What is Forgiveness?

On June 17, 2015, a young white man walked into a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., and sat quietly until the benediction, when he shouted racist statements and opened fire. The suspect, Dylann Roof, was arrested the next day. Killed were Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lee Lance, Cynthia Graham Hurd, Rev. Daniel L. Simmons Sr., Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, and Susie Jackson. After the killings, some family members expressed their forgiveness.

There are cynics who assume these extraordinary expressions of forgiveness were only a trip of the tongue when these family members were put on the spot—but if that’s true they would have recanted their statements or qualified them somehow. Each said something distinctly different at the bond hearing, and all the complexities and contradictions that weave their anger and grief into the notion of forgiveness must be considered. This forgiveness is not easy; it is quite the opposite.

But not every family had a representative at the bond hearing, and not all the family members feel the same way about forgiveness. Forgiveness itself is as complex as any human action. These extraordinary expressions of forgiveness do not suggest acceptance, nor do they imply forgive and forget.

Cynthia Graham Hurd’s brother, Malcolm Graham, was driving to Charleston from his home in Charlotte when he heard the bond hearing unfolding on National Public Radio. “When I heard the first person and second person say, ‘I forgive,’ I said, ‘That’s the sound bite. The media jumped on it and spread that forgive thing across nine families,’ which is not true,” he says. “If my sister was [killed by a distracted driver] ... and the person immediately said, ‘Please forgive me’ ... I would be very upset, but forgiveness would come a lot easier.”

Ethel Lee Lance’s daughter Sharon Risher is “not there yet.” As a pastor, she acknowledges the need for forgiveness, but she considers it a process with no time limit: “The God I believe in is patting me on the back, saying, ‘You take your time.’”

Murder may be the hardest kind of death to process, and unfathomable grief is coupled with anger. In Charleston the media attention has exacerbated the situation; something private became public immediately, in ways that were unexpected and out of one’s control. Ashland Magwood Temoney, DePayne Middleton-Doctor’s niece, said as a Christian it is expected of her to forgive. “But it is really hard, and at times I am very angry. I am sick of hearing the news or seeing anything about the trial. It reminds me of that night all over again. It infuriates me that she had so much to live for and four girls who depended on her.”