A lecture about forgiveness in the Amish community after the school shooting in Nickel Mines, Lancaster County will take place April 19 at Gettysburg College. The talk is the 2011 Frederick and Martha Mahan Lecture, presented by the Department of Philosophy.

The 7 p.m. lecture, "Forgiveness in the Face of Tragedy: The Amish at Nickel Mines," will take place in the College Union Building's room 260, located along West Lincoln Avenue. The talk is free and open to the public. A book signing will take place afterward.

Donald Kraybill, an expert on the Old Amish Order, will reflect on the philosophical and religious meaning of forgiveness, whether or not forgiveness has limits, and why the Amish forgive more readily than other groups.

Kraybill is a distinguished college professor and senior fellow in the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College. Nationally recognized for his scholarship on Anabaptist groups, he is the author or editor of nearly 20 books including "The Upside Down Kingdom," "Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy," and "The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World."

The annual Mahan Lecture is made possible through a generous endowment by 1952 Gettysburg College grad Fred Mahan and Martha Mahan.

The Nickel Mines school shooting took place in early October 2006 when a gunman took ten Amish girls hostage in a schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Lancaster County. He shot all of them, five fatally, before killing himself.

Founded in 1832, Gettysburg College is a highly selective four-year residential college of liberal arts and sciences with a strong academic tradition. Alumni include Rhodes Scholars, a Nobel laureate, and other distinguished scholars. The college, which enrolls 2,600 undergraduate students, is located on a 200-acre campus adjacent to the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.

Contact: Nikki Rhoads, assistant director of communications, 717.337.6803