Book description
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?
