\u201cThe tradition of forgiving was central to the civil rights movement, and it\u2019s grounded in two things,\u201d\u009d said the Rev. Jonathan L. Walton, a professor of Christian morals at Harvard and minister of its Memorial Church. \u201cOne cannot be held accountable for how others treat us, but we can be held accountable by God for how we treat others. So forgiveness and reconciliation are central to us. Particularly for Martin Luther King, it was not about defeating an enemy but defeating injustice by bringing people from opposing sides into beloved community.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Some of those moments of reconciliation have been soul-stirring in their force. One thinks of former Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama rolling his wheelchair into a reunion of Selma marchers in 1995 to renounce the segregationist beliefs that had defined his political career. Yet even if the offender never apologizes at all, black Christianity has repeatedly offered God\u2019s grace in the all-too-real world.<\/p>\n
\u201cForgiveness is just expected,\u201d\u009d said the Rev. Douglas A. Slaughter, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Aiken, S.C. \u201cEven as a child, we were not allowed to hate the racist but to hate racism, and to fight against it. We were taught ways to understand that the racist is more in need of understanding than we were. It\u2019s just how you were raised.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n