9/11

Illustration of a Bible replacing the magazine of an assault rifle

Illustration by Michael George Haddad

WAR-CULTURE IN THE United States is so pervasive and seamless that Americans struggle to see it, much less question it. More than $16 trillion has been spent since 2001 as “the calculus of 9/11 led to runaway growth in military spending,” according to the National Priorities Project. Forget Biden’s drawdown in Afghanistan and realistic proposals emphasizing diplomacy and economic cooperation. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III declared in June that the $752.9 billion request in the FY 2022 military budget aligned with “the will of the American people.” What role do Christians play in this destructive reality?

Here is the problem: Religion and violence intertwine to fuel our ubiquitous war-culture. And in making war “sacred,” the death-dealing consequences are concealed from our consciousness.

Consider a common vehicle decal. A U.S. soldier stands silhouetted before an American flag shaped as angelic wings. The text reads: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, ESV). Another popular meme says, “Remember that only two forces ever agreed to die for you—Jesus Christ and the American soldier.”

The decal verse is ripped out of context. Jesus’ soliloquy is on servant leadership, characterized by the loving washing of one another’s feet—not killing. Religious frameworks are hijacked to place a “sacred canopy” of meaning over the use of deadly force. For Christians, cognitive dissonance should abound. However, using the Bible to bless war is so common we hardly question it.

Robert Hirschfield 11-17-2021
Lawrence Joseph gestures with his hand as he looks off camera

Lawrence Joseph during an interview in 2002 / Chester Higgins Jr. / The New York Times

HISTORY HAS PAID personal attention to Lawrence Joseph, a Maronite Catholic from Detroit. In 1967, when Joseph was 19 and just finished with his freshman year at the University of Michigan, his father’s grocery-liquor store was looted and burned during the Detroit Rebellion. The five-day uprising of Black people reacting in part to police abuse and brutality and its fierce suppression by law enforcement and the National Guard made him “acutely conscious of America’s deeply systemic violence.”

Joseph, a poet who was also a lawyer who taught at St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., and at Princeton, was living a block from the World Trade Center in 2001 when the two planes attacked. He and his wife had to evacuate their apartment. It was weeks before they could return. In the title poem of his 2017 volume So Where Are We?, Joseph writes:

flailing bodies in midair
the neighborhood under thick gray powder—
on every screen. I don’t know
where you are, I don’t know what
I’m going to do, I heard a man say;
the man who had spoken was myself.

David Cortright 10-20-2021
Afghan men stand before a concrete wall topped with barbed wire and a U.S. soldier

U.S. soldiers aim at a man who tried to climb the wall at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan / Jim Huylebroek / The New York Times

“I GRADUATED FROM university in 1968. I was drafted immediately. I had not really thought much about the war, but the more I talked to the guys who were coming back from Vietnam, the more I realized that this thing was terribly wrong. I began to think of the Vietnamese forces as liberation forces trying to free their country from foreign invasion—we were the invaders.

I went through a crisis of conscience. I saw a news report about soldiers who were speaking out against the war. I thought to myself, I can do that. I began to organize among soldiers in the barracks. We submitted a petition signed by 1,300 active-duty service members that was published in The New York Times.

The basis of my commitment to activism is faith: the belief that our role in life is to serve others, to overcome suffering and injustice, especially war, which to me, is the greatest sin."

Josiah R. Daniels 9-09-2021

Valarie Kaur. Photo by Amber Castro; design by Mitchell Atencio.

On Sept. 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man, was killed while he was planting flowers at the gas station he owned in Mesa, Ariz., becoming the first victim of post-9/11 hate crimes. For then-college student Valarie Kaur, the murder of “Balbir Uncle”— as he is known to Kaur and others in the Sikh community — was a pivotal moment.

Joshua Eaton 9-07-2021

Christian singer Sean Feucht hosts a "Worship Protest" on the National Mall during the COVID-19 pandemic on Oct. 25, 2020, in Washington, D.C. By Nicole Glass Photography via Shutterstock.

Two concerts in the nation’s capital next week by conservative singer-songwriter and activist Sean Feucht have raised concerns about security after an event in Portland, Ore., last month ended in violence between far-right extremists and counterprotesters.

Weldon Nisly 1-27-2021
The covers of "Patriotic Dissent" and "To Start A War"

THERE'S A TRAGIC truth behind America’s endless war since 9/11: It’s based on lies. Two recent books confront the lies. Robert Draper and Danny Sjursen independently critique the arguably the worst foreign policy blunder in modern U.S. history.

To Start A War is Draper’s account of how the second Bush administration used 9/11 to justify invading Iraq, which was not involved in the attacks. An author’s note opens his treatise: “This is a story bracketed by two defining tragedies of the 21st century. The first was an unprovoked attack on America’s homeland. ... The second, 18 months later, was an act of war by America against a sovereign nation that had neither harmed the United States nor threatened to do so.” Draper masterfully unravels the Bush administration’s litany of lies following the labyrinthine road to war from the White House to Foggy Bottom, the Pentagon, and Congress, through national security and intelligence agencies, the diplomatic corps, and military ops. The reader becomes privy to real people and conversations. Every page stirs outrage.

The end of the road? Six weeks into war, President George W. Bush swaggered across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, flashed thumbs up, and pronounced, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” Overhead hung a red, white, and blue “Mission Accomplished” banner. Draper concludes, “The slogan accurately reflected the Bush administration’s wishful thinking and grandiose sense that history had already been made.”

Julie Polter 1-04-2021
Mako Fujimura holds a bowl with golden kintsugi cracks.

Photograph by Daniel Dorsa

Artist Makoto Fujimura uses materials and techniques from nihonga, a Japanese style of painting. The pigments are pulverized minerals and precious metals applied in multiple layers, in what he describes as “a slow process that fights against efficiency.” Prayer and contemplation are woven into the work. The tiny mineral particles refract light, often creating subtle prismatic effects. It is a style of art made for the type of long, unforced gaze that slowly reveals evermore depth. Deceptively simple and quietly extravagant.

Fujimura’s thoughts on art, theology, and culture are, like his paintings, many-layered and refractive, celebrating God as love, beauty, and mercy while also contending with pain and desolation. He is a mystic as well as a painter, and in his latest book, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making, he speaks out of his spiritual and his artistic practice.

But Fujimura also builds on three decades of reaching far outside his studio to evangelize on the necessity of art for human thriving and the call to shift from fighting over culture to caring for and nurturing it. He founded the International Arts Movement in 1992, which facilitates connections and communication between groups seeking to creatively and positively impact the culture, whether they are from the arts, music, business, education, or social change organizations.

Vishavjit Singh 9-11-2019

Stephen Sinclair. Photo by Nate Gowdy

On September 11th, 2001, while walking my dogs over to the Hudson River in the Greenwich Village where I lived, I heard the sound of two low-flying planes. I then witnessed everything that happened, standing there with my neighbors in utter, total disbelief.

Kanwar Singh 8-02-2017

Image via RNS/AP Photo/Morry Gash

A neo-Nazi had walked into a gurdwara — or Sikh temple — in Oak Creek, Wis., and gone on a rampage, fatally shooting six worshippers and wounding several others, including a police officer. To this day, the attack on the Oak Creek gurdwara remains one of the deadliest acts of violence on an American house of worship in our nation’s history.

David Mislin 5-22-2017

Image via RNS/Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

President Donald Trump, like his predecessors before him, has discovered the potent language of religious tolerance and interfaith unity when discussing Islam, as he demonstrated in his speech in Saudi Arabia to leaders of some 50 Muslim nations. But unlike previous presidents, he has not linked that rhetoric with recognition of the large, vibrant Muslim community in the U.S. 

Image via RNS/European Union 2016 - European Parliament/Pietro Naj-Oleari

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks made a name for himself as chief rabbi of Great Britain for nearly a quarter-century, a time of great tumult that included the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the influx of millions of Muslims into Europe, and the ongoing pressures to absorb and assimilate newcomers into a mostly secular society.

As chief rabbi, from 1991 to 2013, he stressed an appreciation and respect of all faiths, with an emphasis on interfaith work that brings people together, while allowing each faith its own particularity.

Katie M. Logan 2-15-2017

Image via RNS/Marvel Comics

During the first few weeks of the Trump administration, we’ve seen increased pressure on Muslim and immigrant communities in the United States.

In the face of these threats, which Marvel superhero might be best equipped to defend the people, ideals, and institutions under attack? Some comic fans and critics are pointing to Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel.

Safety is defined in the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus as abiding in God’s sense of justice —“not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.” Justice is love and love is behaving out of fairness to all — even those we see as a risk. We cannot expect to be in safety unless we treat others as we wish them to treat us.

the Web Editors 12-22-2016

Image via Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock.com

President Obama's administration will formally end a registry program created after 9/11 to monitor visitors traveling to the U.S. from countries with active terrorist groups, reports the New York Times. This move comes weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, who made known during his presidential campaign his intent to set up a national registry for Muslims and temporarily ban Muslim immigrants from the U.S.

Kimberly Winston 12-09-2016

Image via RNS

Winter isn’t coming — it’s already here. With it comes the hope — if not the time — to curl up under the covers, or by the fire, and read a good book. Here are seven titles you won’t find on the religion shelf at the bookstore, or library, but that nonetheless use religion and spirituality themes to propel the story.

Faiza Patel 11-23-2016

Image via RNS/Carlos Barria

This election season has been an anxious time for Muslim Americans. After the election, my Facebook feed was filled with Muslim mothers wondering how to explain to their children that the new president is a man who had proposed requiring them to register with the government, and called for a ban on people of their faith coming to the United States.

As we try to absorb what this election means, we must contend with how Muslims have been cast. For the president-elect, we are either terrorists or terrorist sympathizers, who are conflated with the threat of “radical Islam.” For the most part, Democrats too see Muslim Americans through a narrow counterterrorism lens.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Mike Blake

Nearly 200 religious and civil rights groups are petitioning President Obama to dismantle the regulatory framework behind a Homeland Security program critics say discriminates against Muslims and Arabs.

President-elect Donald Trump has appointed one of the architects of the program, Kris Kobach, to his transition team. That, and Trump’s own calls on the campaign trail for “extreme vetting” of immigrants, have led some to believe that he will revive the National Security Exit-Entry Registration System.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Brittany Greeson

The American Civil Liberties Union collected more than $11 million and 150,000 new members. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Twitter account gained 9,000 followers. And the Anti-Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism and other bigotries, saw donations increase fiftyfold.

In the days since Donald Trump won the presidency, these spikes, in support for groups that defend religious and other minorities, speak to a fear that the president-elect will trample on their rights — or at least empower those who would.

Hannah Critchfield 9-30-2016

Image via /Shutterstock.com

Recent polls show that 68 percent of black Americans think the government should provide monetary reparations to descendants of slaves. That this most recent call for reparations, from a global governing body, has largely gone ignored in the same week that Congress gave sweeping support to the JASTA bill suggests to black citizens that the United States government is comfortable pursuing justice for others’ terrorism but less interested in taking responsibility for its own.

Image via RNS/Sikh Coalition

The man who led police to the bombing suspect in New York and New Jersey was [also] an Asian immigrant.

Harinder Singh Bains, a native of India who practices the Sikh faith, said he saw Ahmad Khan Rahami “right in front of my face” and made a call to the police after matching the man’s image with the one Bains saw on TV.

Rahami, who is accused of placing the bombs that exploded Sept. 17 in the Chelsea section of Manhattan and in Seaside Park, N.J., was sleeping in the doorway of Bains’ bar in Linden, N.J., when Bains spotted him.