[1] Everyone has memories of September 11 and what followed.
Working from Capitol Hill, I saw the smoke rising across from the
Pentagon side of the Potomac, heard rumors of bombs outside the
State Department, viewed repeated TV images of planes slamming into
the World Trade Center, watched a stream of workers hastily leaving
the Capitol, and later joined that exodus, unable to find a
near-by, open subway or communicate with family by telephone (or
cell phone)--a picture of American vulnerability.
[2] Later that day and into the rest of the week, religious
communities conducted services, prayer meetings, and grieving
sessions to verbalize our mixed emotions of anger, sadness and fear
and to offer what consolation such communities can bring in the
face of the "mystery of evil" (Billy Graham from the National
Cathedral).
[3] Now those memories blend with that ground zero of time and
the many steps taken to cope with an America violated. President
Bush's two-point recommendation to the American public about being
vigilant but living a normal life--more than most statements--sets
a tone for how to respond that would effect even religious
institutions. But what since those early days? How has the public
role of the Church fared in the longer-term aftermath?
[4] At an interfaith lecture held at Georgetown University
(April 29, 2002), Washington's Archbishop Cardinal Theodore
McCarrick offered an inventory of actions and more importantly
aptitudes for what religious communities could offer the nation
(and their members) and live out their faiths. Churches
could/should:
1) help people understand what happened on September 11;
2) provide opportunities for grieving and mourning;
3) assist people to offer their love;
4) provide assurances about the ongoing reality of hope and hopeful
living;
5) analyze public action and retain a prophetic witness to public
and private sectors; and
6) work for peace.
[5] McCarrick's typology strongly suggested that in
post-September 11 American life religious communities had a
holistic responsibility to work in and be of service at all levels
of human and social interaction--the intra-personal, the
relational, the communal, national and global. The setting for his
speech--a public, interfaith, event that drew people from all walks
of life--might suggest both how these actions and aptitudes could
be enacted and who has responsibility for these roles. It implied
that each person and institution of a religious group must be
responsible in relationship with the wider society and its
interfaith realities. McCarrick's perspective is appealing because
every local congregation, synod, or judicatory could review its
efforts in light of its purposes and missions.
[6] My sense is that religious communities and their individual
congregations have done better and more with some of the above
aptitudes than others, and in particular numbers two, three, and
four. Sincere efforts were undertaken to respond to our various
forms of grief. The most immediate responses had to be to the
communities and families of the dead and injured victims. Some
churches instituted special focus groups for their youth while
others pursued extended prayer ministries. Some creative efforts
included providing camp experiences to the surviving children of
9/11 victims. But religious communities understood that there were
other aspects of our grief that were public and social due to an
end to an American perception of invulnerability. The close
relation between faith and patriotism, once again surfaced as an
important response in American public (and religious) life.
[7] We have always, as a people, poured out our love in our
charity. Americans, both religious and non-religious, gave
tremendous amounts of financial and in-kind resources oftentimes in
a highly undifferentiated manner in the aftermath of 9/11. These
gifts did not only materialize for places like Pennsylvania, New
York and Washington, but financial support also went overseas.
[8] Lastly come the actions taken to assure us of hope. Clergy
conference groups and bishops' eucharists focused on the ministry
of hope. Youth programs, perhaps because of the public nature of
earlier national school tragedies, talked about the hopefulness of
life. Sermons and religious writings emphasized the hope that each
person can provide others when elicited from our many religious
heritages, as well as an optimism for a future good that can
overcome evil circumstances.
[9] Good grieving and mourning, charitable activity to victims
of misfortune, and a hopeful hermeneutic of the power of good being
stronger than evil, are deeply rooted in the "averageness" of
family life, American religious piety, and probably even our civil
religion. In very real ways, such actions have helped our culture
try to "live life normally" again.
[10] What surprises me more now a year after September 11 is an
apparent paradox surrounding the first point of McCarrick's
typology, the ability to provide meaning and understanding to those
terrible events that were once described by many in our political
and academic communities as events that forever changed America and
the world.1
Actions taken to understand these events in light of a changed,
vulnerable, and interdependent world have been
inspiring--congregations who opened their religious curricula to
other faiths, especially Islam, as valid and needed subjects for
people of faith to study, efforts that made ecumenical and
interfaith worship available, and even a national teleconference
shortly after the plane crashes bringing resource people together
from across the United States to offer insights on pastoral care in
the face of so many unknown variables.
[11] Such actions look for answers to our questions of religious
and cultural identity and meaning brought on by September 11
differently, perhaps as a way to break out of religious insularity.
Actions taken by people to protect Islamic religious structures and
compensate Islamic victims of hate-crimes put those newfound
meanings into moral behavior. The paradox arises when viewing their
limited sustainability (How many Islamic classes are now going on
in Sunday Schools?) and their uneven application.
[12] One difficulty for a congregation or wider religious
community to provide understanding and meaning is that events and
personalities partially overtook the tragedies of September 11.
Since then came the war on terrorism, and the actual war in
Afghanistan, the threats of Iraq and Iran, the misinterpreted
intentions of Saudi Arabia, the almost nuclear confrontation
between India and Pakistan, the global downsizing of the economy,
the daily violence from Palestine, corporate scandals, and
religious moral turpitude.
[13] If making a temporary policy consensus in government, a
form of "creating understanding," is difficult under our current
conditions, than for the religions to offer relevant meaning to our
"why" questions about these events must be equally difficult. But
perhaps for churches and other religious communities, it must be
one of the most critical tasks. As one way for producing more
"understanding" of our times and their consequences and options, a
missed opportunity after September 11 and before personal and
institutional perceptions hardened would have been to initiate an
ongoing ecumenical and interfaith ethics and policy dialogue
between those involved in the political and academic work of
defense, security, foreign policy, and intelligence, and the wider
religious community.
[14] There have been various efforts taken to speak about peace
and offer programs on reconciliation.2 It is not clear that the
American public (the same public who are the members of religious
communities) always sees peace as a first priority when addressing
the conflicted settings in the Middle East or Iraq. Would any
national ambiguity about pursuing peace and reconciliation be any
different if religious communities collectively could provide
clarifying explanations and meaningful sense to yesterday's
tragedies and today's rivalries and conflicts?3 Which leaves McCarrick's
category of the need for religion to provide prophetic or critical
analysis to secular agents as well as to its members.
[15] A number of years ago, the topic of "exercising moral
deliberation" became the vogue, as much a way to redistribute and
decentralize the responsibility of our actions and values to us as
individuals and our local religious communities. It is not easy to
know exactly the breadth or depth of critical analysis/moral
deliberation happening across the individual congregations and
religious institutions. In the immediate aftermath of September 11,
providing a critical voice was difficult since it often became
interpreted as an anti-American sentiment. But what should one say
now when governmental officials are able to argue publicly without
reference to doctrines of just war or humanitarian intervention
(and with little external deterrence) that a pre-emptive strike
into Iraq constitutes the moral ground. Public debate has left
religious communities primarily reactive in the great moral
discernment process underway regarding global security and
terrorism. Those promoting such discussions are often at the fringe
of religious institutional thought rather than its center. As we
and our religious communities move ahead following President Bush's
advice about normalizing our lives, could these themes--provoking
deeper understandings about our world and the reasons of such
bitter violence, rediscovering and acting on the centrality of the
mission for peace as the mission of religious communities, and
encouraging a widespread process of intentional ethical
deliberation (and critique) on what constitutes security--equally
fit his encouragement to the nation of being vigilant?
[16] On our summer vacation to the West this year, we stopped in
Oklahoma City partially to see the national memorial honoring the
victims of the federal building bombing. It is a moving memorial
that is both personal and universal, and architecturally rich with
values--remembrance, closure, reconstruction. Current conversations
on the one-year anniversary of September 11 speak in similar terms
of remembrance and hope.
[17] Although we seek reconstruction, reconciliation,
remembrance and hope, where our nation and world are in
relationship to the events bringing on September 11 is different
than our place with what occurred in Oklahoma City. The religious
community can remind others of that difference. For another value
rises from the memorial in Oklahoma City--an imposing and silent
cry for the needs of justice, and a world that needs to do better
to measure itself by justice rather than violence. How similar that
seems to the old dictate from Micah of what God has shown was
needed for human community to thrive, "but to do justice, love
kindness, and walk humbly" with one's God. That conversation and
whole-hearted pursuit is badly needed in the world's search for
security, and might very well be necessarily and essentially linked
together with it.
1 Still seen even in the recently published by Prentice
Hall Publishing, September 11-Prentice Hall Authors Speak Out
(2002) and other publications.
2 In the Washington, DC community, some of these efforts
include an Interfaith Conference on Reconciliation in September,
2002, a program in reconciliation ministry through the College of
Preachers at the National Cathedral beginning in 2003, ongoing
discussions on Middle Eastern affairs, and a monthly ecumenical
peace vigil.
3 The author is aware that the church and Bishop Hanson
recently spoke ecumenically about its concerns of American
unilateral action. Such moral advocacy, especially in an ecumenical
and/or interfaith presence is always important. There are many
challenges for such public recommendations and statements to be
heard. Some include "how wide or large is the public" that receives
the message, how the message is perceived by an intended audience
over against competing thoughts, and the timing and consistency of
the message.