"The whole apparatus of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral." These words, written by the bellicose atheist Christopher Hitchens, will resonate with Christians who decry the racial leveraging of forgiveness that followed Amber Guyger's trial in Dallas. After Brandt Jean's moving gesture and warm embrace of his brother's killer, a debate about the nature and demands of forgiveness has prompted a critical examination of a tenet we once took for granted.
Without fail, the same white Christians who crawl out of the woodwork to applaud black forgiveness are nowhere to be found when the topic shifts to racial justice. Or, perhaps more dangerously, white Christians who say they are committed to racial justice betray naïveté when they declare that justice is reducible to forgiveness
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