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Article Excerpt
Recent empirical studies have shown that forgiveness interventions decrease anxiety, depression, and anger, and increase self esteem, hope, and positive affect. We propose a three-tiered holistic psycho-educational approach called "The Forgiving Communities," that targets three interdependent categories: the family, the school, and the Church. The goal of The Forgiving Communities is to deepen individuals' (and society's) understanding and personal practice of, and growth in forgiveness. We posit here an initial model of the Church as Forgiving Community, consisting of multiple levels of forgiveness education intended to cultivate a culture of forgiveness and the expectation that forgiveness is part of the congregation's existence. The model targets the leadership of the congregation and every level of programming, from infancy through late adulthood.
It is in the ancient pages of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament where the concept of interpersonal forgiveness first finds its shape. From the story of Joseph forgiving his brothers (Gen. 50) to the forgiveness demonstrated by the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), the Scriptures paint a picture of forgiveness relevant not only in the divine-human relationship, but also in person-person relationships. This interpersonal nature is spelled out more explicitly in Pauline thought, where Christ's followers are urged, in their desire to pursue holy communal living, to forgive one another because they themselves had been forgiven by God through Christ (Eph. 4:32; Col. 3:13).
The essence of a forgiving response, as seen in the biblical texts above, is the cessation of resentment and the implementation or the resumption of a beneficent response toward an offender. Enright & Fitzgibbons (2000) define forgiveness as follows: People, upon rationally determining that they have been unfairly treated, forgive when they willfully abandon resentment and related responses (to which they have a right), and endeavor to respond to the wrongdoer based on the moral principle of beneficence, which may include compassion, unconditional worth, generosity, and moral love (to which the wrongdoer, by nature of the hurtful act or acts, has no right) (p. 24).
To forgive is not to condone, excuse, forget, or even to reconcile (see Enright, 2001; Worthington, 2005). To forgive is to offer mercy to someone who has acted unjustly.
Though forgiveness has been part of the Church's message and mission for millennia, it began to draw interest from social scientists only twenty years ago, when Smedes (1984), and Worthington and DiBlasio (1990) introduced the topic. A key feature of the social scientific work was the development of process models, or detailed descriptions of how people actually go about forgiving others. The two most often-cited models are Enright's process model and "Worthington's REACH model. In Enright's model the forgiver moves through four phases: uncovering anger (acknowledging the pain and exploring the injustice), deciding to forgive (exploring forgiveness and making a commitment to work toward forgiveness), working on forgiveness (refraining and developing empathy and compassion for the offender and hearing the pain), and the outcome (healing is experienced) (Freedman, Enright, & Knutson, 200.S). On the forgiveness journey, one progresses at his or her own pace through 20 forgiveness guideposts, often skipping some and revisiting others. In a series of studies, using the gold standard of randomized, experimental and control group designs with follow-up testing, Enright and colleagues have shown strong evidence for the emotional health benefits of using a road map to learn to forgive someone who was deeply unfair to the participant. Participants with a wide variety of hurts have experienced statistically significant reductions in anger, depression, anxiety, grief, and post-traumatic stress symptoms and statistically significant increases in forgiveness, self-esteem, hope, positive attitudes, environmental mastery, and finding meaning in suffering (Holter, Magnuson & Enright, in press).
In Worthington's model, the forgiver (R) recalls the offense in a supportive environment, builds (E) empathy for the offender through various exercises, gives an (A) altruistic gift of forgiveness to the offender, recognizing that, in the past, one has hurt others, (C) commits publicly to the forgiveness one has already experienced, and (H) holds on to (or maintains) the forgiveness that one has achieved (Wade 6c Worthington, 2005). A key feature of the forgiveness process, according to both the Enright and "Worthington models, is empathy, or "the experience of feeling what another feels, or being able to understand and relate to the experiences of others" (Wade & Worthington, 2005, p. 167). Empathy, in fact, was a component of all 14 published forgiveness interventions reviewed by Wade & Worthington (2005). Early studies of Worthington's model (comprising only three steps [REA]) showed small gains in forgiveness after brief (1-2 hour) interventions. Furthermore, psychophysiological data indicate that adopting the REA steps after an offense leads to lower physiological stress responses and greater perceived control than does holding a grudge (Witvliet, Ludwig, & VanderLaan, 2001). Later studies that tested the full REACH model in 6-8 hour psychoeducational interventions produced "moderate to strong effects for helping participants overcome their unforgiveness across time,.gains in forgiveness that may be more clinically significant than shorter interventions" (Wade, Worthington, & Meyer, 2005). Other researchers have integrated elements from Worthington's and Enright's models into successful interventions. Wade et al.'s (2005) recent meta-analysis provided "some support for the specific effectiveness of explicit forgiveness interventions for promoting forgiveness," particularly when "providing a coherent treatment, rather than a smattering of disjointed interventions" (pp. 435-436).
In addition to increased psychological health, forgiveness has physiological correlates as well. Forgiveness has been linked with lower blood pressure (Toussaint & Williams, 2003; Witvliet et al., 2001), lower skin conductance-level scores, lower heart rate, and less tonic eye muscle tension (Witvliet et al., 2001). Similarly, Lawler et al. (2003) found that trait forgiveness was linked to lower blood pressure levels, and that state forgiveness was correlated with lower blood pressure levels, rate pressure product, and heart rate. In her review of the psychophysiological forgiveness literature Witvliet (2005) concludes that the studies "show self-report, cardiovascular reactivity, and facial EMG patterns that reliably distinguish unforgiving responses toward others (as a state or trait) as generating more negative and aroused affect and greater reactivity and prolonged activation than do forgiving responses toward others" (p. 311).
Clear, then, is the notion that forgiveness is an important and desired Transaction for psychological, physical, and relational health. Yet unanswered in the published literature are the following questions: Is it possible to help children learn to forgive? If forgiveness aids in the coping with and the resolution of conflicts in adulthood, then is it not reasonable to begin equipping children with forgiveness so that they can confront injustices in a proven, healthy way later in life? What is an effective way to help children learn about forgiveness and learn to forgive? How can forgiveness become part of a child's central communities of home, school, and place of worship? Along with Worthington (2005), we wonder whether forgiveness interventions, which have been effective in clinical trials, will...
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