Forgiveness Makes the Front Page

“Families of South Carolina Church Massacre Victims Offer Forgiveness.”

That, or something like it, was the headline running across the front page, above the fold, of Saturday’s New York Times. The word “forgiveness” stood out. When, I asked myself, had I last – had I ever – seen the word in a Times headline before? But there it was on the top paper in the stack at the Hudson News outlet in Penn Station.

Camping in the Catskills in the hours after the massacre took place, and then taking part in the American Pilgrimage Project in Albany, I had missed the developing story – seeing only a tabloid picturing the killer near the cash register at a diner in Demming, Sullivan County.

Already, President Obama was marveling at the forgiveness shown by the families of the victims; already David Remnick, on the New Yorker web site, was marveling at the long history of forgiveness and forbearance among African Americans. For me the story, in effect, began with forgiveness – and this made the ability of the victims’ families to forgive all the more striking.

Alas, by Monday the Times – its headline writers, at any rate – was back onto a familiar message of conflict. “Defiant Show of Unity in Church That Lost 9 to Racial Violence,” the headline read. Why “Defiant”? I read the story straight through to the end, and there is nothing in it to support the headline’s claim of defiance. Here are Christians in Charleston, black and white, joining together in faith; worshiping; singing the “sturdiest” of hymns, such as “Amazing Grace”; forming resolve against “every demon on hell and on earth”; praying together; and reaching out in prayer to the parents of the killer:

“They are shattered,” Bishop Herman R. Yoos told the congregation at a later service. “But their faith is strong.”

Why is all this presented as “Defiant”? Is it because the people at the church in Charleston are – lest we forget – black people? Or is it because forgiveness is so strange in our society that it must be infused with aggression and violence – must be made “Defiant” – lest it be unintelligible?

22 June 2015

#media commentary #emanuel ame church
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