c. 2007 Religion News Service

(Adelle M. Banks, Daniel Burke, Shona Crabtree, Omar Sacirbey, Ansley Roan and Kevin Eckstrom contributed to this report.)

(UNDATED) Reflecting on the murder of five Amish schoolgirls last October in Nickel Mines, Pa., one local Amish man said he was struck by parallels between that crime and the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers.

Joseph said to his brothers, “When you sold me into slavery, you intended it for evil,” recalled the Amish man, who, in keeping with his community’s practices, asked not to be named. “But God intended it for good.”

The good that came out of Nickel Mines, according to the Amish man, was the world’s response to how the Amish practice forgiveness.

People saw how the Amish extended forgiveness and mercy to the killer, Charles Roberts, and his family just hours after the crime. Cards, letters and donations _ more than $4 million _ have poured into the tiny town in Lancaster County.

The Amish also sparked a global conversation about forgiveness _ why and how we should forgive those who’ve wronged us, who benefits from forgiving, and the subtle art of letting grudges go.

As the one-year anniversary of the Nickel Mines shooting approaches on Oct. 2, Religion News Service asked representatives from seven faith traditions about forgiveness and how they practice it.

Not an “Amish thing”

“Forgiveness is not an Amish thing. Everybody needs to do it and everybody is capable of it. With Plain, or Anabaptist, theology it’s simply more intrinsic _ it’s part of your inner-self. If we don’t forgive, we won’t have salvation is basically how we see it.”

_ An Amish man from Lancaster County, Pa.

Mutual Benefits

“My take _ I don’t speak for Judaism here _ is that forgiveness is a favor you do yourself, not a favor you do the other person. The purpose of forgiveness is not to lift the burden of wrongdoing from the guy who did wrong. The purpose of forgiveness is to cleanse your soul of the corrosion of being angry and vengeful.”

_ Rabbi Harold Kushner, bestselling author of “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” and “Overcoming Life’s Disappointments.”

Second Chances

“God forgave us so are we to forgive one another. We mess up on God every day. We hurt God every day. We do things we shouldn’t do. We say things we shouldn’t say. But yet he wakes us up every morning and gives us another chance. Every day is another day of his forgiveness.”

_ Fred Luter, pastor of Franklin Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans, who says city residents must forgive government officials for missteps made after Hurricane Katrina.

Forgive and Forget

“A big part of what people call forgiveness is just moving on with your life. A lot of people have had some horrible, some really unspeakable things happen to them, but at some point, in service of their own life, they have to make a decision to move on.

“Maybe `forget’ is not the right term, but `letting go’ or `setting aside.’ It doesn’t mean forgetting; in fact, it can become one’s richness. A lot of people have turned some pretty horrible stuff that’s happened to them into a way in which they bring tremendous blessings to others.”

_ Fleet Maull, a Buddhist who founded the Peacemaker Institute and the Prison Dharma Network, who spent 14 years in prison for drug trafficking.

No Remorse, No Forgiveness

“I have not forgiven my abuser because he has shown no remorse for what he’s done. He hasn’t asked for forgiveness, there’s no remorse there. I haven’t forgiven the individual, or the criminal institution that allowed this to happen. It’s my job to make sure people don’t confuse forgiveness with forgetting, that they don’t confuse forgiveness with consequences. Forgiveness can’t be seen as a substitute for either accountability or consequences.”

_ Christy Miller, who was abused by a Catholic priest at age 14, and founded the Cincinnati chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

Do Unto Others

“Believers are those, the Quran says, who forgive people. Forgiveness should be a characteristic of the believers. As we need God’s forgiveness for our own mistakes, in a similar way we should be forgiving others. And when we forgive others, we may gain forgiveness from God.”

_ Muzammil Siddiqi, chairman of the North American Fiqh Council and director of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove, Calif.

It’s Never Easy

“You never try and rush someone else into forgiving. There’s a difficult balance between letting them move at their own pace and helping them not to forget that forgiveness is possible. And for that to be credible, we need to go on telling stories about how it’s done; that’s why the example of people like the Amish is so powerful and necessary for all of us. Forgiveness is hard,possible and necessary.”

_ Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams

KRE/LF END RNS

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Photos of Kushner, Luter, Maull, Miller, Siddiqi and Williams are available via https://religionnews.com.