A recent survey reports New York area regular church attendance
has increased by about one third over the last decade, though
surely many factors besides 9/11 contributed. The increased
religiosity in New York is ironic given its mayor’s controversial
decision to exclude clergy and formal prayers from the city’s 9/11
commemoration.
Christianity Today magazine recently
asked prominent evangelicals to reflect on how 9/11 affected them
and their ministries. Liberal evangelical writer Philip Yancey
reflected politically, noting the last decade has “taught us the
limits of force” and that “imposing democracy on Iraq and
Afghanistan has come at a terrible cost to all parties, with no
guarantee of long-term success.” He sardonically observed that
Tunisia and Egypt “gained freedom almost overnight in a grassroots
protest against powerful regimes.” He should have asked whether
these anti-authoritarian revolts, whose ultimate outcomes also have
“no guarantee of long-term success,” would have occurred absent
democracy (however flawed and potentially transitory) in Iraq and
Afghanistan. He cited noble Christian missionary families in recent
times who forgave the murderers of their martyred loved ones. Such
mercy is indeed required for persons of deep faith, but civil
governments are vocationally called to defend their people, not
turn the cheek. Yancey then seemingly likened America’s post 9/11
treatment of Muslims to historic Christian/European persecution of
the Jews. “We dare not do to Muslims what we have, to our shame,
done to Jews,” he concluded, as though Muslim Americans are
potentially threatened by pogroms or Holocaust.
Equally provocatively, United Methodist Bishop and popular
preacher/writer Will Willimon, a prominent pacifist, lamented how
the “most powerful, militarized nation in the
world” thought of itself as “an innocent victim” after 9/11, with
“deadly” consequences. Bush and Obama spent “billions asking
the military to rectify the crime of a small band of lawless
individuals, destroying a couple of nations who had little to do
with it, in the costliest, longest series of wars in the history of
the United States,” he opined. Although a savvy theologian,
Willimon’s political observations are often breathtakingly facile.
He regretted the supposed “giddy enthusiasm” of some Christians for
war amid the troubling “ubiquity of flags and patriotic
extravaganzas,” revealing “9/11 as our greatest Christological
defeat.” American Christianity had purportedly “lost the
theological means to distinguish between the United States and the
kingdom of God.” Al Qaeda and America’s “flag-waving boosters” were
of “one mind” in rejecting the “nonviolent way of Jesus.” Feeling
“vulnerable,” American Christians “reached for the flag, not the
Cross.” Willimon and the neo-Anabaptists now so popular in
evangelical academia chronically reject traditional Christian
distinctions between civil responsibilities and devotion to God.
For them, any recognition of earthly place or temporal rule is
idolatrous. The result is typically sneering commentary that treats
average believers with condescension. Those average, supposedly
mindless flag wavers in America’s churches are often more
theologically astute than their snooty, elitist
critics.
None of the respondents in the Christianity Today
forum directly commented much on 9/11’s sinister perpetrators and
their motives. Perhaps the question posed to them required mostly
self-reflection. Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz, noted
how 9/11 caused her more powerfully to realize her own sinfulness
and God’s ultimate judgment of the world. Her message seemed more
spiritually timeless than Willimon’s political tirade. It also
recalled the late neoconservative thinker Irving Kristol’s somewhat
nostalgic recollection after 9/11 that American clergy of an
earlier era routinely exploited national calamities to call for
personal repentance. Today, social rants and finger wagging at
others often seem more popular.
In his forum comments, Christian songwriter Matt Redman
recounted that he and his wife after 9/11 composed the hymn
“Blessed Be Your Name.” He described it as a call to trust God no
matter the season. I once heard this lovely song in a remote
country church, illustrating the reach of this still fairly young
hymn. It’s a Job-like antidote to the sometimes overly sunny
optimism of American religiosity.
Blessed be Your
name
On the road
marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the
offering
Blessed
be Your name
Every blessing You pour
out
I’ll turn
back to praise
When the darkness closes in,
Lord
Still I will
say
Blessed be the name of the
Lord
Blessed be
Your name
Blessed
be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name.
You give and take
away
You give and
take away
My
heart will choose to say
Lord, blessed be Your name
The true impact of 9/11 on America’s religious faith is
likely immeasurable by any survey. Hopefully the horrors of that
day, with subsequent days, have reminded many of life’s fragility
and yet the hope that Divine Providence has a ruling purpose that
merits trust and praise.
