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And yet despite every indignity and scoff, forgiveness does not just endure but thrives. As Mitchell Wright instinctively realized, there is not only a religious impetus to forgive but also therapeutic, social and practical reasons to do so. This applies to victims of crimes as well as to those who must deal with the slings and arrows of more common misfortunes--unfaithfulness, betrayal, ungratefulness and mere insult. In the past two years, scientists and sociologists have begun to extract forgiveness and the act of forgiving from the confines of the confessional, transforming it into the subject of quantifiable research. In one case, they have even systemized it as a 20-part "intervention" that they claim can be used to treat a number of anger-related ills in a totally secular context. In short, to forgive is no longer just divine.
"The field is just exploding," says Virginia psychologist Everett Worthington, director of the Templeton Foundation Campaign for Forgiveness Research. He should know. His organization, set up by mutual-fund magus Sir John Templeton, has distributed $5 million to scientists studying, among other things, forgiveness among chimpanzees and its physiological effects on the pulse and the sweat glands of humans. A number of psychotherapists are testifying that there is nothing like it for dissipating anger, mending marriages and banishing depression. Just a few years ago, says Robert Enright, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin and a pioneer in the scientific study of forgiveness, most secularly inclined intellectuals "trashed it; they said, 'Only wimps forgive.'" But now, Enright says, "psychiatrists, M.D.s, scientists, lawyers, ministers and social workers can all be on the same page. We are really on a roll."
Step into a forgiveness laboratory partly funded by a $75,000 Templeton grant. At Hope College in Holland, Mich., Charlotte van Oyen Witvliet puts electrodes on a young volunteer. In a moment he will think about a hurt that has been done him and then "actively rehearse" it for 16 seconds. At the sound of a tone, he will escalate his thoughts to "nursing a grudge" and making the offender feel horrible. Another beep will cue him to shift gears and "empathize with the offender." Finally, he will imagine ways to "wish that person well." Throughout the two-hour session, the four responses occur in different sequences, and Witvliet, a professor of psychology, will measure his heart rate, blood pressure, sweat and muscle tension.
So far, she has studied 70 subjects, half of them men, half women. Witvliet finds "robust" physiological differences between nonforgiving and forgiving states. Subjects' cardiovascular systems inevitably labor when they remember the person who hurt them. But stress is "significantly greater" when they consider revenge rather than forgiveness. Witvliet suggests that we may be drawn to hold grudges "because that makes us feel like we are more in control and we are less sad." But interviews with her subjects indicate that they felt in even greater control when they tried to empathize with their offenders and enjoyed the greatest sense of power, well-being and resolution when they managed to grant forgiveness. "If you are willing to exert the effort it takes to be forgiving, there are benefits both emotionally and physically," she concludes.