Forgiveness Without Theology?
Kathleen Fairchild Thursday, 1 March 2007
William Bole, Drew Christiansen, and Robert T. Hennemeyer, Forgiveness in International Politics: An Alternative Road to Peace (United States Conference of Catholic Bishop's Publishing, 2004). 224 pp. $19.95.
Does forgiveness work? This question is critical to conflict resolution experts seeking solutions to seemingly intractable violent conflicts. The answer is complex, because it is impossible to know if the world would have been better or worse without past efforts to foster forgiveness. Moreover, it is difficult to know exactly what constitutes forgiveness, when it is appropriate, and how it should be applied. According to the authors of Forgiveness in International Politics: An Alternative Road to Peace, "useful answers depend on a clear and particular grasp of what forgiveness means in a political context" (p. 180). Because traditional understandings of forgiveness as an individual act do not necessarily translate into a social concept of forgiveness, there is a need to re-imagine forgiveness on a larger scale.
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