In theory, all religions guide their followers to forgive those who injure them.

"But no one does it like the Amish," said Donald B. Kraybill, Elizabethtown College sociology professor.

Kraybill, speaking at a Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society meeting Monday night, examined the profoundness of Amish forgiveness by focusing on the community's gracious reaction to the killing at the West Nickel Mines Amish school.

"The Amish follow the Lord's prayer, which says literally that if you don't forgive, you will not be forgiven," Kraybill said at Stumptown Mennonite Church in Bird-In-Hand.

A nationally recognized expert author on the Amish who wrote the 1989 book "The Riddle of Amish Culture," Kraybill discussed his upcoming book on the Nickel Mines shootings, "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy."

Five Amish girls were killed and five were wounded when a gunman opened fire inside the one-room schoolhouse in Bart Township. The shooter, Charles Roberts IV, killed himself inside the school immediately after on Oct. 2, 2006.

Before the sun set on that awful October day, three Amish men went to express their sorrow to Roberts' widow. They finally tracked her down at her parents' house after going to her and her grandparents homes in Georgetown.

At the same time, about four miles away in Strasburg, an Amishman visited Robert's mother and father, a former policeman, who provided a taxi service to the Amish. Kraybill said the Amishman, who knew Mr. Roberts' son well, hugged him for an hour.

Kraybill spoke to 35 Amish families, including the victims and their families, to help him describe the Amish response to the killing at Nickel Mines.

He provided examples Monday of how forgiveness is embedded in the separatists society and questioned whether Amish practices parallel or diverge from other religions and secular notions of forgiveness.

About half the 75 people who attended Roberts' funeral were Amish.

"The burden to forgive was not just on the parents or the children themselves, which were the immediate victims," Kraybill said.

There were no Amish church meetings to discuss strategies of forgiveness after the shootings no discussion among bishops, "there was no organized discussion of what we should do," Kraybill said. "The expressions of forgiveness happened spontaneously."

A father who lost a daughter in the killings expressed empathy and sorrow for Roberts' parents.

"He said 'Can you imagine what it would feel like to be the father of a killer?' He said 'that pain would be 10 times worse than our pain,'!\p" Kraybill said.

The funerals for the Amish children were held Oct. 5 and 6, and Roberts' ceremony was held Oct. 7. Three of the families who lost children attended the funeral — the families who didn't attend were in the hospital with injured children, Kraybill said.

"These families who buried their children the day before or two days before, greeted Marie, Roberts widow, and her three children and family," he said. "The funeral director said 'I knew I was witnessing a miracle'."

Kraybill said Amish forgiveness does not excuse or condone evil or seek to eliminate punishment — had Roberts lived, they would have advocated that he go to prison. Some Amish agreed that it would have been a greater challenge to forgive had Roberts not killed himself.

Kraybill spent many hours doing media interviews after the killings. He said the media shifted its focus away from the violence and began to wonder how the Amish could forgive so quickly, what prompted them to forgive and even whether it was healthy to forgive so spontaneously.

By the end of the week there were 2,400 news stories around the world about Amish forgiveness, he said.

"There was shock and amazement that someone could have either the foolishness or the courage to extend forgiveness in the face of such a horrific event," he said.

That reactions was followed by shock in the Amish community, which was puzzled by why forgiveness became news and why people were surprised about forgiveness.

"A number of Amish people told me that it's the normal Christian thing to do, just standard forgiveness and 'everybody does it,' " Kraybill said "Or do they."

"Amish Grace" is being co-authored by David Weaver-Zercher and Stephen M. Nolt.

E-mail: pburns@lnpnews.com