‘Embodied Reconciliation: Congregational Healing as Pastoral Care’

Repentance

Although confessing sin and asking for forgiveness are critically important, the move toward reconciliation is not complete without repentance — that is, a commitment to change one’s behavior and go in a new direction. [Chanequa] Walker-Barnes notes that in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, repentance is translated as conversion, indicating that the word has a double meaning — “a turn away from sin (and a commitment to refrain from, or forsake, further sinning) and a turn toward God.” This notion of turning away from one’s sin, or from the words and actions that have caused harm, is at the heart of what it means to repent. Just as a confession that shirks responsibility is not authentic, repentance that does not genuinely seek to change one’s ways and avoid further harm is dishonest. Instead, true repentance involves taking a completely different path; it “means a change of mind and heart and is demonstrated by nothing less than transformed behavior.”

Repentance is a critical step in the journey toward reconciliation because without it we run the risk of rushing toward forgiveness without attending truthfully to the relationship between those who have been harmed and those who have acted harmfully. As [Miroslav] Volf has argued, glossing over the truth of what has happened in a conflict in an effort to move toward forgiveness results in cheap reconciliation, in which “forgiveness is best described as acting toward the perpetrator ‘as if their sin were not there.’ . . . At the popular level, one is told simply to shrug one’s shoulders and say, ‘Oh, never mind.’” Such a “never mind” approach is not only dishonest about what actually happened in a situation of harm; it also robs the offender of the opportunity to offer genuine confession and repentance and to attempt to make amends with those who have been hurt. After all, why make yourself vulnerable through confession and repentance if you have already been forgiven?

Within the context of conflict in faith communities, boundaries between offenders and victims are often unclear. This can make it challenging to imagine how genuine repentance can be embodied communally as a part of an entire group’s path toward reconciliation. Yet as we saw above, providing opportunities for people to confess — individually and communally — the wrongs they have committed is an important form of truth telling that can help the whole community heal. Without repentance, however, confession is incomplete; it admits wrongdoing without authentic commitments not to repeat the harm that has been done. In this respect, it can leave those who have been harmed feeling unsafe, wondering if the same thing will happen again in the future. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman underscores the vital connection between confession and repentance when he writes, “There is no doubt that a new life can only begin with the truth-telling that is the intent of confession. Such truth-telling, however, inescapably entails followup with new life in the world . . . such truth-telling assures nothing without a changed life.”

Confession remains incomplete without genuine repentance; for this reason, one could argue that true forgiveness and reconciliation are ultimately impossible without it. One of the most powerful articulations of this argument comes from the writers of The Kairos Document, published in 1985 as a challenge to the church regarding its response to the policies of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Written by a group of predominantly Black South African theologians, the document is framed as a biblical and theological engagement with the destructive political reality of apartheid, with the aim of developing a Christian response. The Kairos Document argues that in situations of oppression, talk of peace and reconciliation is premature until injustices have been addressed and those who have perpetrated them have confessed and repented. The Kairos writers make their case boldly: “No reconciliation, no forgiveness and no negotiations are possible without repentance. The Biblical teaching on reconciliation and forgiveness makes it quite clear that nobody can be forgiven and reconciled with God unless he or she repents of their sins.” Building on this claim, the writers argue that to ask the victims of oppression to reconcile with their oppressors — without first requiring an end to unjust behaviors and genuine commitments to change in the future — would be “totally unChristian” and, ultimately, sinful. For this reason, The Kairos Document calls first for the establishment of justice and nonviolence before meaningful progress toward reconciliation can even be contemplated.

Here it is important to reiterate that the situation addressed by The Kairos Document is qualitatively different from what most conflicted faith communities are facing. The Kairos Document is grappling with the widespread oppression of large social groups on a national level. By contrast, most congregations experiencing conflict contain a variety of subgroups, none of which typically exercise the kind of social power over others that the apartheid regime in South Africa did. Simply put, congregations do not wield the same sort of power as national governments, and their ability to affect or harm those in their midst is of a completely different scale.

Nevertheless, The Kairos Document can be instructive even for Christians who find themselves in vastly different social contexts than those who penned it. First, this document points to the centrality of repentance within the processes of forgiveness and reconciliation. Without repentance, forgiveness becomes a cheap form of amnesty that requires nothing of the offender. Conversely, asking someone who has been harmed to forgive, with no commitment from the offender to turn away from their past behavior and live differently in the future, is itself an injustice that can cause further harm to those who are already suffering.

Second, just because most congregational conflicts do not involve widespread oppression of one social group by another does not mean that we have no need to confess and repent. While faith communities do not wield the same kind of authority as governments, they can still be settings where tremendous harm is done and where powerful healing can take place. For healing to occur, though, communities must be courageous enough to create spaces for truth telling. This includes telling the truth about the ways specific individuals and the group as a whole have perpetrated harm and also being honest about how community members will seek to turn away from their past patterns of behavior and practice repair with one another.

Because of the social and historical context in which it was written, The Kairos Document speaks in terms of injustice and oppression — language that admittedly does not resonate as clearly with most situations of congregational conflict. Even so, the document’s focus on telling the truth and righting wrongs as preliminary steps toward forgiveness and reconciliation is helpful for faith communities struggling to heal from their own conflicts and tension. The Kairos Document serves as a reminder to Christians everywhere that healing relationships requires honesty and a willingness to take responsibility for one’s own part in what has gone awry.

Making Amends

Admitting that we have caused harm and taking responsibility for our actions is not easy. [Desmond] Tutu and [Mpho Andrea] Tutu write, “We assume it is hard for the person being asked to forgive. It may be harder still for the person seeking forgiveness. Why do we reckon it is easier to be contrite than to be forgiving? It is not.” This may be because confessing what we have done can make us feel vulnerable; we may experience intense feelings of guilt or shame about the ways we have participated in a conflict that has hurt other people — even if the harm we committed was inadvertent. Genuine repentance offers a powerful way to metabolize the difficult feelings that come with admitting our wrongs. It also allows us to exercise agency by trying to make things right and by committing to a changed way of living in the future.

Tutu and Tutu’s The Book of Forgiving lays out a process that the authors call The Fourfold Path, which offers a guide both to those who need to forgive others and those who need to be forgiven. The Fourfold Path includes the following steps: (1) Admitting the wrong. (2) Witnessing the anguish and apologizing. (3) Asking for forgiveness. (4) Renewing or releasing the relationship. The third step of asking for forgiveness is particularly helpful for repentance because it includes expressing remorse, offering an apology, and making amends (insofar as that is possible): “When we genuinely seek forgiveness, we will do whatever it takes to make things right — we will be willing not only to ask the victim if they will grant us forgiveness but also to offer whatever form of restitution they require in order to forgive. It is as simple and as difficult as that.” The Tutus note that just what making amends looks like will depend on the specific wrong that has been committed, and what the person(s) who has been harmed feel they need in order to forgive.

No matter the particular circumstances, however, the key to making amends is to reassure all involved that the offense will not happen again. As Walker-Barnes explains, repentance requires both recognition and accountability: recognition of the harm that one has caused and a willingness to be held accountable for that harm through appropriate consequences and through an honest commitment to changing one’s ways. In this respect, Walker-Barnes writes, repentance “is not a onetime event involving expressions of apology and forgiveness. It is the gateway to moral repair and to new life, that is, the gateway to conversion.” The language of conversion is important here because it serves as a reminder that repentance is not only a path toward receiving forgiveness from another and potentially reconciling the relationship. It is also a means of receiving grace, mercy, and healing for one’s own woundedness. As Desmond and Mpho Tutu write, “Ultimately, you are engaging in this process [of asking forgiveness and making amends] to return to your wholeness and heal all who were harmed — including yourself. Making amends is also how you heal yourself.”

Originally published in “Embodied Reconciliation” by Leanna K. Fuller (Fortress Press, 2026). Reprinted with permission.