by Herb Frazier
Some family members who do not forgive readily admit their loved one embodied the principles of forgiveness attributed to Christianity. Nadine Collier stated that she heard her mother’s voice when she spoke at the bond hearing, but when Susie Jackson’s son, Walter, was asked about forgiveness he said, “Right now all in my heart is anger for him. I doubt if I’ll ever forgive him.”8
Polly Sheppard found that the teachings in the Bible require one to forgive although it took some time for her to forgive Dylann Roof: “With me, forgiveness is a process. I have to think about it. Sometimes I have to have a prodding from God to forgive people for small things. When it comes to something this magnificent, it would be a whole process for me.”9
What did Jesus say about forgiveness, and what can that teach us about this extraordinary practice? In Matthew 18, Peter asks Jesus how often he should forgive if a member of the church sins against him. “ ‘As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times’ ” (vv. 21–22 NRSV). The response is clearly not about how often one forgives, but the number itself is haunting since Roof fired exactly seventy-seven bullets in the Emanuel Church basement. Christ’s words from the cross at Calvary, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34 KJV), reverberate across the centuries and have been used by countless people as an example: “Father Forgive” is inscribed on the wall behind the altar at the Coventry Cathedral in England, bombed by the Germans in 1940. It produced the International Centre for Reconciliation, which continues to address conflicts in societies around the world. In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a sermon he titled “Love and Forgiveness,” said, “These sublime words from the lips of our Lord and Master on the cross of Calvary represent love at its best. They represent the magnificent example of the courage to love.”10
Clementa Pinckney echoed the teachings of King—only two months before Pinckney was killed—during a prayer he offered at a community event called Requiem on Racism, which was held in the sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in the wake of the police shooting of the unarmed Walter Scott in North Charleston. His words are particularly haunting when you consider the racist nature of Pinckney’s murder: “We know that only love can conquer hate, that only love can bring all together in your name. . . . Together we come to bury racism, to bury bigotry, and to resurrect and revive love, compassion and tenderness. We pray that you would bless and empower all of us who are here to reach and to feel the love and to share the love.” 11 Many community leaders spoke that day, including US Representative James Clyburn, and at the end of the event, Pinckney referred to it as a funeral in which they were metaphorically burying racism.
During the weeks following the murder of African American Walter Scott by white policeman Michael Slager, Senator Pinckney worked with his colleagues in the state senate to adopt a bill requiring police to wear body cameras. He gave a short, very moving speech on the Senate floor in May 2015, which ended with an expression of empathy and compassion that foreshadowed the statements of forgiveness made at Roof’s bond hearing only one month later: “We have a great opportunity to allow sunshine into this process. . . . Our hearts go out to the Scott family, and our hearts go out to the Slager family because the Lord teaches us to love all, and we pray that over time, that justice be done.”12 (The body cameras bill was passed by the South Carolina General Assembly on June 4, 2015.)
Pinckney’s expressions of love and empathy have a long tradition in the AME Church, going back to its founder, Richard Allen, when Allen asked the judge to release the Southern slaveholder who had tried to kidnap him in Philadelphia. At an Emancipation Day Program in the late 1950s, Benjamin Glover, who was severely beaten by the Ku Klux Klan as a young man when he tried to register to vote, stated publicly that despite that incident he had no hatred in his heart for white people, telling his African American audience that they should love the white man.13 Where does this extraordinary capacity for love and forgiveness come from? South Carolina NAACP leader and AME minister Joseph Darby describes this capacity for forgiveness as a survival or coping skill to survive the horrific conditions during slavery times: “If you have no prospects to escape, you try to figure out how to forgive so that you can move on for your own psychological well-being. I think that’s baked into the Southern African American experience. That doesn’t mean I absolve you of all responsibilities; it just means I forgive you.”14 “Forgiveness, therefore, is a deep spiritual practice that helps people to survive as they refuse to give in to the anger and hate that they might rightfully feel toward those who have brutalized them for so long. So when the families forgave, they were taking the moral high ground,” Dr. Jeremy Rutledge explained in a sermon on the subject at Charleston’s Circular Congregational Church. He quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who once said, “We already have enough burden,” and praised the families for turning a legal proceeding into a spiritual teaching.15
Renowned theologian James Cone has written extensively about the origins and implications of forgiveness within the African American community. Cone, the father of black liberation theology, was raised in the AME church in Arkansas, and he interprets the African American capacity for forgiveness as a form of resilience and resistance, a way to maintain one’s humanity when one’s social and political power has been stripped away: “One forgives the oppressor in order to transform anger into something that nourishes the soul.”16 Perhaps this is what Camryn Singleton meant when she spoke with Bob Woodward soon after her mother’s murder, when she told him that being consumed with hatred was a worse choice. Perhaps it is what the family members were articulating at the bond hearing. That morning, Bethane Middleton Brown publicly spoke about her anger and her conscious decision to honor her sister’s focus on choosing love rather than hate.
Darby explains that everyone who calls himself a Christian should practice forgiveness: “It ought to be hardwired into folks. If you say you’re a follower of a Messiah who not only sacrificed his life, but forgave those who killed him, then that means forgiveness, as difficult as it is, has to be hardwired into the proposition.”17
This approach to adversity brings us back to the story of the crucifixion, so central to all Christian thought. Cone explains the gospel as the way we move beyond the crucifixion by reminding us that God promised to be with us during a tragedy. Forgiveness, according to Cone, comes from this promise and the fact that “tragedy is not the last word.”18 Considered in this light, forgiveness becomes a powerful tool, particularly for the oppressed. It is a deeply spiritual practice and harkens back to the long history of struggle and resistance in the African American community. Cone’s book The Cross and the Lynching Tree deepens the connection between the suffering experienced by African Americans, particularly in terms of lynching during the Jim Crow years, and the suffering of Christ on the cross. “In the mystery of God’s revelation, black Christians believed that just knowing that Jesus went through an experience of suffering in a manner similar to theirs gave them faith that God was with them, even in suffering on lynching trees, just as God was present with Jesus in suffering on the cross.”19 This deep historical connection through suffering is critical in our understanding of forgiveness expressed at the bond hearing. The racist ideology inspired by the white supremacist beliefs that motivated Dylann Roof was no different from the racist ideology avowed by the Ku Klux Klan and others who participated in the lynchings that took place across the United States in the twentieth century.
Cone explores the connection between salvation and the cross and describes the cross as an “opening to the transcendent,” particularly for the oppressed, “that transcendence of the spirit that no one can take away, no matter what they do.”20 The cross reminds us that “there is a dimension to life beyond the reach of the oppressor.”21 It takes enormous Christian faith to believe in transcendence, and this is what the world witnessed at the bond hearing—faith in the divine and the love that comes from that faith. With this faith als
o comes hope and the strength to go on. This hope has nurtured African Americans and provided strength, joy, and solace within the walls of the church for generations. Music, the blues in particular, also provided solace and hope and reminded people that “there was more to life than what one encountered daily in the white man’s world.”22 Because the cross is a symbol of salvation, Cone explains, the focus has been on this positive aspect of the story while becoming disconnected from human suffering. This disconnect has led to what some call “cheap grace,”23 and it has implications for Charleston.
Joseph Darby dislikes the “raging politeness” that characterizes the attitudes in Charleston and claims that it stems from a long-standing need for acceptance by “folks who will do anything but offend the status quo . . . it’s about wanting to please people and get along at all costs.” Others call it “go along to get along,” and Darby says this attitude is worse in Charleston than anywhere else he has seen.24 Malcolm Graham echoes Darby’s sentiments and says the passivity in Charleston’s black community is one of the reasons he left the city and never came back. He also explains that this passivity is why there were no riots or anger in the streets after the church killings.25
Darby often refers to the dangers of the kumbaya moment in Charleston. Many community leaders share his concern. This is not to discount the relief experienced throughout the city and beyond that there were no violent repercussions after the shooting; the unity and peace in Charleston have gone a long way toward healing. The fact that the Confederate flag is off the statehouse grounds is most certainly a hopeful sign, but institutional racism is still blamed for underfunded, poor-performing segregated schools; higher rates of unemployment and imprisonment in the African American population; housing and gentrification issues; unjust voter-ID laws that disproportionately affect African Americans; and so on.
Malcolm Graham agrees with Darby and reminds us that the Confederate flag would still be flying beside the statehouse if not for the murder of his sister and eight other beautiful souls. Mr. Graham worries that “the oversimplification of I forgive demonstrates a lack of understanding of the significance of the incident.” Graham admits that he does not fault or challenge anyone’s “spiritual walk” or their capacity to forgive within that context. He has said numerous times that he is a forgiving man, but he does not forgive what happened to his sister Cynthia Graham Hurd, which was “premeditated, calculated, cold-blooded murder.” He also says, “It was an attack on a race of people and an attack on humanity; it was an attack on the Christian church. Whether you’re Baptist, Jewish, or Muslim, you should be extremely upset. There’s no forgiveness for racism . . . it’s just stupid. It’s hate, pure hate. I don’t forgive . . . That doesn’t mean I’m not a forgiving spirit.”26
A week after the church shooting, African American writer Roxane Gay began her op-ed piece in the New York Times saying, “I do not forgive Dylann Roof, a racist terrorist whose name I hate saying or knowing. I have no immediate connection to what happened in Charleston, S.C., last week beyond my humanity and my blackness, but I do not foresee ever forgiving his crimes, and I am wholly at ease with that choice.”27 Gay repeated the line of the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” and she wondered if there are limits to this forgiveness, especially for those sins that fall outside of our own behavior. Her question, which most certainly is one many were asking at the time, is in keeping with Senator Graham’s feelings about the nature of the crime committed at Emanuel Church. Gay also bemoaned the fact that African Americans are expected to forgive “in order to survive” the litany of racist practices that continue in America: “We forgive and forgive and forgive and those who trespass against us continue to trespass against us.”28
Malcolm Graham is not alone among family members in his inability to forgive, and the facile way it has been interpreted by some members of the press is disturbing. There’s a way that it seems to wash over the excruciating grief Senator Graham and other relatives and friends are enduring. DePayne Middleton-Doctor’s cousin, Waltrina Middleton, is upset about the way the statements of forgiveness were immediately used to interpret the larger meaning of what happened at Emanuel Church: it “took away our narrative to be rightfully hurt. I can’t turn off my pain.”29
The grief among these families is bottomless, and within the small Emanuel family there are some who attended every funeral. It is difficult for most of us to imagine losing a loved one in this manner, and it is equally difficult to imagine losing nine friends in one day. And every mass shooting brings up memories of what happened to their loved ones. Both Nadine Collier and Malcolm Graham expressed anguish when they heard about the terrorist attacks in Paris five months after losing their loved ones. It brought the horror of their experience back into their lives in an immediate way. Ms. Collier commented, “I don’t want to be remembering back. I don’t even want to go back.”30 But mass shootings and terrorist attacks have become an inescapable part of our lives, and it is a cruel reality that Ms. Collier and too many others have to relive over and over again.
Less than one month after Paris, when fourteen people were killed at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California, Felicia Sanders told the Post and Courier that coping with these mass killings was the hardest part of coping with her own grief over losing her son and aunt under similar circumstances. She told reporters she prayed for all victims and their families. “My heart bleeds,” she said in her Gullah accent. “I can relate, because not that long ago I been that person.”31
Despite the implications of the expressions of forgiveness expressed at the bond hearing, the power of the words transcends the negative connotations. Those who spoke at the hearing did not plan what they would say, nor did they coordinate their efforts among themselves. It is simply what happened. Anthony Thompson didn’t even want to go the bond hearing, but “the kids” (Kevin, Denise, and Anthony) talked him into attending. Before he became a minister in the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1995, Thompson worked for twenty-seven years as a probation officer for the state of South Carolina. During that time, he never carried a gun. He’d always had a thing about guns and didn’t see the need for one. “I was more effective than if I had carried a gun,” he explains. “My clients respected me so much more.”32
He had been to many bond hearings in his lifetime, and he assumed this one would be procedural like the others. He didn’t know he would have the opportunity to speak—and he even told his family that none of them should say a thing. But when the judge asked him if he would like to speak, Thompson heard a voice speaking to him—the same voice he had heard when he was only five years old, chasing and kicking at leaves in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot in downtown Charleston; the voice that told him he would preach one day. “The same voice said, ‘I’ve got something to say, and this is what I want you to tell them.’ And he told me exactly what to tell them. God told me exactly what to say because I didn’t even want to be there. I wasn’t even thinking about Dylann Roof. I’m still thinking about my wife and what had happened. Did she suffer? I said exactly what he told me—no more and no less. I knew where to begin, and I knew where to end. Because he told me. That was it.”33
Thompson was calm throughout; he never raised his voice during the bond hearing, and he spoke in complete sentences: “I forgive you, and my family forgives you, but we would like you to take this opportunity to repent. Repent, and pass, give your life to the one who matters most, Christ. So he can change it, and change your ways, no matter what happens to you.”34
Whatever we may believe, the power of the families’ statements is larger than them. Their strength seemed to come from somewhere else, and who can say where faith resides? Their words touched something deep inside each of us. Thompson says that as soon as he spoke, he began to experience peace: “When I sat down, I was a different person. I wasn’t that person thinking like when I came in there, ‘What happened to my wife?’ No more. I said, ‘God, you’ve got her; y
ou gave me my peace this morning.’ I knew where to go from there. I still just don’t know exactly what to do, but I knew not to dwell on the tragedy anymore. And I never dwell on Dylann Roof for one minute, for one second.”35
According to Dr. Don Flowers Jr., pastor of Providence Baptist Church on Daniel Island, South Carolina, Thompson’s extraordinary statement embodies the connection between forgiveness and healing. He reminded us of the Lord’s Prayer and its instructions about forgiving our trespasses the same way “we forgive those who trespass against us.”36 He explained this practice in the words of renowned theologian Lewis Smedes, whose book Forgive and Forget explores the spiritual dimensions of forgiveness in great depth: “ ‘When you forgive someone, you slice away the wrong from the person who did it. You disengage the person from his harmful act. You re-create him. At one moment, you change that identity. He is remade in your memory.’ ”37 This process is exactly what Thompson expressed about his experience after speaking at the bond hearing. Flowers also explained that the forgiveness expressed by the families “wasn’t a sign of weakness, a sign of resignation. Rather it may be the most powerful thing they could do as they remake the future.”38 And remaking the future is exactly what they are doing.
Thompson says his statement was “a God thing. He had a bigger plan, and I was just a small portion of his plan.”39 He couldn’t know at the time that the peace he felt would be experienced by others. Some call it grace, and this is what President Obama emphasized in his moving eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, which some say is his greatest speech. The president reminded us that grace comes unbidden: “We don’t earn grace. We’re all sinners. We don’t deserve it. But God gives it to us anyway. And we choose how to receive it. It’s our decision how to honor it. . . . Amazing grace.”40 The president went on to refer to the power of grace, the goodness at its root, and its power to effect change. And then he did something that surprised and delighted everyone: he sang the hymn “Amazing Grace.” How powerful and how fitting, given the song’s origins. Ironically, this hymn was written by an English former slave trader named John Newton; even more ironic is the fact that his slave ships brought captured Africans to Charleston, South Carolina. According to legend, Newton found his faith during a particularly rough storm in 1748. Fourteen years later he was ordained as an Anglican priest, and he wrote the words for “Amazing Grace” in 1772. It is worth noting that Newton also wrote a widely circulated pamphlet called “Thoughts upon a Slave Trade,” which outlines the horrific conditions on the slave ships and publicly apologizes for his work as a slave trader.
