‘Forgiveness and civil justice are not mutually exclusive’

‘Forgiveness and civil justice are not mutually exclusive.’ That was the message at today’s National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast, from Dr Amy Orr-Ewing. 

She told the assembled gathering of MPs, including the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, that the word ‘forgiveness’ now ‘might make some of us flinch’. 

Society had, she said, become a place where, ‘Public floggings are back in the form of group shaming and boycotting, but forgiveness is gone, a lost art form from a bygone age. Accountability is everything, redemption feels impossible.

‘Forgiveness,’ she said, ‘begins to be seen as moral weakness. Is this really what we want? Forgiveness and redemption are being lost in our pursuit of justice.’

But she added, ‘The Christian faith has something profound to say to us in this cultural moment as well as some important questions to pose’. 

Dr Orr-Ewing who is an author, speaker and theologian, said that society’s need for a price to be paid for wrongdoing could be found in Jesus, who had paid ‘a price for the transgressions of the world’. ‘That,’ she said, meant that ‘forgiveness can be real.’

The ability to forgive, she said, released people from seeking ‘vengeance’ and enabled them to support ‘civil justice in this life … and that there will be eternal justice in the hands of God’. 

‘All of us are invited to receive forgiveness and the power to forgive others. The power to forgive,’ said Dr Orr-Ewing, 'may just the be the greatest gift that the Christian story can offer our age.’

In a message to the gathering in Westminster Hall, the Prime Minister said that it was ‘wonderful’ to welcome church and charity leaders to Parliament, at an event that ‘serves to strengthen connections between local churches and their MPs.’

The event was chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Rt Hon Sir Lindsay Hoyle MP and the Lord Speaker, Lord McFall of Alcluith. 

The Speaker said, ‘In my role I appreciate the need for our political conversations to be both robust and honest, but also marked by gentleness and respect’. He spoke of the need for ‘a settlement and hope’ in Ukraine. 

Prayers were said for people in the Ukraine, and countries affected by climate change, as well as those in Syria and Turkey impacted by the earthquake.

The National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast is an annual event which draws together MPs, members of the House of Lords and the public. As well as the 700 attending in person, including 180 MPs, more than 1,200 people took part in the event online, from as far afield as Trinidad and Tobago, Australia and Hungary, as well as from around Britain.