Forgiveness and Reconciliation

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Forgiveness and reconciliation are terms that we often honor and imbue with a certain social sense of nobility, but it is impossible to speak about such concepts without also understanding the costs, compromises, and commitments that we must face in order to embrace them. This course will examine “forgiveness” and “reconciliation” through the lens of religious ethics to develop a better sense of what it means to be a person committed to a worldview and who finds their way of perceiving the world both challenged and constructed by the difficult realities of what forgiving and reconciling means. We will examine texts and case studies by thinkers and activists who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu, who are from the United States, Germany, Israel, India, Vietnam, and South Africa, who are from a variety of racial backgrounds. Without privileging any one religious tradition, we will undertake a pilgrimage together to better conceive what is involved in the work of forgiveness and reconciliation and use that knowledge to better understand how we might employ these meaningfully in our own lives and for the betterment of our communities.