Introduction
The German theologian Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz tells a story of a family holiday in Ireland. Somewhere south of Dublin they came across the remains of what must once have been an impressive church. After exploring the site they met a woman at a nearby farm who pointed back across the fields to the ruins and said grimly, ‘Cromwell did that to us!’ For those not familiar with Irish (and British) history, Cromwell’s army wreaked havoc on the Irish in 1649 – over 350 years ago. But the ‘memory’ lives on as a reminder of the pain and humiliation suffered at the hands of the English.

This example of ‘victimhood’, people clinging to the memory of their past suffering, reminds me of a call made by a respected journalist with the British daily newspaper The Guardian. Two years ago Jonathan Freedland, echoing others, urged his fellow Jews to end their absorption with the Shoah – it was time to jettison their status as victims and put something else at the core of their identity.

The point I am trying to illustrate is that you can have too much of the wrong type of memory, so that the pain occasioned by the divisions and conflicts of the past never dies. The hurt and the resentments are reproduced from generation to generation into the future – a future that is over-determined by the remembered past.

So how can people address the collective trauma of the past in a constructive and future oriented manner? This is a crucial issue not just for individuals but for societies and communities emerging out of division, bloodshed and collective nightmare. As we know there is no single authoritative model. Different societies, like individuals, have adopted their own approaches to dealing with the pain of the past as a basis for future reconciliation.

In this presentation I want to explore the role of forgiveness in processes of reconciliation, concluding with some observations on the importance of nurturing a culture of reconciliation in societies emerging out of division and destructive conflict.
So first of all let me try and clarify my understanding of the related concepts of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Forgiveness and reconciliation
For the damaged and dispossessed everywhere, that which they have lost can never be fully restored. But we know that as long as people hold on to their identity as victims they will be susceptible to calls for vengeance against those deemed responsible for their past and present suffering. But we also know that without a radical weakening of the desire for retribution there can be no new beginning, no transformation of relationships, no moving beyond ‘us’ and ‘them’ towards some more inclusive identity. People will remain imprisoned by their personal and collective memories, reproducing the old desires and hatreds.

It is this destructive cycle that can be broken by forgiveness. As Hannah Arendt phrased it in her book The Human Condition, ‘forgiving serves to undo the deeds of the past, whose “sins” hang like Danmocles’ sword over every new generation.’ From this perspective forgiveness is a creative act involving a relaxing of the grip, a ‘letting go’ of the pains of the past and creating a new memory – a new definition of the past which does not determine the future but liberates people to reorient themselves as creative subjects towards the future. The outcome of forgiveness is, if you like, the ability to come to terms with the past, to live with the memory in such a way that it does not over-determine one’s future.

This creation of a new memory, a new perspective on the past, may or may not involve the forgiveness of particular individuals or actors deemed responsible for past suffering. The key element common to ‘forgiving the past’, whether that past is constituted entirely by more or less anonymous categories of historical actors (the English, the Nazis, the West) or relates exclusively to identifiable individuals and specific acts, is the relaxing of the conscious focus on those elements that heretofore symbolised the loss and the injustice suffered, and which thereby fed the ongoing desire for revenge and vengeance against those deemed responsible.

If forgiveness relates to the past, then reconciliation relates to the future and requires the active participation of those that were divided. At the core of any reconciliation process is the preparedness of people who have been divided to anticipate a shared future together. For this to occur it is necessary for them not to forget the past as such, but to forgive it, in the sense of freeing themselves from its destructive and determining grip, learning to live with their history in such a way that opens up the possibility of a shared future. In practice, of course, the level of reconciliation achieved will always be a matter of degree – few communities separated by violence and pain can hope to achieve the kind of organic wholeness or harmony that seems to inform many images of ‘true’ reconciliation. The degree of reconciliation achieved over time will reflect the extent to which people who were once divided by hatred, resentment and fear can ‘forgive’ that past and each other. This is neither an easy nor a once-and-for-all process – the old memories can always return, ensnaring people once again in their mutually exclusive identities from the past.

The necessary conditions for ‘forgiving the past’
What enables people and communities that have been divided to ‘come to terms’ with the personal and collective trauma of the past in a constructive, future-oriented manner?
In truth it is very difficult to generalise about such processes across cultures. Some communities appear to have developed highly successful means of suppressing the memories for the sake of the future. Thus we have the example of Mozambique where indigenous rituals for cleansing and exorcising the past have been adapted to heal those returning from the horrors of civil war. A complete contrast with the situation in Northern Ireland where the divisions and the suspicions between the communities is reproduced in so many aspects of everyday life. Despite such reservations about over-generalising, certain elements seem to be conducive to forgiving the past and moving forwards towards reconciliation.

I) Peace/security
One clear and necessary precondition for people to begin to forgive the past is the experience of a clear break from that past. A key element in this is an end to the bloodshed, violence and abuse. To begin to have hope for the future, a fundamental constituent of any reconciliation process, people must experience a significant degree of personal and collective security. The experience of political and identity-driven violence must become a memory, rather than a lived daily experience in the here-and-now.

II) ‘Justice’
In addition to personal and collective peace and security, always a matter of degree, many would argue in a similar vein that people need to perceive some degree and form of ‘justice’ being implemented in order to experience a break with the past and lay it to rest. At the heart of most common-sense notions of justice is the idea of ‘making things right’, by punishing the perpetrators and compensating the victims. But this presumes that one can make a distinction between the guilty and the innocent, and in many historical situations of conflict where a people have been divided this is not so easy. Thus, President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic was initially reluctant to endorse any kind of purge following the Velvet Revolution of 1989. He was too aware of the manner in which the machinery of the old regime could colonise people, turning them into unwitting accomplices of the repressive apparatuses of the state. He remarked, ‘None of us is merely a victim of it, because all of us helped to create it together. ...We cannot lay all the blame on those who ruled us before, not only because this would not be true but also because it could detract from the responsibility each of us now faces ...’

Karl Jaspers, reflecting on the nature of German guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust, distinguished between four types of guilt: the criminal guilt of those who actually committed the crimes; the political guilt of those who helped such people get to power; the moral guilt of those who stood by doing nothing as the crimes were being committed; and finally the metaphysical guilt of those who survived whilst others were killed, thereby failing in their responsibility to do all that they might have done to preserve the standards of civilised humanity.

One of the major challenges facing those seeking to foster reconciliation between divided peoples is fashioning the most appropriate form of ‘justice’ in relation to the different types of guilt in the context of different cultural attitudes towards culpability and punishment.

III) Truth
In the growing body of literature relating to reconciliation in societies emerging out of violent and destructive conflict and gross human rights abuse there is regular reference to the significance of unveiling and acknowledging the truth about the criminal acts and wrongs of the past as a necessary condition for people to ‘move on’ individually and collectively. The many advocates of truth commissions argue that they can heal the wounds of division that trials, purges and the pursuit of punitive justice can deepen.
However, there are historical examples of transition processes where elites have agreed to ‘bury the past’ as a means of forging a new future; such was the case with Spain after the death of the dictator Franco in 1975. He had come to power through a military rebellion and subsequent civil war, and after his victory in 1939 his regime became infamous for its barbaric treatment of the defeated Republicans and the repression practised throughout the country. Yet after his death there was neither purge nor truth commission, but rather an exercise in collective amnesia, a pact of oblivion. Everything was subordinated to the peaceful transition to democratic rule. Furthermore, although this was an elite driven process, there is no strong evidence to indicate that this desire to let bygones be bygones was not shared by people at the grass roots. For people who have been involved in mass violence such as can happen in a civil war, it can certainly seem as if the past is best left where it belongs – in the past. To introduce it into the present might lead to further bloodshed, conflict and pain.

Managing the tension between the values of peace, justice and truth
These constitutive elements or processes that would appear to help people forgive the past and lay the ground for future reconciliation do not rest easily together.Too active a pursuit of justice in societies emerging out of division can result in a return to violent conflict and bloodshed. This was the fear that informed the Spanish transition process, and it is the fear that is still widespread in Cambodia. Arguing against attempts to hold trials of Khmer Rouge cadres implicated in the genocide of 1975–79, a Cambodian journalist expressed his view with painful honesty when he wrote in December 1998, ‘I know the Khmer Rouge are bad and criminals, but there are too many to convict and some remain strong. To safeguard the living it is better not to seek justice for the dead.’
But too great a concern with avoiding a resumption of violence can mean that truth and justice are forfeited. Likewise, if the value of truth is prioritised above all else, then this can come at the cost of justice. Expressed quite crudely, within the truth commission framework the criminals provide a version of the truth in return for amnesty, and the victims are then left to do the reconciling, in the sense of becoming reconciled to their loss and their failure to see justice being done.

Compensation and reparations
For those who have suffered loss and pain, to be denied justice and required to accept an inadequate and incomplete version of the truth is a bitter pill to swallow. It can be sweetened to some degree by offers of compensation and reparations. New regimes can try to compensate the primary and secondary victims of violence and human rights violations with cash payments, educational bursaries, access to health care, the construction of memorials and other forms of material and symbolic reparations. But how do you address the issue of reparations for the vast majority of people who were not immediately and directly affected by the violence and abuse – the people who were not forced out of their homes, raped, tortured, or dispossessed but who were denied the opportunity to fulfil their potential as human beings because of the conditions under which they were required to live during the period of conflict and/or repression? How do you acknowledge their suffering? How do you compensate them for the impoverished lives they endured?

It is doubtful that the pain of the past can be left behind and reconciliation in any deep sense approached without addressing the structures of power, inequality and exclusion that constituted the framework within which the violence of the old order was perpetrated and endured. After all, how can people begin to orient towards a shared future if their everyday life reminds them of the pain of the past? For people to move together along the path of reconciliation it is crucial that a sustained effort is made to transform the structures and circumstances of everyday life that embody and perpetuate the old divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between perpetrator and victim. Only when people feel that the evils of the past will not return and believe that ‘things are moving in the right direction’ will they be in a position to loosen the bonds of the past, relinquish the impulse for revenge and orient towards the future. In other words, reconciliation needs to be grounded in a sustained effort at restitution and ‘putting things right’.

Towards a culture of reconciliation
An important role in ‘forgiving’ the past, redefining it and creating new memories can be played by those occupying positions of public prominence. But whilst opinion leaders can open up the symbolic space for people to begin to reinterpret the past and consider alternative futures, too often there is a theatre and a rhetoric of reconciliation which fails to resonate beyond elite circles. This is perhaps the greatest challenge that faces those involved with societies emerging out of violent conflict and division who are committed to ‘forgiving the past’ and moving forwards along the path of reconciliation – how to deepen the process such that it resonates at the grass roots level of neighbourhoods and communities. The proclaimed commitment to a common future must extend beyond elite levels and be embodied and lived out in new relationships between people at all levels of society. After all, the seeds of the most horrendous crimes against humanity do not start ‘out there’. They have their origins in the denial of the full humanity of the stranger, the non-recognition of the other as a human being. There is a clear causal relationship between our mundane everyday actions and the mass crimes that are beyond the comprehension of most of us.

The cultures of violence and vengeance that reproduce the hatreds and grievances of yesteryear and transmit them from one generation to the next have their roots in everyday life - in the home, the school, the workplace. And it is at this level that the seeds for a durable reconciliation process must be sown, by means of a counterculture that embodies those values of peace, justice and truth that can help people come to terms with the traumas of the past in a constructive, future-oriented manner.

Culture of peace/nonviolence
Conflict is endemic in each and every sphere of life. Out of conflict comes change and innovation, but it can also be ruinous and negative. In societies emerging out of violence and division it is crucial that the value of nonviolence is acknowledged and embodied in the different institutional spheres in order to avoid a collapse into the ways of the past.

Culture of justice and human rights
In recent years Hans Kung has written a lot about the ‘golden rule’ that he claims to be present in all the major religious belief systems – ‘Do not do to another what you would not want to be done to you’. This moral imperative is of course central to notions of right behaviour. It might be an unattainable ideal but this does not weaken its significance as a guide to those seeking to establish just relationships in and throughout society. In this regard it bears repeating once again that if people are to focus more on their hopes for the future than upon their fears from the past, then they must be able to experience significant movement to counter the inequalities and injustices that fuelled the old divisions.

Culture of truthfulness
The different parties to a conflict each have their own history, and people do not relinquish their collective memory easily, insofar as it invariably constitutes such a key component of their collective identity. However, to ensure that rival narratives do not fuel future conflicts it is vital that people learn to acknowledge the validity of other people’s ‘truths’. This is a reciprocal process – it is far easier to render respect to the history of others, if they in turn respect one’s own. And it is in acknowledging the reality of the other’s history, even when you view the past through a different lens, that the basis for a kind of organic solidarity embodying a fundamental respect for difference can be laid.
But this in turn requires people to face up to the flaws in their own past, to acknowledge the reality of the grief and remorse of the other, to begin to realise that the old manichean division between ‘us’ and ‘them’, good and evil, is fundamentally flawed. It requires them to reinterpret their own past and create new memories.

Culture of forgiveness
Forgiveness, in the sense of relinquishing the quest for revenge, is the prerogative of the victim/ survivor. But in exercising that power, people can liberate themselves, escape the grasp of the past, and become more fully human. At the core of such a difficult process, whether it refers to identifiable individuals or more-or-less anonymous historical collectivities, is the capacity to distinguish between the perpetrators and their deeds. This in turn requires some recognition of the humanity of the other, however difficult this might be. But it is in this acknowledgement of our common humanity that the seeds of a shared future lie.