Wonderful Reading | Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy

Well Done with a Better Perspective of The Amish than I've seen in a Long Time | Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy | Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, ...

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	• Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, ... Jossey-Bass, 2007 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 36 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Important

The issue of forgiveness is one of the most difficult and one of the most important issues in Christian life.
I was so impressed with the book that I read the book within 2 days. It continues to linger on my mind. It is a must read! It really deserves 4 1/2 stars. My only criticism is that it appears to be written in a hurry and that the different authors sometimes overlap and repeat the same issue.
The positives far outweigh the small negative.

Wonderful Reading

This book is an amazing story of true grace, Amish style, and forgiveness. I highly recommend it to all readers.

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Well Done with a Better Perspective of The Amish than I've seen in a Long Time

Having grown up amoung the Amish, I frequently see poorly written books and writings about this often-misunterstoon group of wonderful people. The authors have delved far beyond just the occurence at Nickel Mines and looked at the underlying faith of what the Amish are really about - their interpretation and living out of the Christian Faith. These folks have a depth of character and belief far what most of us "English" imagine, and the authors have done a good job in a very short time of finding that. Granted there is some repetition in the writings and from a purely technical literary standpoint perhaps not the best, but from a content stanpoint this book is a 5 star all the way. It depicts the faith of the Amish and what makes them tick better than any other I've come across. Unless you've been amoung them and understand them, it would be difficult to know, I've been there and it is accurate.

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Seventy times seven

This book is a grace note in an age of religiously fuelled hate crimes and suicide bombings. It is not only about how the Old Order Amish found it within themselves to forgive the killer of their young girls, it is also one of the best books on religion and ethics that I have ever read.

If the reader learns one thing from the Nickel Mines school shooting, it is this: "the Amish commitment to forgive is not a small patch tacked onto their fabric of faithfulness. Rather, their commitment to forgive is intricately woven into their lives and their communities."

The Amish take the Lord's Prayer to heart. If they themselves wish to be forgiven, they must forgive.

"Amish Grace" gives an account of Charles Carl Roberts IV and the instruments of cruelty and death that he brought to the small Nickel Mines schoolhouse on October 2, 2006. But as the authors put it, the biggest surprise "was not the intrusion of evil but the Amish response." How and why the Amish forgave the killer in their midst is the main focus of this book.

One of the contrasts I couldn't help drawing from this story was the Amish response to the murder of their children, versus the way John Walsh, dedicated host of "America's Most Wanted" reacted to the murder of his six-year-old son, Adam. Since that horrible day in 1981, Walsh has devoted himself to bringing criminals to justice, and has been instrumental in rescuing abducted children. In 2006 President Bush signed a new bill into law that changed how Americans protect their children against sexual predators such as Charles Carl Roberts IV. The law is called "The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act."

If John Walsh had been Amish, would any of these good and necessary deeds have been accomplished? On a more personal level, were the stricken Amish parents better able than Mr. Walsh to live with their grief because they forgave their children's killer?

In the course of writing this book, the authors develop answers to questions such as the above, from the Amish and non-Amish point-of-view. They don't preach. They don't resort to sociological mumbo-jumbo. They tell the stories of good people, who are also fallible human beings. They conclude that "Amish-style forgiveness can't be strip-mined from southern Lancaster County and transported wholesale to other settings. Rather, the lessons of grace that the rest of us take from Nickel Mines must be extracted with care and applied to other circumstances with humility."

This is a thoughtful, well-written book.

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On Monday morning, October 2, 2006, a gunman entered a one-room Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. In front of twenty-five horrified pupils, thirty-two-year-old Charles Roberts ordered the boys and the teacher to leave. After tying the legs of the ten remaining girls, Roberts prepared to shoot them execution with an automatic rifle and four hundred rounds of ammunition that he brought for the task. The oldest hostage, a thirteen-year-old, begged Roberts to "shoot me first and let the little ones go." Refusing her offer, 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.

The story captured the attention of broadcast and print media in the United States and around the world. By Tuesday morning some fifty television crews had clogged the small village of Nickel Mines, staying for five days until the killer and the killed were buried. The blood was barely dry on the schoolhouse floor when Amish parents brought words of forgiveness to the family of the one who had slain their children.

The outside world was incredulous that such forgiveness could be offered so quickly for such a heinous crime. Of the hundreds of media queries that the authors received about the shooting, questions about forgiveness rose to the top. Forgiveness, in fact, eclipsed the tragic story, trumping the violence and arresting the world's attention.

Within a week of the murders, Amish forgiveness was a central theme in more than 2,400 news stories around the world. The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek, NBC Nightly News, CBS Morning News, Larry King Live, Fox News, Oprah, and dozens of other media outlets heralded the forgiving Amish. From the Khaleej Times (United Arab Emirates) to Australian television, international media were opining on Amish forgiveness. Three weeks after the shooting, "Amish forgiveness" had appeared in 2,900 news stories worldwide and on 534,000 web sites.

Fresh from the funerals where they had buried their own children, grieving Amish families accounted for half of the seventy-five people who attended the killer's burial. Roberts' widow was deeply moved by their presence as Amish families greeted her and her three children. The forgiveness went beyond talk and graveside presence: the Amish also supported a fund for the shooter's family.

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 ask 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?

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