Mainstreaming Nonviolence Toolbox:

Building a World Where Everyone Matters

 This blog by Ken Butigan highlights ideas, books, videos, websites, projects, campaigns, organizations and individuals offering new directions for mainstreaming the power of nonviolent change.  Click here for more about mainstreaming nonviolence.

One of the Tools in the Toolbox: Forgiveness

“Hate is too heavy a burden to bear…
I can truly say that I don’t have any
ill feeling or malice or hatred toward anyone
that attacked me or had me arrested or jailed…”
— Rep. John Lewis

“The act of forgiving may be accepting
people at their word — immediately.”
— Madeline Bialecki

 Mainstreaming nonviolence is not about creating a utopia where all violence and conflict cease.  Instead, it is the process of creating a culture where, in the face of our tendencies as people and as societies to unleash violence in all of its destruction and cruelty, people everywhere:

• Have the tools to transform violence and conflict — and to take steps for more justice, peace and dignity in their lives and in the larger world;
• Are trained in the power and potential of nonviolent alternatives through stories, teaching, media, and their own experience; and
• Collaborate both in nourishing relationships and in creating policies, institutions, movements, and social structures that will nurture the nonviolent life in a more nonviolent world.

 One of the central dimensions of mainstreaming nonviolence is tapping the power and possibility of forgiveness.  In the past two decades, there has been a growing focus on what forgiveness is, how it works, and the ways it may change the world.

The Transforming Challenge of Forgiveness

The eighteen century writer Hannah More wrote, “Forgiveness is the economy of the heart… forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.”  Psychologist Robert Enright put it another way: “Forgiveness is giving up the resentment to which you are entitled, and offering to the persons who hurt you friendlier attitudes to which they are not entitled.”  And Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu put it starkly: “Without forgiveness, there is no future.”

I found my own grasp of this powerful and perplexing process sharpen when I saw the documentary, The Power of Forgiveness, which was released a couple of years ago.   As the film’s website explains, this documentary “explores recent research into the psychological and physical effects of forgiveness on individuals and within relationships under a wide variety of conditions and translates it into a popular, accessible documentary film for national public television. This includes feature stories on the Amish and the 9/11 tragedy….”  I highly recommend this film as a good starting point for engaging and deepening this process.

In the film, Robert Enright and his three decades of work on forgiveness are profiled, including his work with Protestant and Catholic school children in Northern Ireland.  Last October, I attended the Justice and Peace Studies Association conference in Milwaukee, where Dr. Enright spoke.  He said when he began to develop “forgiveness circles,” he was met with outrage.  “What we need instead,” one person told him, “are revenge circles.” 

Over the years, however, he has helped establish that “forgiveness practice” can be enormously transforming for all parties.  You can see a summary of his work by clicking here.

Explorations of Forgiveness

Here are some other organizations and individuals pioneering the research on forgiveness.

Stanford University’s Forgiveness Project has been the site for two decades of scientific study of forgiveness.  One of is offshoots is Forgive for Good.

Michael McCullough, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, where he directs the Laboratory for Social and Clinical Psychology, has written Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct.  His work was recently featured on public radio’s Speaking of Faith program, which also offers a range of resources and stories on this subject.  He was also interviewed on the website, In Character: A Journal of Everyday Virtues.  Also, check out organizational psychologist Paschal Baute’s “Forgiveness: Why and How.”

A number of the organizations promoting forgiveness include The Forgiveness Project; A Campaign for Forgiveness Research;and the Fetzer Institute  and its Campaign for Love and Forgiveness.

 Forgiveness Practice

 Spiritualityandpractice.com is a comprehensive and enormously important online resource on spiritual practices.  Here’s the section on forgiveness.

And while you’re at it, you might want to engage in the Fetzer Institute’s online “letting go ritual.”   I took it with certain wariness, but in the end found it helpful.  One of the key assumptions of this online practice is that forgiveness is as much about untangling our own harbored feelings and judgments as anything else.

Many of the dimensions of forgiveness are being given a broader and richer depth today in the emerging field and practice of Restorative Justice.  Within this new framework, however, forgiveness practice remains incalculably vital.

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