Abstract
Restorative justice processes may be described as ‘thinner’ without forgiveness, understood as both a costly journey of reaching out to the ‘other’ and of subsequent endurance. The conference is the heart of restorative justice, yet very little empirical evidence has been gathered regarding the dynamics of forgiveness within conferencing processes, or analysis undertaken of whether/how to maximise the experience of forgiveness. Our qualitative study, involving structured interviews with participants (harmed, harmers, facilitators), suggests that, despite definitional complexity and some reservations, forgiveness and forgiveness-related ideas (such as ‘letting go’ and ‘moving on’) can be hallmarks of the conference, often emerging from unexpected shifts in emotional dynamics.
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Notes
- 1.
See R. K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods (London: Sage, 4th edn, 2009), ch. 1.
- 2.
For a comparable example, see M. Halsey, A. Goldsmith and D. Bamford, ‘Achieving Restorative Justice: Assessing Contrition and Forgiveness in the Adult Conference Process’, The Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 48.4 (2015), pp. 483–497.
- 3.
See M. N. Blyth, ‘Towards a Restorative Hermeneutic: Local Christian Communities responding to Crime and Wrongdoing’, PhD Thesis (University of Birmingham, UK, 2012).
- 4.
See P. S. Fiddes, ‘Restorative Justice and the Theological Dynamic of Forgiveness’, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 5.1 (2016), pp. 54–65.
- 5.
For consideration of the ‘unforgivable’, as well as ‘unforgivingness’, see Mills, Chap. 8.
- 6.
M. Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 75.
- 7.
Ibid., p. 85.
- 8.
- 9.
P. S. Fiddes, Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1989), pp. 173–178.
- 10.
Ibid., p 60.
- 11.
R. Savill, ‘Vicar Who Can’t Forgive Steps Down from the Pulpit’, The Telegraph (7 March 2006) https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1512281/Vicar-who-cant-forgive-steps-down-from-pulpit.html [accessed 29 March 2020]. On the potential for an eschatological resolution, see Mills, Chap. 8.
- 12.
See Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, p. 126. For another take on the theological conundrum of forgiveness and the ‘unforgivable’ sin, see Mills, Chap. 8.
- 13.
M. McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY; London: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 102.
- 14.
For some consideration of this, see Taylor, Chap. 4.
- 15.
See E. L. Worthington, Dimensions of Forgiveness: Psychological and Theological Perspectives (Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 1998).
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Blyth, M.N. (2021). Forgiveness and the Conference Experience. In: Forgiveness and Restorative Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75282-8_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75282-8_6
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