Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy
(eBook)

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    [year] => 2010
    [artist] => Donald B. Kraybill
    [fiction] => 
    [coverImageUrl] => https://cover.hoopladigital.com/opr_9780470873816_270.jpeg
    [titleId] => 15361333
    [isbn] => 9780470873816
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => Amish Grace
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    [pages] => 288
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                    [name] => Donald B. Kraybill
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    [synopsis] => 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?
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15361333
    [pa] => 
    [subtitle] => How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy
    [publisher] => Wiley
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