Lesson of forgiveness in slayings of Amish

An unusual word has come to dominate TV coverage of the terrible murders of five girls in a one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania’s Amish country.

Forgiveness.

Chris Cuomo used it Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” reporting that the “Amish believe others will see a glimpse of Christ’s love in their forgiveness, an instinct that is galvanizing this community.”

That evening, introducing an interview with an Amish scholar about the reaction to the killings on “The CBS Evening News,” correspondent Byron Pitts said, “In much of America, such forgiveness would be unimaginable.”

That night on CNN, Larry King explored the concept with the Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council.

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“How do you explain, Reverend, the Amish’s forgiveness of the killer?” King asked.

“The Sermon on the Mount is really their code, their Christian code,” he explained. “And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus admonished us in that sermon, he said that we needed to forgive others as God forgives us. That we have to be careful to forgive others their sins against us, or God will not forgive us.”

This focus on forgiveness in the coverage comes from a sect that’s often portrayed as an eccentric remnant of the past, thanks to their antique style of dress and archaic reliance on horse-and-buggy transportation.

There continues to be plenty of video that reinforces that picturesque quality, a dramatic counterpoint to the horror of the murders of five girls. But this focus on one of the central tenets of Christianity (it’s not limited to the Amish) is fascinating - and telling.

The script in these kinds of stories clearly isn’t being followed by the Amish, who live outside our media culture.

In this story, we don’t see survivors seemingly enjoying their celebrity status on NBC’s “Today.” We don’t see angry parents screaming for vengeance. There aren’t relatives whining that the killer was really the victim here.

In fact, it’s mostly not even the Amish that we’re seeing and hearing in this story. It’s people who’ve studied them or met with them who are going in front of the cameras to describe them and their ways to us.

The tightly knit Amish community obviously feels no compulsion to share every tear with the outside world, a concept almost unthinkable in every other community.

Without the bucolic scenes of Nickel Mines, Pa., as a backdrop for the horror of the murders, the TV story likely would have faded more quickly.

It’s actually thanks to TV’s never-ending quest for interesting images that we’ve been exposed to a touching lesson in simplicity and silence and forgiveness.

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