Amish Grace

I'm reading this wonderful book in preparation for interviewing one of the authors, Dr. Kraybill, who has made it his lifelong calling to study the Amish and other Anabaptists. He's written a lot of books on the Amish and Anabaptists but this one was occcasioned by the tragedy of last year, when five girls were killed by a man who then killed himself.

The three men who wrote the book are rightly reticent about the actual tragedy. They spend most of the book analyzing how the Amish understand forgiveness from a New Testament perspective-and how their communal culture creates a basis for practicing forgiveness. Kraybill and his two colleagues did many interviews with Amish people around Nickel Mines-I doubt that would have been possible without a trust relationship between them and the Elizabetown prof. I'm very eager to meet him.