Forgiveness debated as nation moves on from Charleston
After a shooting that killed nine members of a S.C. church, U.S. struggles with feelings about alleged shooter.
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Under an outdoor tent a few blocks from Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Sharon Simmons paused while cleaning up from the previous night’s revival to ponder the idea of forgiving 21-year-old Dylann Roof, the white man accused of killing nine of the historic black church’s members, including the pastor.
A churchgoer herself, Simmons admits feeling torn between her anger and her Christian inclination to forgive. She also adds that she’s a firm believer in capital punishment. “Too many lives are gone,” the 57-year-old former New Yorker says.
Many African-Americans are struggling with those same feelings as the nation begins to move past the tragedy that occurred June 17 in Charleston. Although many say their religious faith requires them to forgive, there is a question of whether a public narrative of quick forgiveness actually provides cover for whites to avoid facing racism.
“It’s almost like white America is telling us, ‘Help us to forget the past by telling us that you forgive us,’ ” said Raymond Winbush, di- rector of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
But those who extend forgiveness say they are not naive in doing so. Some say they are still working at it, and they make clear that forgiveness is not the only emotion they have.
“It makes us angry. It makes some of us want to explode,” the Rev. Jonathan Newton said Wednesday during midweek services at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington, which has increased security at its historic sanctuary since the Charleston killings. But forgiveness is “not about that person, it ’s about you,” Newton said. “In order for you to be free, you’ve got to let it out.”
One factor at play is that forgiveness is a strong Christian tradition, and African-Americans identify as Christians more than any other group in the United States. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly 80 percent of blacks identified as Christian in 2014, compared with 77 percent of Hispanics and 70 percent of non-Hispanic whites. A smaller number of blacks, 18 percent, identified as agnostic, atheist or “nothing in particular,” compared with 24 percent of whites and 20 percent of Hispanics.