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Encountering the Other: Evangelicalism and Terrorism in a Post 911 World*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

Anthony E. Cook
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Extract

On the Sunday following the attacks of September 11, 2001, millions of Americans crowded into churches, synagogues and mosques around the country. They came in record numbers, seeking consolation, reassurance and understanding—a framework for processing what was for most a ghastly, unprecedented and utterly incomprehensible event. The religious leaders that greeted them that Sunday would play a seminal role as mediators—strategically situated between the political and media-dominated reactions to the attacks and congregants desperately seeking clarity amidst the smoke, rubble and devastation of that day.

In the weeks following 911, my family and I visited one such Protestant church, the kind of Black church that sociologists of Black religion now call the Mega-Church, located in one of America's most thriving metropolitan areas and boasting a congregation of well over 10,000 members. The sanctuary was a scaled down version of a large arena with balcony and mezzanine seating. Flanking each side of the stage/pulpit were cinematic screens projecting images of an American flag swaying gently in the wind and a choir singing its “Mormon Tabernacle” rendition of “America the Beautiful.”

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , 2005 , pp. 1 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2004

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Footnotes

*

This article was originally presented at the Hamline University School of Law/Journal of Law and Religion Symposium on Law, Religion & Ethics on October 22, 2004.

References

1. In the Gallup Poll, 71 percent of Black respondents said they would favor requiring Arabs, including those who are U.S. citizens, to undergo special, more intensive security checks before boarding airplanes. 57 percent of Whites said they would favor such a policy. There was no category specifically for Hispanics and Asians. But among Non-whites, the figure was 63 percent. Asked whether they favor or oppose requiring Arabs, including U.S. citizens, to carry special identification as a means of preventing terrorist attacks, 64 percent of Blacks said yes, while 48 percent of Whites said no. Among Non-whites, 56 percent supported requiring Arabs to carry IDs.

Scales, Ann, America Prepares Domestic Concerns/Profiling of Arabs, Boston Globe A16 (09 30, 2001)Google Scholar.

2. Quoted in Markham, Ian, 911: Contrasting Reactions and the Challenge of Dialogue, in September II: Religious Perspectives on the Causes and Consequences 206, 218–219 (Markham, Ian & Abu-Rabi, Ibrahim M. eds., Oneworld Publications 2002)Google Scholar.

3. Id. at 218.

4. Id. at 219.

5. Id.

6. The fear of increased secularization of post-World War 1 German society was a major factor in the largely conservative and anti-republican (pro-monarchial) Protestant pastorate being largely supportive of the Nazis in the 1932 election. Barnett, Victoria, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler 23 (Oxford U. Press 1992)Google Scholar (citing German church historian: Scholder, Klaus, Die Kirche und das Dritte Reich, Band 1: Vorgeschichte und Zeit der Illusion, 1918-1934, at 25 (Stuttgart 1972)Google Scholar (reporting that the prevailing attitude of the Protestant pastorate was that the Weimar Constitution was “godless” and that it was a “state without principles”); Baranowski, Shelly, The Confessing Church, Conservative Elites, and the Nazi State 20–21 (Edwin Mellen Press 1986)Google Scholar (Protestant pastors refer to socialism, liberalism, and democracy as “godless”).

7. Eberhard Bethge, student and biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, remembers that the common spirit of many Protestant German pastors was to say, “yes to a foreign policy of might, no to a domestic policy of emancipation, in the name of faith.” Barnett, supra n. 5, at 15. Since communism promoted the state ownership of corporate wealth and was seen as a godless, secular ideology, capitalism was accepted as society's savior from secular communism. Of course, this binary orientation, positing communism as evil and capitalism as good, helped to clear the way for the fascist partnership of corporate and state power in post WWI Germany. The consistency and cohesiveness of the political alliance between the Christian Right and the Corporate Right in our own time demonstrates the relevance of examining the political beliefs of contemporary pastors against the backdrop of international history and the nexus between pastoral political views and church support of morally undesirable political outcomes. This alliance between religion and corporate power, in its current iteration in America, reaches back to the publishing of a series of conservative articles in The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth edited by Torrey, R.A. and fully published in 4 volumes in 1917Google Scholar. That text, largely regarded as the literary spark of the fundamentalist movement, was commissioned by two wealthy California oil men in order to defend conservative Protestantism from modernism and liberalism. Dictionary of Christianity in America 1180–1181 (Reid, Daniel C. ed., Intervarsity Press 1990)Google Scholar.

8. Again, a comparison with Nazi Germany is instructive, because it illustrates how even Christian pastors can be lulled into a false complacency, believing that the state's restriction of the Other's liberties will never affect our own. Martin Niemöller, a leading member of the German Protestant resistance against the Nazi regime illustrates the point:

At that time, I did not realize that we would have to pay for these restrictions [on Jews] with our own liberty. I did not fully take into account that equality had been given to the Jews during our own epoch of political liberalism, and that any restriction imposed on them now would mean the end of the epoch and possibly the end of individual liberty, including the right to worship. In other words, to deprive Jews of political equality would mean turning back the wheel of history.

Baranowski, supra n. 5, at 92-93.

9. It is this thought process of uncritically accepting the government's position, while refusing to view that acceptance as a political act of support, that contributed to the failure of Protestant Christians in Germany to mount a significant, institutional resistance to the rise of Nazism in Germany. Barnett, supra n. 5, at 47-73 (detailing how the clergy's commitment to the historic Protestant position of apolitical support of the state's policies made institutional resistance to Hitler doomed from the start).

10. Jakes, T.D., The Gathering of America, in 9.11.01: African American Leaders Respond to an American Tragedy 19, 28 (Simmons, Martha & Thomas, Frank A. eds., Judson Press 2001)Google Scholar.

11. Id.

12. Id. at 27-28.

13. Id. at 26-27.

14. Matt 13:30. (All Biblical citations are taken from the King James Version.).

15. Rom 8:28.

16. Id. at 29.

17. Id. at 29 (emphasis added).

18. Jakes' phrase, “ordained of God” comes from Romans 13. That passage of the Bible is notorious for the way in which it formed the textual foundation (along with the gospel passage which states that one must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's) of the Lutheran doctrine of “the two kingdoms.” Barnett, supra n. 5, at 11. A version of the separation of church and state, the doctrine posits that the state is ordained by God to rule the secular realm while the church is ordained by God to regulate the spiritual. Id. Neither ruler is to interfere in the affairs of the other. Id. Though the original intent of the doctrine was most likely to secure the independence of the Lutheran church from the state, the prevailing cultural interpretation of the doctrine in Germany, even before the First World War, was that the church was a nationalist institution whose mission was partly to support the monarchy or local Protestant prince. Id. In return, the German Evangelical Church (which consisted of Lutheran and Reformed churches) received state establishment with seminaries, churches, and the pastorate maintained by a church tax. The cumulative effect on the German Pastorate in the years before both World Wars was that unquestioned nationalism and their spiritual duties went hand in hand. Id. at 10.

19. Jakes, supra n. 9, at 29-30.

20. Cho, David, The Business of Filling Pews, The Washington Post C1 (03 6, 2005)Google Scholar. This article highlights ways the thirst for increased church membership is driving a corporatization of evangelism. Like corporations, churches are now paying high priced consultants to develop and implement strategies to attract what are deemed desirable congregants; see also, Mathisen, Tyler, Do Cod and Money Mix?, MSNBC News (04 1, 2005) <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7346446/> (accessed May 26, 2005) (article describes the rise of the evangelical Christian leader in becoming an economic success story)Google Scholar; Mahler, Jonathan, The Soul of the New Exurb, NY Times Mag. 30et seq. (03 27, 2005)Google Scholar (article investigates Radiant church, a mega-church in Surprise, AZ; the following quote from the lead pastor McFarland illustrates the new orientation with painful clarity: “We want the church to look like a mall,” McFarland said. “We want you to come in here and say, ‘Dude where is the cinema?’”).

21. Wright, Jeremiah A. Jr., The Day of Jerusalem's Fall, in African American Leaders Respond to an American Tragedy (Simmons, Martha & Thomas, Frank A. eds., Judson Press 2001)Google Scholar.

22. Id. at 88.

23. Id. at 84.

24. Id. at 86.

25. Id. at 89.

26. This ability to view current negative circumstances self-critically through a lens of God's mercy and judgment on the nation's corporate failure to do justice is not new. President Lincoln's second inaugural speech suggests that he believed that the Civil War very well could have been God's retribution on both sides of the conflict for allowing the evil of slavery to go on as long as it did in a nation which hypocritically extolled freedom and self determination as the country's political cornerstones.

27. Wright, Jr., supra n. 18, at 87.

28. Id. at 87.

29. Id. at 90.

30. Matt 20: 26-27.

31. One well-recognized person who appears to have crystallized this concept of the un-chosen is Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was one of an isolated few Protestant German pastors to resist Nazism from the beginning. Bonhoeffer (Journey Films. Inc. 2003)Google Scholar. The experiential and intellectual source of his resistance to the persecution of Jews was forged through Bonhoeffer's studies at New York's Union Seminary under progressive theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and his time spent among oppressed Black Christians at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Id. See also, Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Who is Christ For Us? 15 (Nessan, Craig trans., Nessan, Craig & Wind, Renate eds., Fortress Press 2002)Google Scholar.

32. In response to Germany's “Jewish Question” in 1933, Bonhoeffer specifically addressed the possible ways the church can and should respond to state oppression of “unchosen” groups and individuals.

First, there is the question of whether the character of [the state's] action is legitimate, that is, to call the state to responsibility. Second, there is service to the victims of state action. The church is obligated unconditionally to the victims in every civil order, even when they do not belong to the Christian congregation. The third possibility consists of this, not only to tend to the victims under the wheel, but to stick a rod in the spokes of the wheel itself. Such action would be inherently political action by the church and is only then possible and requisite when the church sees that the state has failed in its function of creating law and order.

Bonhoeffer, id. at 58-59. All three of these options require prophetic clarity. One must choose to examine the state's action and have prophetic criteria for critical examination. One must be able to view all victims of state action, regardless of its legitimacy, as though one is responsible to tend (for the Christian obligation to “visit” the prisoner and to be in solidarity with the prisoner does not turn on the prisoner's actual guilt or innocence but rather the prisoner's status as confined by the state). One must be able to discern with prophetic senses when the state has transgressed to the point that true political resistance is necessary.

33. Matt 26: 39 & 42.

34. Matt 26: 39 & 42. I Cor 15:55 (emphasis deleted).