Amish Grace

October 2, 2006. You doubtlessly remember the terrible tragedy that occurred ten years ago on that date in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. You may not have remembered the name of that small town, but that is where ten Amish girls were brutally shot in their one-room schoolhouse.

Such a horrendous event is unforgettable.

The Shooting

Charles Roberts, a local 32-year-old man who was not Amish, entered the school just before 10 o’clock on that Monday morning. He released all the boys but kept the ten girls hostage. The teacher escaped and ran for help—but to no avail.

Even though the police soon arrived, they were unable to do anything to stop Roberts from shooting all ten of the girls. Three died at the scene and two more died the next morning. One survived with severe brain injury. The other four recovered and were able to go back to school.

Donald Kraybill and two colleagues wrote a powerful book about that school shooting and its aftermath. They titled their book Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (2007). Kraybill arrived at Nickel Mines on the morning following the shooting. The first part of the book is based largely on his observations and interviews with many Amish and “English” people who lived in the community.

Kraybill (b. 1946), the world’s leading expert on the Amish, is also the co-author of a 500-page book titled simply The Amish (2013).

I first became acquainted with Kraybill’s name when I read his 1978 book The Upside-Down Kingdom not long after it was published. I have been an admirer of him ever since, and reading Amish Grace for the first time this month increased my admiration of him.

The Movie

Perhaps many of you have seen the 2010 made-for-television movie “Amish Grace” that was in part based on the book—although the movie’s central character, and her family, was fictional. A couple of weeks ago, June and I watched the movie for the second time and were deeply moved by it again.

Thankfully, the shootings were not shown, but the grief of the parents was made very evident. What was of particular interest, and amazement for many, was the forgiving attitude of the Amish community.

To make it a more interesting movie, though, the fictional mother Ida, whose oldest daughter was one of the five who were killed, at first resented the forgiving attitude of Gideon, her husband, and the larger Amish community.

In reality, as well as in the movie, beginning on the very day of the shooting some of the local Amish people began reaching out to killer’s wife as well as to his father, expressing loving concern and forgiveness. The fictional part of the movie portrayed well the positive change in Ida’s life when her attitude changed from anger to forgiveness. 

Gideon & Ida (from the movie)

My Visit

More or less on a whim, the next day after watching the movie I drove 70-plus miles to just south of Jamesport, Mo. By chance, or providence, I met and had about an hour of delightful conversation with Melvin Yutzy, an Amish farmer with eight children, including a daughter who looked much like the schoolgirls in the movie.

He said an “English” friend drove to his place on the afternoon of October 2, 2006, and told him about the shootings. When I asked him what he thought about the forgiving attitude of the Amish in Nickel Mines, he was in complete agreement.

Just like the Amish people Kraybill interviewed soon after the shootings, my new friend Melvin emphasized that forgiveness is the only option for followers of Jesus. 

My daughter Kathy was with me and took
this picture of me by the Yutzy's buggy.
What do you make of the Chiefs sticker?

Remembering Robert Capon

Although he was no household name, Robert Farrar Capon was a noted Christian clergyman and author. Born in 1925 and a lifelong New Yorker, he passed away one year ago, on Sept. 5, 2013.
 

Robert Farrar Capon (in 2011)

Capon authored twenty books, and back in the 1980s I became aware of him and read at least some of one or two of his books—enough that I remembered him with appreciation.

Last September when I heard that Capon had died, I decided to read one of his books in his memory. The one I chose was "Parables of Grace" (1990), and I was not disappointed.

Here is part of what I wrote in my brief Goodreads review of that book:

As the title indicates, this work deals only with those parables of Jesus which especially emphasize grace, and Capon has a remarkable understanding of the breadth and depth of God’s grace. Some readers may even be offended by the radical nature of Capon’s understanding of grace.

His far-from-usual interpretation of the parables soon became evident in reading his “take” on them. For example, “We twentieth-century Christians—with our basically nineteenth-century view of childhood as a wonderful and desirable state—miss the point of the passage” about Jesus saying his followers would have to become like children.

He explains:

In Jesus’ time, and for most of the centuries since, childhood was almost always seen as a less than human condition that was to be beaten out of children as soon as possible. Therefore when Jesus sets us a little child as an example, he is setting up not a winsome specimen of all that is simple and charming but rather one of life’s losers (p. 17).

In “The First Parable of Grace: The Coin in the Fish’s Mouth,” his third chapter, Capon says that it is very sad      when the church acts as if it is in the religion business rather than in the Gospel-proclaiming business. What a disservice, not only to itself but to a world perpetually sinking in the quagmire of religiosity, when it harps on creed, cult, and conduct as the touchstones of salvation (p. 29).

Last month I read another of Capon’s books, "The Foolishness of Preaching" (1997), which I wish I could have read 50+ years ago when I was preaching every week. In it he calls religion, spirituality, and morality “grim pills” that stand in contrast to the radical grace he praises.

To Capon’s way of thinking, not only grace but also the forgiveness produced by that grace is radical and unconditional.

In “Death, Resurrection, and Forgiveness: The Unforgiving Servant,” the fifth chapter of "Parables of Grace," he contends that “the gift of forgiveness proceeds solely out of God’s love and is therefore antecedent to any qualifying action on the part of the receiver” (p. 40).

Accordingly, at the end of that chapter, Capon says that both heaven and hell are occupied by “only forgiven sinners.” Jesus forgives all. Thus,

The sole difference, therefore, between hell and heaven is that in heaven the forgiveness is accepted and passed along, while in hell it is rejected and blocked (p. 50).

Capon’s writing is captivating because of his out-of-the-ordinary ideas and also because of his witty ways of saying things. For example, I enjoyed his reference to being “stuck with a paradoxical pig in an off-putting poke” ("Foolishness," p. 11).

And speaking of paradox, his trilogy on the parables of Jesus has been published in one volume, "Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus" (2002). I highly recommend it.

Yes, Robert Capon is a man worth remembering—and worth reading.

The Forgiveness Challenge

As I wrote about in my previous blog article, Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa on April 27, 1994. He was the first black president in that country that had long been dominated by the white minority.

At the time of Mandela’s election, there was still considerable anger and resentment among the blacks because of the decades of abuse and mistreatment under the cruel system known as apartheid.

There was also considerable fear and anxiety among the whites, who were no longer in control of political power. They had every reason to fear violent reaction by those who for so long had been victims of injustice. And there was unrest that did result in some violence.

However, President Mandela took a conciliatory attitude and led in the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1995. Mandela chose Desmond Tutu to be the head of the TRC, and he was an excellent choice.

Tutu (b. 1931) was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1960. He served three years as the Bishop of Lesotho in the late 1970s and then as Bishop of Johannesburg in 1985-86. Tutu was then installed as the Archbishop of Cape Town (one of the three capitals of South Africa) in 1986, a post he held until 1996, the year he turned 65.

Tutu’s work for peace, justice, and reconciliation began long before 1995. In fact, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, while Mandela was still in prison and the majority population of South Africa was still under oppressive white rule.

But in his tireless opposition to apartheid, Tutu advocated only nonviolent means for change.

Tutu’s new book “The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World” was published just last month. It was co-authored with his daughter Mpho. She is also an Anglican priest who now lives in Virginia.

Having just read their splendid book, I highly recommend it—especially if you have any lingering feelings of anger or resentment toward people who have hurt you in the past.

The Tutus’ “fourfold path” to forgiveness includes (1) telling the story, (2) naming the hurt, (3) granting forgiveness, and (4) renewing or releasing the relationship.

I am not sure what all it is going to involve, but beginning on May 4, the Tutus are leading the “Tutu Global Forgiveness Challenge” on the Internet. I have signed up—along with people from more than 120 other countries—to receive the daily emails and other information about forgiveness.

If you are interested, the address for learning more about the Forgiveness Challenge, as well as for signing up, is https://ForgivenessChallenge.com. And while you will probably be encouraged to buy their book, that is not required and signing up for the online activity is free of charge.

In promoting the challenge, their website declares, “The Forgiveness Challenge will help you discover how the act of forgiving can bring more love and peace to your life. When enough of us forgive–we can change the world!”

I think that is quite true. That is the reason I am writing about this—and encouraging you to respond to the forgiveness challenge.

Although Desmond and Mpho Tutu are Anglican priests, their book is not explicitly religious. It is based on a deep understanding of human psychology and verified by the experiences they have had, especially his experience with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

And it is by no means just about South Africa. It is for all who need to forgive—and to be forgiven by others.

"Forgiving Everything"

A year ago at this time (the first week in Dec.) my posting was about “God’s Samurai.” That was what Capt. Mitsuo Fuchida, the lead pilot of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was called after he later became a Christian. This column is more about that same story, but it centers on Jacob DeShazer, a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps on that fateful day of Dec. 7, 1941.

DeShazer, born in Oregon in 1912, enlisted in the Air Corps in 1940 and rose to the rank of sergeant in 1941. He was stationed in Washington at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, but shortly thereafter he, along with other members of the 17th Bomb Group, volunteered to join a special unit that was formed to attack Japan. They soon acquired the name “Doolittle’s Raiders” after their famous commander, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle.

In April 1942, DeShazer and his fellow crew members were forced to parachute into enemy territory when their B-25 ran out of fuel. He was captured the very next day by Japanese soldiers and consequently spent some 40 months in P.O.W. camps (both in Japan and China)—and 34 of those months in solitary confinement. During his long, painful ordeal as a prisoner, in May 1944 he was able to get a copy of the Bible. Reading it brought about a great change in his way of thinking.

At the end of the war in August 1945, DeShazer was freed and able to go back to the U.S. He soon decided that he wanted to go into missionary work and began to prepare for that ministry at Seattle Pacific College. During this time he wrote a short account of his experiences, calling it “I Was a Prisoner of Japan.” That story was printed as a Christian tract, and more than a million copies were distributed to the Japanese people.

It was a copy of DeShazer’s tract that Timothy Pietsch gave to Capt. Fuchida that eventually led to his becoming a Christian. (As I wrote last year, Pietsch was the son-in-law of C. K. Dozier, founder of Seinan Gakuin, the school complex where I taught in Japan. In May of this year, I heard this story directly from Pietsch’s son Kelsey, who was visiting Seinan Gakuin at the same time I was.)

“From Pearl Harbor to Calvary” (2011) is the title of the English translation of Fuchida’s autobiography. Florence DeShazer wrote the Introduction and refers to her husband as Jake. She concludes: “The autobiography that follows tells the full story of my husband’s dear friend, Mr. Mitsuo Fuchida, a man who, like Jake, was completely transformed by the Lord and preached and lived a message of forgiveness.”

In his book Fuchida tells that after he finished reading DeShazer’s story, he thought, “If a Bible could change his life, it might change mine.” So the next day he bought a Bible and began reading it. And when he read about the crucifixion of Jesus, he realized there was “the source of this miracle of love that can forgive enemies!”

“Forgiving Everything” is the subtitle of the story of DeShazer as told by Ace Collins in his book “Stories Behind Men of Faith” (2009). He is also the subject of a children’s book, written by Janet and Geoff Benge and published with the subtitle “Forgive Your Enemies” (2009).

DeShazer lived to be 95 years old, passing away in March 2008. His long life of loving and forgiving is worth considering well as once again recall the tragic events of 12/7/41.

"The Glad River"

“There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.” These words of Psalm 46:4 (KJV) are cited on page 291 of Will D. Campbell’s “The Glad River” (1982) and are apparently the source of the title.

I recently finished reading Campbell’s novel, deciding to read it shortly after hearing of his death early last month. He would have celebrated his 89^th birthday this week, on July 18, had he not passed away on June 3.

Campbell was often referred to as a “maverick.” Among other newspapers and websites, headlines in the New York Times on June 4 and on HuffingtonPost.com on June 5 described him that way.

The central character in “The Glad River” is Doops, a young man born in Mississippi in 1920, four years before the author. And while Campbell said his novel was not autobiographical, Doops is also a maverick as was his creator.

Although having a Baptist mother who tries for years to convince Doops to be baptized, he continually refuses to do so until late in the book—and I can’t tell the details without it being a spoiler for those of you who have yet to read the book.

Doops is continually seeking to find “real” Baptists – such as those of the 16^th century who were known as Anabaptists and about whom he wrote a story during his time in military service during World War II.

As Doops correctly understood, those baptists (intentionally not capitalized) were pacifists, did not believe in the death penalty, and believed in the complete separation of church and state. That seemed to be what Doops also believed. And that was why he couldn’t be a conventional Baptist in the South.

So, Doops was probably somewhat autobiographical after all.

In an article published shortly after Campbell’s death, noted Baptist historian and author Bill Leonard wrote how Campbell was “obsessed with grace.” That seems to be a correct assessment. While he didn’t write about it directly, grace is an underlying theme of “The Glad River.”

As a result of God’s grace, undeserved and unreserved forgiveness, another of Campbell’s themes, is clearly seen in the novel.

James Wm. McClendon, Jr., was a prominent baptist theologian, born the same year as Campbell, although he died in 2000. (He is the one who emphasized being baptist with a small “b,” as I wrote about in a blog article found here.)

In his highly acclaimed “Ethics: Systematic Theology, Volume I,” McClendon cites a passage from The Glad River at the beginning of Part II. Then in writing about “The Politics of Forgiveness,” McClendon tells of Campbell’s discussion with his non-believing friend P.D. East.

As I wrote on this blog three years ago today, on one occasion, P. D. asked Will, “In ten words or less, what’s the Christian message?” Campbell’s pungent answer was, “We’re all bastards but God loves us anyway” (“Brother to a Dragonfly," p. 220).

That is essentially the meaning of grace. And that is the type of God’s love and acceptance experienced by the beer-guzzling, rough-talking young men in “The Glad River”: Doops and his friends Kingston and “Model T.”

Whether we admit it or not, many of us “good Christians” think we are morally superior to others, such as, perhaps, fundamentalist Christians and bigoted Southerners with whom we disagree – or even superior to people like the young men in Campbell’s novel.

A serious reading of “The Glad River” can perhaps help us reflect on our pharisaicalism and even on our judgmental attitudes towards others, those bas----- whom God loves just as much as he loves us.