Christian Responses
to the recent tragedy of 9/11

By David Radcliff

September 12, 2001---Shock. Grief. Anger. Incredulity. Numbness. The senselessness of an act of violence

 directed against a system but inflicted upon real human beings. For me as for many, there was a sick-to-the-stomach feeling that lingered throughout this horrific day in U.S. history.

And underneath it all was the distinct realization that we in this nation are no longer an island of tranquility, protected by oceans, affluence, fences---whatever---from the violence that plagues so many of our global neighbors. We suddenly know ourselves to be vulnerable.

This vulnerability will likely now shadow us on what heretofore were routine outings. Those of us who fly often may never again glibly say to land-lubbers that "going by air is the safest way to get there"---even if statistically it remains so. We may never again venture to the top of a skyscraper for the view without one eye on the lookout for danger on the horizon. We may not be able to assume that the pillars of American military/economic prowess are quite as invincible as they seemed even yesterday---helpless as they were in the face of determined but relatively powerless foes.

But this vulnerability also provides opportunities, should we be able to seize them once the dust has cleared and our passions subsided. For one, we can now better empathize with vulnerable people all around the world, for whom walking to school in a hostile environment, or going about village life even while threatened by government bombers, or coming home to an abusive spouse is a daily exercise in gut-wrenching vulnerability. Perhaps we will be moved to stand more closely by them, minister more substantially to them, and take up their cause with a passion born of those who can now empathize rather than merely sympathize.

This new-found sense of vulnerability can also remind us that we are not and cannot be made secure by all the weapons we may want to place on land or sea or in space. Life is now more tenuous, and less easily secured. It becomes somehow more urgent now, as a nation but more pointedly as Christians, to name and commit ourselves to nurturing the things that make for peace.

In this regard, how can we replace the hatred in so many hearts with some more promising emotion? What can we do to build bridges of understanding between those who now only see others in the unflattering light of demeaning stereotypes? Where can we work for justice and equality in a world where injustice and lack of respect drive many to despair---and some to destruction?

This it seems to me, is at least part of the work of Christians in the unsettling aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001. May God give us the vision, strength and compassion to be and do what this time requires?

David Radcliff is director of Brethren Witness, Church of the Brethren General Board.

In the coming weeks and months there will be a significant public debate in the United States on the proper and precise response to September 11’s acts of terrorism. As we are now confronted by the nature of war in the 21st century, clear, principled Christian reflection is critically important.

Before Christians analyze and evaluate the various recommendations for responding to these acts of terrorism, we must first ask what makes terrorism a particularly grave evil. The initial answer is, of course, so obvious to both Christian believers and nonbelievers alike that the very question seems ridiculous.

Terrorists are particularly evil because, unlike trained and disciplined soldiers on the traditional battlefield, they deliberately and intentionally attack innocent and defenseless civilians. Christians tutored in the just-war tradition will denounce terrorism because, in the language of the tradition, such actions are morally forbidden by the "principle of discrimination" or "noncombatant immunity."

To be morally appalled at the attack on innocents is entirely justifiable, and the call for justice in the form of retribution is entirely warranted. In fact, what makes this attack even more egregious than the attack on Pearl Harbor, aside from the fact that the number killed will be far greater, is that the focus of Japanese attack was at least on military targets. If a declaration of war was justified in the former instance, it is hard to see how it is not justified in this one.

Still, a Christian political and moral judgment against terrorism cannot remain confined to the violation of the principle of discrimination and the targeting of civilians. Indeed, to understand the evil of terrorism exclusively through the prism of noncombatant immunity is to make a dangerous moral and political concession.

Classically, Christian teaching on war and the use of force are known by the Latin terms jus ad bellum (literally, justice toward war) and jus in bello (justice in war). The jus ad bellum provides guidance on the resort to force. The jus in bello places restraints on fighting a justified war. It is important to understand that the prohibition of attacks on noncombatants is part of the jus in bello, or the right conduct of war. The very distinction between guilt of the combatants and innocence of noncombatants is a legal one, which only applies in a state of war between recognized combatants.

To fully gauge the evil of this attack and of contemporary terrorism in general, and hence properly choose and evaluate a response, we must turn to the other part of the just-war tradition, the jus ad bellum. Christian just-war theory prescribes that before war can be waged there must be a legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention. Political leaders must then prudentially judge that the use of force will be successful, is a last resort, will produce more good than evil effects, and will secure peace.

To fully understand the injustice of terrorism, we must consider in particular the requirement of legitimate authority. Who has the right to make war? In recent years, discussions of authority often focus on such questions as whether the president can use force without the consent of Congress or whether a nation must first seek international approval for the use of force. Those are important questions, but they fail to address the most fundamental issue.

It is not insignificant that in addressing whether war could be waged justly, both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas began with the issue of legitimate authority, citing as biblical support Romans 13:1-6. By legitimate authority they meant a political authority to whom there is no superior.

Beginning with Augustine, and throughout the Middle Ages, Christians sought to curb violence by emphasizing that only legitimate political authority could wage war. They thereby declared illegitimate any use of force by subordinate nobles, private soldiers, criminals, and even the church.

Eventually, when confronted with a militaristic Germanic culture in which princes frequently engaged and glorified in combat for private ends, Christian thinkers repeatedly insisted that warfare was a public issue. War could not merely be an extreme tool of private parties but had to be a legal instrument, a part of the coercive power of law itself. Historically and theoretically, securing the public monopoly on the use of force was a necessary (albeit not sufficient) precondition for a peaceful and civilized society.

The free-lance terrorism of the late 20th and now the 21st century is nothing less than a direct assault on this Christian achievement. Left unchallenged, the rise of terrorism may foreshadow a return to the barbarism of private war. But a return to private warfare is even more ominous since vengeance is no longer fueled by distorted notions of private glory and honor. Today motives are ideological, ethnic, and religious fanaticism, which know no bounds. And they are accompanied by technology that’s capable of inflicting massive carnage.

While the precise political-military response to terrorism both in the short and long term will generate vigorous debate, the U.S. government must not fail to respond firmly, deliberately, and aggressively as a legitimate authority to the challenge of terrorism itself. This will involve killing or capturing those responsible. And it will probably involve military action against those nations that have aided and abetted them. Our public officials must do so because, whether they know it or not, they are responsible to God for the protection of the innocent. They must not carry out their responsibilities in a manner that suggests frustration with due process and the rule of law but in a way that indicates that terrorist acts cannot be respected as having any public legitimacy.

The grievances of a people may never be legitimately represented by an act of terrorism because injustices must be addressed by legitimate public authority. Failure of the United States to act decisively against terrorism in a publicly authorized way may encourage the proliferation of disorder and barbarism of a kind far worse than the private wars of the so-called Dark Ages.

Keith Pavlischek is a fellow at the Center for Public Justice, Washington, D.C., and director of the Pew Civitas Program in Faith and Public Affairs. He is also a colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.

Reflections on the trauma of 11 September 2001
By Ken Sehested with Kyle Childress

"How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she that was great among the nations! . . . She weeps bitterly in the night. . . ." (Lam. 1:1)

Late yesterday morning--midway through a long car trip to visit my Mom and several mentors--I awoke in the home of a good friend, in the oldest city in Texas, to the news repeatedly described in media accounts as the "horrific" events in New York City and Washington, D.C. Parties yet unnamed and unknown (though suspected) hijacked our own agents of affluence to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, twin symbols of global economic and military dominance.

As the details and graphic visual images flood our ears and eyes, "horrific" seems an understated refrain, and we are left repeating it, over and again, to underscore that which is too terrible for words. Knowing that my first-born and my beloved sister-in-law lived less than a mile from Manhattan's southern shore made the shock all the more poignant.

Here I sit, in the oldest city in Texas, reflecting via one of the oldest Scriptures in print on the oldest drama of human savagery. The shedding of blood begun by Cain--against his brother Abel, early in Genesis 4--was geometrically escalated, by chapter's end, in Lamech's threat to avenge his personal honor seventy-times-seven. God's refusal of revenge­indeed, the Divine prohibition again human vengeance­was ignored with impunity then no less than now. It is an old story. But there is another story, indeed a counter-story, which can and must be told by the believing community.

What may we say, dare we say, in the face of such horror? Is there any hope, any healing, any harvest of mercy to be had?

There are, of course, reminders both of pastoral insight and prophetic challenge demanding our attention.

At a moment like this, the first engagement of the Body of Christ is to engage in the ministry of grieving­grieving for the yet-uncounted individuals and families whose lives have been crushed or crumbled by this catastrophe. We weep with those who weep.

Holy grief, the practice of lament, is not a form of self-centered pity but the willingness to crouch with those forced to their knees in the face of devastation. The billowing grief rising from this trauma is very real and will not be disposed of with the power of positive thinking. We have no quick answers or explanations­or even plans of action.

Among other things, the ministry of grieving is important because it implies that the community of faith has not lost touch with the pulse of God's intent in creation, an intent confirmed in the rainbow promise of Genesis 6 (following the flood), ratified in cruciform career of Jesus and dramatically broadcast in John's concluding Revelation promising the new heaven and the new earth, when all tears will be dried and death itself shall be defeated (21:1-4).

Furthermore, the ministry of grieving reminds us that we are not engineers of the coming Reign of Peace, but witnesses, pointing to where this Promise is breaking out even in our midst (and, conversely, where it is being opposed). Grieving is also a powerful antidote to the arrogance of self-sufficiency, to confidence in wishful thinking and human control. There is a sustaining force in the universe that we can trust, which is available but not manageable.

The second engagement for the Body of Christ is to intercede in prayer for the casualties of this catastrophe. Intercessory prayer is not a form of spiritual hocus-pocus; we have no magical wand to wave, to make the hurt go away. "The effective, fervent prayer of the righteous availeth much," according to the King James rendering (James 5:16). We may debate exactly how this is so, but this much is clear: intercessory prayer keeps us in a heightened state of readiness to intervene with compassion when the moment arises, which is the third call to the Body of Christ.

The third engagement for the church in the face of this catastrophe­and surely this moment feels like an apocalypse to those of us in the U.S.­is to remind our congregations that the root meaning of "apocalypse" is not the advent of destruction but the occasion for uncovering. While God is certainly not the author of this pain, there is the possibility that, out of the grief, an unveiling may occur; and we must prepare to ask and respond to the question, "What is God saying to us?"

Grieving and intercession make us available for the ministry of mercy and comfort. This, of course, is what U.S. President George W. Bush attempted in his speech to the nation Tuesday evening when he referenced the psalmist's affirmation of hard-won hope: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me" (Psalm 23:4). It is very appropriate for the nation's leader to speak words of succor to the people. And the believing community should stand ready and willing to echo and amplify those words whenever possible.

Nevertheless, the Body of Christ must remain alert when Caesar quotes Scripture. The text of Holy Writ is forever threatened with being co-opted, is always in danger of being robed in the garments of empire, of being mobilized to endorse injustice, of being segregated from intended conclusion. And in Tuesday night's episode, President Bush neglected to note that the text he quoted pushes forward to the point of table fellowship with enemies.

Which brings me to the parallel, if less comfortable, work of prophetic challenge to which the Body of Christ has been ordained. An essential work of Gospel proclamation is theological interrogation of political propaganda. In short, the Body of Christ is called to ask the questions currently being disguised by newspaper headlines.

For instance: Not so long ago, following the bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, state authorities, news media and common mobs alike began harassing people of Arab descent living in the U.S., only to discover that responsibility actually lay with one of our own decorated war veterans of European lineage.

Even if someone the caliber of Osama bin Laden, whose name has frequently been mentioned as a suspect behind the simultaneous, bloody attacks on the market-military monuments, is found to be responsible, the believing community needs to recall an embarrassing bit of history. It was the U.S. who originally recruited, trained and supplied bin Laden and his colleagues for guerilla warfare. Back then, his services were as a "hot" proxy agent in our "cold" war with the Soviet Union. He has since found a more lucrative offer on the "free market" of global political violence.

And of course there's the recent demonization of Saddam Hussein, whose original chemical weapons arsenal was supplied by the U.S. back when he was still our ally against the Iranian Ayatollah.

To our shame, and our peril, we have little knowledge of a millennium of Western meddling in Arab affairs, deposing this ruler, propping up that one, with no criteria other than cost/benefit calculations. Few in the U.S. realize that our nation, aided by Great Britain, has waged the longest bombing campaign in human history against Iraq. Since the formal end of the Gulf War­and without even the semblance of United Nations' authority­we have over the past decade, on a weekly, sometimes daily basis, continued to rain death from the skies.

UNICEF, the U.N.'s own child-welfare agency, has indicated that at least a half-million Iraqi children have died since the end of Desert Storm from causes directly related to the international economic sanctions. When former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright was asked point-blank on national television if the death of half a million children was worth the price of opposing Hussein, she said yes. We say no. The competition of loyalty is that stark. Choose this day whom you will serve.

There is another way, an option other than flight (in the face of genuine evil) or fight (violent resistance to injustice). It is a common, though grossly unattended, melody in Gospels­repeatedly echoed by Paul­the most insistent note of which is the stress on loving enemies. For the Body of Christ, the failure to love enemies is to hedge on Jesus.

Yet this theme is woven into the fabric of Scripture. Take for example the story of the Prophet Elisha's transforming initiative recorded in 2 Kings.

In the sixth chapter we are told that the King of Aram (Syria) is menacing Israel, sending raiding parties across the border to steal crops, livestock, even young people for sale as slaves. It was a conscious policy designed to effect Israel's submission to Aramean political, economic and military control, to make it a "client" state.

Political intrigue enters the story when the King of Aram notices that Israel seems to know in advance of all the King's military strategies. He suspects a "mole" in his security and intelligence apparatus. After extensive investigation, his trusted aides return with this shocking news: No, there's no spy in our camp. The problem is that Israelite prophet, Elisha, who somehow divines the King's most highly-guarded orders.

So the King of Aram orders that Elisha be "neutralized." Troops are assembled; they undertake a cross-border raid on the prophet's home; and under the stealth of night, surround Elisha's headquarters.

As dawn breaks, the prophet's student intern arises to fetch the newspaper. When he steps outside in the cool morning air, the sight of an Aramean army startles the residual slumber from his eyes. Panicked, he rouses his mentor.

When Elisha finally calms his protégé enough to get a coherent story, the prophet seems curiously unimpressed. "But we're surrounded by an army!" the intern exclaims. Elisha then initiates a prayer meeting. "Oh, Lord, please open his eyes that he may see." After the "amen," Elisha urges the young man to take another peak out the window. And he was dumbfounded by what he saw. The Aramean army was still there, armed and eager; yet surrounding their ranks was an even larger, encircling army of angels astride flaming chariots and horses.

At that moment the Aramean army advanced on the prophet. Elisha prayed again: "Close their eyes so they cannot see." And the entire army of Aram is struck blind. As the chaos ensues, Elisha steps out of the house, calls to the commanding general, saying, "I hear you're looking for the Prophet Elisha?" "Yes," comes the stuttered response from a confused and frightened voice.

"Well, he's not here," Elisha nonchalantly responds. "But I can take you to where he is." So this massive army, in comical, stumbling formation, meekly fall in line behind Elisha. Whereupon they are led straight to Israel's capital, to the king of Israel, inside the walled city­delivered into the waiting hands of their enemies!

The Israelite king is overjoyed and immediately sets about to order a slaughter. But Elisha has something else in mind. He prays again, this time to have the Aramean soldiers' eyesight restored. All present are then further confounded by Elisha's next directive. "There will be no killing here today. Put away your weapons; gather food and drink. Today we feast!"

And the mortal enemies sit down at common tables for a grand meal. When everyone is satisfied, Elisha instructs the Arameans to return to their home. And the story ends with these brief words, "And the Arameans no longer troubled the land of Israel" (6:8-23).

Part of our prophetic calling is to insist that there are rival, realistic and spiritually-informed political strategies which suggest an alternative to those policies which depend on superior fire-power and assume the need for political domination. We lift them up and, together with all who share this common vision, recommend them to our nation's leaders.

For the Body of Christ, the pivot point of the vision sustaining such political alternatives is portrayed in the symbolically-elaborate narrative of John's Revelation. In the fifth chapter, there is a picture of the end of history, the ultimate horizon. As the sacred book of life is revealed, an angel asks, "Who is worthy to open the scroll?" The text concludes that none is able, no one in heaven or on earth. Neither kings nor presidents, generals nor multinational magnates is able. And the narrator weeps at this admission.

Yet a member of the heavenly hosts exclaims that there is one and only one capable of opening the scroll: the conquering Lion of Judah.

But suddenly, without warning, explanation or transition, the image shifts and the text turns. Instead of a lion standing ready between the throne and heavenly hosts, the narrator identifies a lamb: "I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain. . . ." Indeed, the Lion of Judah has been transposed as the Lamb of God. The Lion of Judah has conquered by being the Lamb slain. And as the Lamb opens the book, countless creatures and angels sing hymns of praise. "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing . . . for ever and ever!"

Overcoming the world's enmity will indeed come at the cost of much blood. But in the end only the power to relinquish life, rather than require it or remand it, results in a reconciled, restored community.

It is possible to fearlessly traverse the valley of the shadow of death; but not because we are the meanest S.O.B. in sight. No, because we have learned, as Jesus taught, that only those willing to lose life, for his sake‹that is to say, for the sake of the promised Peaceable Reign of God­will find it.

P.S. (especially to pastoral leaders): Facing this tragedy will obviously require a season rather than a Sunday. There are multiple layers to this trauma, including the festering question, "Why do these people hate us so much?" When the time comes for this latter question, I urge you to have this dialogue, at least in part, in conversation with those who will likely become targets for racial/religious violence. They may very well need us to help fend off sporadic or calculated acts of vengeance. We also need them to help us comprehend the history that has prompted such hatred.

Ken Sehested is executive director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. Kyle Childress is pastor of Austin Heights Baptist Church, Nacogdoches, Texas