Serb camp guards standing by the road hitch-hiking. The image caused Pervanic to react in way that might seem surprising – he started to laugh. “What else could I do?” he explains. “I didn’t want to swear or scream or get violent. I laughed because I remembered the monster this man had been. But now, hitch-hiking alone on a dusty road, he looked almost pitiful. People describe these people as monsters, born with a genetically mutant gene, but I don’t believe that. I believe every human being is capable of killing.”
Forgiveness Can Help Transform Attitudes
Forgiveness and reconciliation in this context are therefore about shifting and even transforming people’s attitudes, prejudices, and perceptions about the “other.” Forgiveness isn’t an act of kindness born out of the victim’s generosity, but rather a re-humanizing gift emphasizing the humanity of the perpetrator. In other words, it is about reducing fear through the recognition of the human being in “the enemy.” In the softening of positions comes the acknowledgement and possibility of each side’s complicity.
Forgiveness Can Help Repair Broken Relationships
Another way forgiveness and reconciliation promote community building is that they allow people who were once hostile towards one another to live together again. Forgiving past wrongs may be a key to reconciliation between friends, family members, spouses, neighbors, races, cultures, and nations. More complete reconciliation means that we engage co-participants honestly and respectfully in the construction of a newer world through meaningful and faithful relationships. The process results in decreased motivation to retaliate or maintain estrangement from an offender despite his or her actions.
Case Example: Senegal
Salimata Badji-Knight was brought up in a Muslim community in Senegal, where she was circumcised at the age of five. “Today my three sisters work with me to stop the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Even my mother now understands that it’s a violation of human rights and has told me that she had never wanted to put me through FGM and had done everything in her power to protect me. Hearing this made me happy, as it created a closer relationship between the two of us and I no longer blame her for what happened to me.
In addition, before he died, I was able to have a good talk with my father. I opened my heart to him and explained how female circumcision could affect you physically and mentally. He cried and said that no woman had ever explained the suffering to him. Then he apologized and asked for forgiveness. The next day he called my relatives in Senegal and told them to stop the practice. As a result, a meeting was cancelled and 50 girls were saved.”
Forgiveness Can Help Break the Cycle of Violence
Finally, forgiveness can help end violence. “It is the responsibility of the living to heal the dead.” Alexandra Asseily, founder of the Centre for Lebanese Studies in Oxford and creator of the Garden of Forgiveness in Lebanon, has spoken and written extensively about the repetitive nature of conflict; that consciously (and unconsciously) held grievances are received by each new generation through an ancestral bond that can only be released through forgiveness and compassion.
Case Example: Lebanon
Asseily has described the deep ancestral connection she felt with the “agony of war,” which manifested in her own life during the civil war in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. She has spoken about the horror of seeing her good Christian friends destroying everything she had worked for with their Muslim neighbors. “I saw grievances being played out that went back to the Crusades,” she said, explaining why she would not wear a cross for 20 years. “It was after I came to London that I tried to make sense of my life and started to ask the question, ‘What is it that makes me at the same time human and inhuman?’”
In a similar vein, Kay Pranis, a pioneer of restorative justice in
the United States, is convinced that while the victim has a right not to
reconcile with the wrongdoer, the community must accept an offender
when he or she transitions from prison back into the neighborhood
(Cantacuzino, 2013, p. 10). “It is the community’s responsibility to
reconcile with the one who has harmed, because if they do not, they set
up the next victimization,” she says.
In both of the above examples, as well as in the case of the Israeli Rami Elhanan, citizens who may not be directly responsible for a conflict nevertheless take responsibility for repairing the harm. This recognition of the interconnection of all human life seems a key component of forgiveness. As the psychologist Erik Erikson (1902-1994), famous for his work on the conceptualization of identity, put it: “Living together means more than incidental proximity. It means that the individual’s life-stages are ‘interliving,’ cogwheeling with the stages of others which move him along as he moves them” (Erikson, 1964, p. 114).
Forgiveness can help reconcile two opposing sides in almost any situation. However, in the midst of violent conflict it may not be safe or expedient to talk about forgiveness. It is a concept that irks some people, and to suggest forgiveness when past grievances are currently being played out – when people are hell-bent on survival on the one hand, whilst destroying the enemy on the other – may be insensitive and counter-productive.
In Peace-building
Forgiveness can be a critical ingredient in rebuilding broken relationships and repairing damaged communities. It can be an important part of any peace-building process, and sometimes the only thing that can help divided communities move toward reconciliation. Festering trauma so easily has the capacity to become festering dehumanization; since both sides may believe there is risk in equality, they therefore adopt fear-based thinking such as: “If you’re equal to me, then you may harm me.” Sometimes it takes something radical like empathy, forgiveness, and reconciliation to break this impasse.
When the Law is Inadequate
Forgiveness can be especially advantageous when the law has been inadequate in exacting measured retribution. Justice is dependent on the existence of an authority perceived as just; so when that is absent, who then can bring justice?
In the insightful documentary Beyond Right and Wrong, Lord John Alderdice, psychiatrist and negotiator for the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement, warns: “If you simply hold tight to the requirement of justice come hell or high water, then you probably won’t find it possible to move forward. But if you try to move forward without attending to the pain and the hurt of the injustice and the trauma of the past, your move forward will probably be illusory, and you will carry some of that difficulty into the future and into your relationships as an individual or as a community.” Forgiveness then comes into play.
In South Africa, leaders sought to attend to the hurt of injustice and the trauma of the past through formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as noted below.
Case Example: South Africa
In 1993, Amy Biehl, an American student working in South Africa against apartheid, was stabbed to death in a black township near Cape Town. In 1998, the four young men convicted of her murder were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) after serving five years of their sentence – a decision supported by Amy’s parents.
Easy Nofemela, one of the convicted men, demonstrates just how important trust is in the peace process, and that it can’t be established unless individuals and communities find ways of repairing and rebuilding relationships with each other. “Not until I met Linda and Peter Biehl did I understand that white people are human beings too... The first time I saw them on TV I hated them. I thought this was the strategy of the whites, to come to South Africa to call for capital punishment. But they didn’t even mention wanting to hang us. I was very confused. They seemed to understand that the youth of the townships had carried this crisis, this fight for liberation, on their shoulders.”
How can One develop and promote forgiveness and reconciliation in community building?
Engaging in the Reconciliation Process
Developing Forgiveness on a Community Level
Forgiveness is often portrayed as a deeply individual process with personal healing as its prime goal. But individual traumas are often part of a larger societal trauma, and therefore larger change can often come about from healing and forgiveness at both individual and societal levels.
In the Fetzer Institute’s short documentary Being with the Energy of Love and Forgiveness, Dr. Mark Umbreit, founding director of the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota, explains his work in restorative justice. The film represents one of the most useful and comprehensive insights available into the practical application of forgiveness and reconciliation at a community level.
Describing the impact of healing circles, victim-offender dialogue, and community conferencing, Umbreit concludes that “respect,” “openness,” and “compassion” are the underlying components of engagement. “I literally feel and sense what I would call the authentic energy of forgiveness there; more than I do in institutions that talk about it a lot or preach it or push it,” he says.
For Umbreit, “Restorative dialogue is one of many pathways to a deeper experience of forgiveness. It’s about creating a safe space to go deep within your heart, to feel vulnerability, to be open to others’ pain, to recognize their humanity at the deepest level. When you humanize your adversary it’s harder to hold on to hate, it’s harder to kill.”
The film also shows interviews with members of the Native American Somali Friendship Committee in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis. This initiative grew out of conflict arising when thousands of Somali refugees settled in the Twin Cities in the early nineties.
The Native American Somali Friendship Committee was formed when Wade Keezer, an Ojibwe leader and organizer, called the Native American and Somali communities to address the growing tension. The result was the beginning of a cross-cultural dialogue intended to promote peaceful community building. Peacemaking in this context was a process based on traditional methods of dispute resolution, which is a cornerstone of Native American culture and addresses the need to rebuild relationships between people.
The first meeting between the two communities took place on Martin Luther King Day in 2010. At first, only negative feelings were aired as people were able to safely express their pain and fear; but in time and through sharing stories, food and other cultural activities, the two communities discovered they had more similarities than differences.
This peacebuilding initiative worked because both communities were able to look at each other in the eye, find respect, and build a relationship with greater understanding. Umbreit concludes this was not “little common conversations…but real restorative dialogue,” as people spent hours together, listening to each other’s pain and trauma. In this way, both communities were able to hear each other’s stories, forgive, move forward, and build a safer neighbourhood.
Moving beyond small, local communities, forgiveness in large-scale peace-building processes that involve two or more opposing social, ethnic, or religious groups can affect the future of a country. It did so in South Africa, where politicians and civic leaders urged large groups of people to forgive other groups with whom they had previously been locked in conflict. While forgiveness was never obligatory in South Africa, its value was upheld within the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In addition, several public figures spoke out in favor of forgiveness, thus modeling a way forward for the communities they represented.
Nelson Mandela, by publicly forgiving those who had wronged him, became a global symbol for forgiveness, compassion, and peace-building. “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.”
Case Example: South Africa
Albie Sachs – the anti-apartheid campaigner who lost an arm and was partially blinded in a car bomb in 1988 – has spoken about ubuntu, the spirit of reconciliation that allowed a nation not to resort to bloody recriminations post-apartheid.
“We called the peaceful transition in South Africa from the vicious system of apartheid to a constitutional democracy a miracle.... It became possible because millions and millions of African people, despite their hardship, or perhaps because of their hardship, had never lost the deep traditional spirit of ubuntu, a shared sense of humanity: I am a person because you are a person; my humanity can’t be separated from a recognition of your humanity.
“Because of ubuntu and the Truth Commission, I was able to meet the soldier who had organized the placing of a bomb in my car that cost me my right arm and the sight of an eye. It was a moving encounter, from which we both emerged better human beings. The key to the encounter was that our country had changed. Ubuntu, the spirit of reconciliation, requires dealing with the causes of the conflict. But it can help overcome those causes, and be liberating to the individuals involved in a very personal way.”
Ways to Build and Rebuild Relationships
In a similar matter, reconciliation must involve actively rebuilding relationships by creating opportunities for people to engage with each other through spaces, activities, and enterprises. In order to build or rebuild relationships, there must be platforms on which to develop understanding between groups and communities.
Cultivating dialogue: Enabling people to embrace tensions in the process of reconciliation and dialogue is the starting point. Dialogue can take place in many settings, such as a national dialogue or within communities across divisions of race, religion, or gender. Dialogue can be practiced in community halls, schools, prisons, and corporate institutions. However, dialogue by itself can be a fairly shallow gesture. To be effective, it has to include:
An important element of the reconciliation process is the restoration of broken relationships, which may be addressed in various ways. While some of these will be discussed in detail under the “Developing Victim-Offender Programs” heading, it is worth mentioning here the contributions of Howard Zehr, who is widely known as the grandfather of restorative justice. He describes his work as being about “changing lenses,” and sums up some of the different approaches as follows:
“Some advocate the use of restorative approaches such as ‘circles’ (an approach that emerged from the First Nation/aboriginal communities in Canada) as a way to work through, resolve, and transform conflicts in general. Others pursue circles or ‘conferences’ (an effort with roots both in New Zealand and Australia and in facilitated victim-offender meetings) as a way to build and heal communities.” (Zehr, 2002).
Utilizing the healing power of sharing stories: Stories of hope in hopeless times can change lives. A constructive strategy that may help one break out of an endless cycle of violence is to develop the ability to listen to the pain of the other (the so-called “enemy”), because if people focus only on their own pain and trauma this locks them into a sense of despair.
The Forgiveness Project collects and shares real stories of forgiveness in order to create opportunities for people to consider, examine, and choose forgiveness in the face of atrocity. Its work in restorative storytelling demonstrates that personal narratives can broaden perspectives and bring healing to those impacted — whether victim or perpetrator — as well as motivate others regarding future life choices.
Research has shown that storytelling is a powerful tool for which humans are hard-wired. Storytelling enables individuals and groups to form connections and collaboration at the same time as they overcome differences and defenses. The spiritual teacher Anthony Mello has said: “The deepest truth is found by means of a simple story.” And as the German-born political theorist Hannah Arendt has noted: "Storytelling is the bridge by which we transform that which is private and individual into that which is public” (Arendt 1958). Some other examples follow.
Some Story-Sharing Examples
To practice forgiveness and reconciliation in daily life comes with its own challenges, and prompts a number of reflection questions. As one example, there is a popular notion that if you do not forgive you will be depleted in some way, tied to the past, holding on to grudges, filled with negative and even violent thoughts. This sentiment is found in much literature (blogs, articles, books, and motivational quotes) and creates a perception that forgiveness must be the panacea for all ills, a key to serenity, and the route to enlightenment. But it glosses over the fact that forgiveness is a slippery and complex concept, meaning many things to many people.
The above assumptions not only ignore the real pain many people suffer, but shame those who chose not to forgive. In a BBC1 TV program in 2011 “What is the Point in Forgiveness?”, the U.K.’s then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, warned against forgiving too easily. He told the Radio Times: “I think the 20th century saw such a level of atrocity that it has focused our minds very, very hard on the dangers of forgiving too easily” (Thomas, 2011). The point he went on to make very strongly was that if forgiveness is easy, it is as if the suffering doesn’t really matter.
Some other challenges in the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation follow.
Challenges
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/spirituality-and-community-building/forgiveness-and-reconciliation/main
In both of the above examples, as well as in the case of the Israeli Rami Elhanan, citizens who may not be directly responsible for a conflict nevertheless take responsibility for repairing the harm. This recognition of the interconnection of all human life seems a key component of forgiveness. As the psychologist Erik Erikson (1902-1994), famous for his work on the conceptualization of identity, put it: “Living together means more than incidental proximity. It means that the individual’s life-stages are ‘interliving,’ cogwheeling with the stages of others which move him along as he moves them” (Erikson, 1964, p. 114).
What Are Favorable Conditions for Forgiveness and Reconciliation in Community Building?
There are three in particular:- In post-conflict situations (i.e., not being in the midst of active conflict)
- In peace-building
- When the law is inadequate
Forgiveness can help reconcile two opposing sides in almost any situation. However, in the midst of violent conflict it may not be safe or expedient to talk about forgiveness. It is a concept that irks some people, and to suggest forgiveness when past grievances are currently being played out – when people are hell-bent on survival on the one hand, whilst destroying the enemy on the other – may be insensitive and counter-productive.
In Peace-building
Forgiveness can be a critical ingredient in rebuilding broken relationships and repairing damaged communities. It can be an important part of any peace-building process, and sometimes the only thing that can help divided communities move toward reconciliation. Festering trauma so easily has the capacity to become festering dehumanization; since both sides may believe there is risk in equality, they therefore adopt fear-based thinking such as: “If you’re equal to me, then you may harm me.” Sometimes it takes something radical like empathy, forgiveness, and reconciliation to break this impasse.
When the Law is Inadequate
Forgiveness can be especially advantageous when the law has been inadequate in exacting measured retribution. Justice is dependent on the existence of an authority perceived as just; so when that is absent, who then can bring justice?
In the insightful documentary Beyond Right and Wrong, Lord John Alderdice, psychiatrist and negotiator for the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement, warns: “If you simply hold tight to the requirement of justice come hell or high water, then you probably won’t find it possible to move forward. But if you try to move forward without attending to the pain and the hurt of the injustice and the trauma of the past, your move forward will probably be illusory, and you will carry some of that difficulty into the future and into your relationships as an individual or as a community.” Forgiveness then comes into play.
In South Africa, leaders sought to attend to the hurt of injustice and the trauma of the past through formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as noted below.
Case Example: South Africa
In 1993, Amy Biehl, an American student working in South Africa against apartheid, was stabbed to death in a black township near Cape Town. In 1998, the four young men convicted of her murder were granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) after serving five years of their sentence – a decision supported by Amy’s parents.
Easy Nofemela, one of the convicted men, demonstrates just how important trust is in the peace process, and that it can’t be established unless individuals and communities find ways of repairing and rebuilding relationships with each other. “Not until I met Linda and Peter Biehl did I understand that white people are human beings too... The first time I saw them on TV I hated them. I thought this was the strategy of the whites, to come to South Africa to call for capital punishment. But they didn’t even mention wanting to hang us. I was very confused. They seemed to understand that the youth of the townships had carried this crisis, this fight for liberation, on their shoulders.”
How can One develop and promote forgiveness and reconciliation in community building?
- By engaging in the process of forgiveness (individual level)
- Self-forgiveness
- Common stages in the engagement process
- Developing forgiveness on an individual level
- By engaging in the reconciliation process (community level)
- Promoting forgiveness on community level
- Ways to build and rebuild relationships
- Cultivating dialogue
- Starting grassroots initiatives
- Utilizing the healing power of sharing stories
- Developing victim – offender programs
Engaging in the Reconciliation Process
Developing Forgiveness on a Community Level
Forgiveness is often portrayed as a deeply individual process with personal healing as its prime goal. But individual traumas are often part of a larger societal trauma, and therefore larger change can often come about from healing and forgiveness at both individual and societal levels.
In the Fetzer Institute’s short documentary Being with the Energy of Love and Forgiveness, Dr. Mark Umbreit, founding director of the Center for Restorative Justice and Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota, explains his work in restorative justice. The film represents one of the most useful and comprehensive insights available into the practical application of forgiveness and reconciliation at a community level.
Describing the impact of healing circles, victim-offender dialogue, and community conferencing, Umbreit concludes that “respect,” “openness,” and “compassion” are the underlying components of engagement. “I literally feel and sense what I would call the authentic energy of forgiveness there; more than I do in institutions that talk about it a lot or preach it or push it,” he says.
For Umbreit, “Restorative dialogue is one of many pathways to a deeper experience of forgiveness. It’s about creating a safe space to go deep within your heart, to feel vulnerability, to be open to others’ pain, to recognize their humanity at the deepest level. When you humanize your adversary it’s harder to hold on to hate, it’s harder to kill.”
The film also shows interviews with members of the Native American Somali Friendship Committee in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis. This initiative grew out of conflict arising when thousands of Somali refugees settled in the Twin Cities in the early nineties.
The Native American Somali Friendship Committee was formed when Wade Keezer, an Ojibwe leader and organizer, called the Native American and Somali communities to address the growing tension. The result was the beginning of a cross-cultural dialogue intended to promote peaceful community building. Peacemaking in this context was a process based on traditional methods of dispute resolution, which is a cornerstone of Native American culture and addresses the need to rebuild relationships between people.
The first meeting between the two communities took place on Martin Luther King Day in 2010. At first, only negative feelings were aired as people were able to safely express their pain and fear; but in time and through sharing stories, food and other cultural activities, the two communities discovered they had more similarities than differences.
This peacebuilding initiative worked because both communities were able to look at each other in the eye, find respect, and build a relationship with greater understanding. Umbreit concludes this was not “little common conversations…but real restorative dialogue,” as people spent hours together, listening to each other’s pain and trauma. In this way, both communities were able to hear each other’s stories, forgive, move forward, and build a safer neighbourhood.
Moving beyond small, local communities, forgiveness in large-scale peace-building processes that involve two or more opposing social, ethnic, or religious groups can affect the future of a country. It did so in South Africa, where politicians and civic leaders urged large groups of people to forgive other groups with whom they had previously been locked in conflict. While forgiveness was never obligatory in South Africa, its value was upheld within the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In addition, several public figures spoke out in favor of forgiveness, thus modeling a way forward for the communities they represented.
Nelson Mandela, by publicly forgiving those who had wronged him, became a global symbol for forgiveness, compassion, and peace-building. “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.”
Case Example: South Africa
Albie Sachs – the anti-apartheid campaigner who lost an arm and was partially blinded in a car bomb in 1988 – has spoken about ubuntu, the spirit of reconciliation that allowed a nation not to resort to bloody recriminations post-apartheid.
“We called the peaceful transition in South Africa from the vicious system of apartheid to a constitutional democracy a miracle.... It became possible because millions and millions of African people, despite their hardship, or perhaps because of their hardship, had never lost the deep traditional spirit of ubuntu, a shared sense of humanity: I am a person because you are a person; my humanity can’t be separated from a recognition of your humanity.
“Because of ubuntu and the Truth Commission, I was able to meet the soldier who had organized the placing of a bomb in my car that cost me my right arm and the sight of an eye. It was a moving encounter, from which we both emerged better human beings. The key to the encounter was that our country had changed. Ubuntu, the spirit of reconciliation, requires dealing with the causes of the conflict. But it can help overcome those causes, and be liberating to the individuals involved in a very personal way.”
Ways to Build and Rebuild Relationships
In a similar matter, reconciliation must involve actively rebuilding relationships by creating opportunities for people to engage with each other through spaces, activities, and enterprises. In order to build or rebuild relationships, there must be platforms on which to develop understanding between groups and communities.
Cultivating dialogue: Enabling people to embrace tensions in the process of reconciliation and dialogue is the starting point. Dialogue can take place in many settings, such as a national dialogue or within communities across divisions of race, religion, or gender. Dialogue can be practiced in community halls, schools, prisons, and corporate institutions. However, dialogue by itself can be a fairly shallow gesture. To be effective, it has to include:
- Genuine exploration of self and the “other”
- Addressing the roots of conflict
- Building closer bonds between individuals and groups
- Promoting systemic and structural change
An important element of the reconciliation process is the restoration of broken relationships, which may be addressed in various ways. While some of these will be discussed in detail under the “Developing Victim-Offender Programs” heading, it is worth mentioning here the contributions of Howard Zehr, who is widely known as the grandfather of restorative justice. He describes his work as being about “changing lenses,” and sums up some of the different approaches as follows:
“Some advocate the use of restorative approaches such as ‘circles’ (an approach that emerged from the First Nation/aboriginal communities in Canada) as a way to work through, resolve, and transform conflicts in general. Others pursue circles or ‘conferences’ (an effort with roots both in New Zealand and Australia and in facilitated victim-offender meetings) as a way to build and heal communities.” (Zehr, 2002).
Utilizing the healing power of sharing stories: Stories of hope in hopeless times can change lives. A constructive strategy that may help one break out of an endless cycle of violence is to develop the ability to listen to the pain of the other (the so-called “enemy”), because if people focus only on their own pain and trauma this locks them into a sense of despair.
The Forgiveness Project collects and shares real stories of forgiveness in order to create opportunities for people to consider, examine, and choose forgiveness in the face of atrocity. Its work in restorative storytelling demonstrates that personal narratives can broaden perspectives and bring healing to those impacted — whether victim or perpetrator — as well as motivate others regarding future life choices.
Research has shown that storytelling is a powerful tool for which humans are hard-wired. Storytelling enables individuals and groups to form connections and collaboration at the same time as they overcome differences and defenses. The spiritual teacher Anthony Mello has said: “The deepest truth is found by means of a simple story.” And as the German-born political theorist Hannah Arendt has noted: "Storytelling is the bridge by which we transform that which is private and individual into that which is public” (Arendt 1958). Some other examples follow.
Some Story-Sharing Examples
- In the 11 years since it was founded, The Forgiveness Project has
gained a reputation for using narrative and storytelling techniques as a
way to reach across the rifts not only of race, faith, and geography,
but also the rifts of enemies. Presenting, producing, and examining real
stories of transformation is The Forgiveness Project’s key tool for
change.
The project does this through “The F Word” travelling exhibition (a thought-provoking collection of arresting images and personal narratives), through filmed interviews, through written stories on its website accessed by the public as an open resource, through a restorative justice program in U.K. prisons where facilitators are victims and ex-offenders share their redemptive narratives, and through real lived experiences from a Speakers Bureau at events, lectures, workshops, and seminars. The stories have also appeared in a book, The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age, by the organization’s founder, Marina Cantacuzino. - Another storytelling initiative including forgiveness and narratives is “The F-You Project,” an acclaimed youth-led nonprofit organization and movement in Toronto, Ontario, which utilizes arts and self-expression to empower youth to find strength to overcome some of the most intractable circumstances. This organization provides first-hand experiences in forgiveness within the context of violence. It focuses on organizing public events, featuring speakers who have evolved from victim to survivor in the face of their own internal adversities. This is a good example of the community working together to erase negativity and inspire healing.
- Compelling examples also come from Rwanda. In that country, alongside the stories of murder and carnage, when neighbors killed neighbors, teachers killed students, and armed gangs across the country at one point reached a killing rate of seven people per minute, it is important to hear stories of people who acted with kindness, empathy, and self-sacrifice.
- Some other examples of those who are using their stories to support divided communities are Jo Berry, with “Building Bridges for Peace,” Rami Elhahan, through the “The Parents’ Circle,” and Alistair Little, who started the organization “Beyond Walls.” These examples show that any community can start collecting stories as a way of listening to the pain of the “other” in order to build empathy and understanding.
To practice forgiveness and reconciliation in daily life comes with its own challenges, and prompts a number of reflection questions. As one example, there is a popular notion that if you do not forgive you will be depleted in some way, tied to the past, holding on to grudges, filled with negative and even violent thoughts. This sentiment is found in much literature (blogs, articles, books, and motivational quotes) and creates a perception that forgiveness must be the panacea for all ills, a key to serenity, and the route to enlightenment. But it glosses over the fact that forgiveness is a slippery and complex concept, meaning many things to many people.
The above assumptions not only ignore the real pain many people suffer, but shame those who chose not to forgive. In a BBC1 TV program in 2011 “What is the Point in Forgiveness?”, the U.K.’s then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, warned against forgiving too easily. He told the Radio Times: “I think the 20th century saw such a level of atrocity that it has focused our minds very, very hard on the dangers of forgiving too easily” (Thomas, 2011). The point he went on to make very strongly was that if forgiveness is easy, it is as if the suffering doesn’t really matter.
Some other challenges in the practice of forgiveness and reconciliation follow.
Challenges
- Letting go: Forgiveness requires a deliberate — or as Gandhi put it, “strong” — letting go of negative emotions toward the offender.
- Assuming that forgiveness means reconciliation: People can mistake forgiveness for reconciliation. Sometimes it is best to do as Desmond Tutu advises: release the relationship (and forgive!) rather than renew it.
- Accountability: Another challenge is how forgiveness is promoted. There is a real danger in politicizing forgiveness, since the rhetoric of forgiveness can prevent politicians being held accountable, as in the above-mentioned case of Burundi. It has also been suggested that in transitional justice (which can be defined as a society's attempt to come to terms with legacies of massive human rights abuses) perceived pressure to forgive and the repression of anger or resentment may be psychologically harmful and reinforce structures of inequality. Similarly victims of child sex abuse within the church have sometimes complained that members of the clergy urged them to forgive rather than pursue justice.
- Creating the right climate: A paradox of forgiveness is that in a restorative justice setting the more you talk about forgiveness or encourage it, the less safe people may feel. Moreover, pushing forgiveness may make people feel pressured, hence trigger direct resistance from them. Forgiveness is not a magic bullet; it can re-traumatize.
- No set formula: Since forgiveness may have relevance in a great variety of social, cultural, and racial settings, it is important that forgiveness be approached according to the given context and not applied as a one-size-fits-all solution.
- Provision of resources: The greatest challenge to any successful reconciliation process, whether in building bridges between warring communities on a national level, or seeking to rehabilitate violent individuals into the community, is the provision of financial resources to allow these processes to be sustained and developed.
- Sustaining dialogue: The challenge to any society
is to develop sustained dialogue and reconciliation processes, so that
our differences will never serve as the source of division, conflict,
and violence.
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/spirituality-and-community-building/forgiveness-and-reconciliation/main