When we watched images on television of the World Trade Center falling to the ground in ashes it shook us to the core. We flew flags in every yard and every window. Church pews filled up and many of us expressed revived faith in God. The long-term effects have been even more important. The United States entered two major military campaigns in the Middle East. American politics were infused with concern over terrorism and new terms like “Islamofascism”. Discussion of religion has grown more polarized, I believe, in large part due to 9/11. Some of us believe that religion provides important answers to the problems of violence and hatred. Some of us believe religion is one of the primary causes of violence and hatred. But ten years after 9/11 most of us agree on one thing—religion is important.
This realization is something we have arrived at many times before but continue to forget. In the past two hundred years thinkers like Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud have predicted the eventual decline of religion. The highly publicized Scopes Trial in 1925 brought the conflict between Evolution and Biblical Creation into the public eye. How could religion stand against the tide of scientific progress that would seemingly undermine it? I would say the answer lies in an analogue to evolutionary theory itself—applied to ideas, or memes, rather than genes. Evolutionary science teaches that genes will persist in a population where they provide favorable phenotypes, or traits, that allow an organism to survive and reproduce. Biologist Richard Dawkins proposed in his book The Selfish Gene that certain ideas could self-replicate and spread in a similar form of natural selection. In my opinion, through an interesting twist of irony religion has been able to survive through evolution by adaptation. It is naïve to expect that religion will ever disappear but it will change and adapt to become more relevant.
One way religion has adapted to modernism has been to become more extreme. Author Karen Armstrong wrote in The Battle for God that fundamentalism is not properly understood as a reversion to more archaic expressions of religion. Rather, fundamentalism is a modern phenomenon responding to modern conditions like globalization, secular government and science. It is this form of religion that is most visible today in the news. Most fundamentalists are not violent but some begin to feel so frustrated with the conditions of the world that they believe violence and force are the only effective tools to provoke change. This is the crossover into extremism and it happens in many religions. Christian fundamentalists who believe abortion is so abominable that it justifies violence may go to the extreme and bomb an abortion clinic. Muslim fundamentalists who feel trapped by their local political conditions and foreign involvement from a world superpower may feel there is no other recourse but to engage in violent acts of terrorism.
Muslims have gotten the brunt of criticism from atheists and Christians alike. Both Richard Dawkins and Bill O’Reilly voice very strong opinions about the purported dangers of Islam. The difference is that Richard Dawkins doesn’t stop with Islam. Since 9/11 we have seen the publication of books like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens and The End of Faith by Sam Harris. These three authors have led what is now called New Atheist movement. New Atheism is the belief that religion should not simply be tolerated but should be countered, criticized and exposed by rational argument wherever its influence arises. [1] Christopher Hitchens goes further than identifying himself as an atheist and calls himself an “antitheist”. Hitchens said in a phone interview “Religion is the most important argument there’s ever been, because it’s about the meaning of life… It’s much more necessary to understand this argument than anything else. It touches on all the other great matters of science and medicine and, indeed, literature, ethics and morality. Therefore, it’s the progenitor of very strong passions.” [2] If there is one thing both the New Atheists and theists agree on it is that religion is important.
Another way religion has adapted has been to place more emphasis on compassion. In a recent Washington Post editorial Karen Armstrong wrote: “Each of the world faiths developed originally in a world where violence had reached unprecedented heights.” [3] This is the thesis of her book The Great Transformation, which analyzes the religious transformation that took place in the Axial Age (900-200 BCE). Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Greek rationalism and Judaism passed through dramatic changes during this time. This was the age of Buddha, Confucius, Laozi, Socrates, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. The great insight of the Axial Age was simple—compassion works. “The only way you could encounter what they called ‘God’, ‘Nirvana’, ‘Brahman’, or the ‘Way’, was to live a compassionate life. Indeed, religion was compassion… Each tradition developed its own formulation of the Golden Rule: do not do to others what you would not have done to you” [4]
The interesting thing about these important religious revolutions was that they were often inspired by horrible violence. “The sages of the Axial Age did not create their compassionate ethic in idyllic circumstances. Each tradition developed in societies like our own that were torn apart by violence and warfare as never before; indeed, the first catalyst of religious change was usually a principled rejection of the aggression that the sages witnessed all around them.” [5] In our own day our capacity to kill and inflict pain on one another has increased exponentially. Vast scientific resources that could be devoted to improving our lives and ending human suffering are instead dedicated to developing weapons. We are living in a global village that is becoming a crowded mixture of cultures and religions and we don’t yet have an understanding of how to handle these changes. The consequences of these conditions are tragedies like 9/11. In the face of such terrifying violence many religious people around the world have responded by rediscovering the eternal principle of compassion.
A few days ago, Lutheran minister Nadia Bolz-Weber sent out this tweet: “Question of the day: why didn't people KEEP Going to churches after 9-11?” My own answer to that question is that people went to churches looking for something and they stopped going because they didn’t find what they were looking for. After 9/11 we felt that there was something seriously wrong, a disease that needed to be cured. People went to church looking for answers. Unfortunately, some of the answers we heard were remarks like this from Jerry Falwell: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen’”. [6] The tragedy of 9/11 was used as a prop in the culture war. The culture war is not a war of bombs and guns (though it often supports those too). The culture war is a war of words and emotions and it is toxic. When we were looking for enlightenment we heard a lot of the same old thing—divisiveness and intolerance, even from the pulpit. If these are the things people get from their churches then I think these words of Louis Cassels are appropriate: “If you persist in handing out stones when people ask for bread, they’ll finally quit coming to the bakery.” [7]
I believe that religion does have the answers to the problems of violence and hatred but it cannot answer with more violence and more hatred. Real religion, the gutsy, hard-core religion that inspires real transformation responds to hatred with love and to violence with peace. This is the kind of religion that dares to take seriously the teaching of Jesus: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” [8] It is of paramount importance for Christians not to tame or domesticate Jesus to fit our nationalism or culture. Jesus’ offensiveness is what makes him so powerful. In response to the violence of 9/11 religion can answer with peace.
As a Mormon I believe that Heaven is open and that God continues to speak to people today. I have found inspiration and enlightenment of the prophetic words of many Latter-day Saints as they reply to the threat of violence and hate. In 1976, the bicentennial of the founding of America, LDS church president Spencer W. Kimball warned: “We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become antienemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching: ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.’” [9]
After 9/11 LDS Apostle Russell M. Nelson said from the pulpit in General Conference shortly before the invasion of Iraq: “Now, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what does the Lord expect of us? As a Church, we must ‘renounce war and proclaim peace.’ As individuals, we should ‘follow after the things which make for peace.’ We should be personal peacemakers. We should live peacefully—as couples, families, and neighbors. We should live by the Golden Rule.” [10]
Religion is something we cannot afford to ignore. Our lives are saturated with it. To take a note from Latter-day Saint scripture, God is “above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things; and all things are by him, and of him”. [11] We cannot escape religion or pretend that it doesn’t affect our lives or our world. The question is what kind of religion we will practice and what we will do with it. Ten years after 9/11 I hope we can look back on this and dig deep within ourselves and choose compassion.
References
3. Karen Armstrong. The Great Transformation. p. xviii-xix
4. ibid. xix
5. Remarks to Pat Robertson after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on The 700 Club (13 September 2001) (audio recording); more at "Falwell and Above" at Snopes.com
6. Christianity Today, Oct. 23, 1970. Quoted here: http://lds.org/ensign/1973/01/spiritual-famine?lang=eng and http://lds.org/ensign/2004/11/prophets-seers-and-revelators?lang=eng
7. Matthew 5:44-45
10. Doctrine and Covenants 88:41
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Well done!
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