ATTACK ON AMERICA/Digest of Commentary For those without words, 'He understands the situation' The Layman Online Thursday, September 20, 2001 Many Christians are at a loss for words or troubled by the words we do speak and imagine in response to the terrorist attacks on America and the road ahead. What are people saying? This is a digest of excerpts from statements by religious leaders and syndicated columnists. Click the name of the author for the full text. I HAVE NO WORDS. I have no explanation. All I can do is to point us to the Lord. He has not lost control and He understands this situation, and that's why we're here today – to simply call on His name. Dr. James Dobson Focus on the Family FOR ONCE, LET'S HAVE no "grief counselors" standing by with banal consolations, as if the purpose, in the midst of all this, were merely to make everyone feel better as quickly as possible. We shouldn't feel better. For once, let's have no fatuous rhetoric about "healing." Healing is inappropriate now, and dangerous. There will be time later for the tears of misfortune. A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage. What's needed is a unified, unifying, Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury-a ruthless indignation that doesn't leak away in a week or two, wandering off into Prozac-induced forgetfulness or into the next media sensation (O.J. … Elián … Chandra …) or into a corruptly thoughtful relativism (as has happened in the recent past, when, for example, you might hear someone say, "Terrible what he did, of course, but, you know, the Unabomber does have a point, doesn't he, about modern technology?"). Lance Morrow Time Magazine … WHILE IT MAY SEEM politically helpful to call them [the terrorists] "barbaric" in their acts against the "civilized" world, it is appropriate to ask why the incineration of several thousand people in the attack on the World Trade Center was a "barbaric act of terrorism," while the incineration of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are seen as a "necessary act of war by a civilized nation." Vernon Broyles Associate director for social justice and associate for corporate witness in the National Ministries Division of the General Assembly Council, Presbyterian Church (USA) THOSE HUMANISTIC, "can't we all get along,'' "profiling potential terrorists is racism,'' "we're all God's children,'' "Kumbaya," "all we are saying is give peace a chance'' moral equivalency equivocators will soon be back. They'll try to wear down our resolve. They should be ignored. They have lost all credibility, just as the "peace in our time'' crowd did at the start of World War II. Cal Thomas Syndicated columnist IN VENGEANCE, we simply pummel the enemy to hurt them worse than we were hurt. Our motivation is neither the common good nor the upholding of justice and truth per se. We simply want to assuage our own pain by seeing our enemy in worse pain than we were. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is not 'letting him off scot free'. Forgiveness is a means of giving up the hate and the desire for personal vengeance so that we can then pursue justice and maybe even reconciliation. Tim Keller Presbyterian Church in America IN THINKING about terrorism, democracies are sometimes plagued by bad sociology and bad philosophy feeding upon each other. From the false idea that extreme action must have justification in the social environment, it is but a short intellectual stagger to the equally false idea that such acts can and should be eliminated by appeasement tarted up as reasonableness. The real aim of terrorism is not to destroy people or physical assets, still less to score anything remotely resembling military victories. Rather, its purpose is to demoralize. George Will Syndicated columnist WE ARE SHOCKED by a series of terrible acts against humanity and especially our country. We pray for the innocent victims and their families. We pray also that those whose hearts are filled with hate might be turned away from evil. Help us not to speak or act rashly, not knowing by whom or why these awful deeds have been committed. Fill our hearts with compassion for those in need and strengthen our wills that we may do justly and love mercy and walk humbly before you. Moderator Jack B. Rogers Presbyterian Church (USA) WHEN PEARL HARBOR was bombed, nobody talked about bringing the Japanese pilots or even their commanders to justice. We declared war on Japan. It so happened that, a couple of years later, the navy learned that Admiral Yamamoto, who had planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, was in the air on a tour of his bases and they sent up some fighter planes that shot down the plane that was carrying him. But nobody talked about ending the war against Japan, just because the individual responsible for bombing Pearl Harbor had gotten justice. Thomas Sowell Syndicated columnist IN UPHOLDING the mission of The United Methodist Church, as followers of Jesus Christ, we cannot approve of any retaliation in-kind. More violence begets violence. Yes, we believe in punishment, but not in retaliation. We also urge all Americans and especially United Methodist Americans to refrain from rushing to judgment against whoever may have committed these heinous crimes against humanity. Jim Winkler, executive United Methodist Board of Church and Society THE PEOPLE who planned Tuesday's bombings combined world-class evil with world-class genius to devastating effect. And unless we are ready to put our best minds to work combating them – the World War III Manhattan Project – in an equally daring, unconventional and unremitting fashion, we're in trouble. Thomas L. Freidman New York Times WE PRAY ESPECIALLY for the victims of these tragedies and for their families and loved ones. We pray for those providing emergency services. We pray for the leaders of your nation. May God give them courage and wisdom in this terrible hour. We fervently pray that this is the end of terror, and implore those responsible to desist from any further such acts of inhumanity. Rev. Dr Konrad Raiser, general secretary World Council of Churches WE SHARE THE ANGER the anger toward those who so callously and massively destroy innocent lives, no matter what the grievances invoked. In the name of God, we too demand that those responsible for these utterly evil acts be found and brought to justice. Those culpable must not escape accountability. But we must not, out of anger and vengeance, indiscriminately retaliate in ways that bring on even more loss of innocent life. Joint statement by some Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders, including Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick of the Presbyterian Church (USA). The statement was circulated through the National Council of Churches. SUPPOSE THERE were quick strikes by U.S. aircraft on targets in Afghanistan, made to show that we mean business. The result would likely be to kill many impoverished Afghan civilians and few if any terrorists. The danger is that such military action would trigger the Law of Unintended Consequences. That law, as Clyde Haberman of The New York Times put it recently, provides that for every action, there is an excellent chance of producing an opposite and totally disproportionate reaction. Anthony Lewis Syndicated Columnist SIN IS ALIVE AND WELL on Planet Earth. The attack on civilians and using civilian means of travel was sin at its most vile. When two planes hit the World Trade Towers, they flew all of us into a black hole of human making. Designed as an attack on American "symbols" of commerce and power, the one thing most ignored was the sanctity of human life. Terrorists saw a building's steel frame as a more significant monument to be destroyed than the lives of mothers and fathers taken as unwilling passengers on journeys of death and hatred. Darrell L. Block Christianity Today IT MAY BE TOO MUCH to ask that people of faith love our enemies today. But it is so important that we at least not lash out against innocent people. Whenever something happens that seems to put us at odds with people in the Arab world, little Muslim kids in Southern California get beat up on the way home from school. We must not allow this to happen. This is an important time for people of faith to call for-and model-sanity in the midst of chaos. Richard J. Mouw, president and professor of Christian philosophy Fuller Theological Seminary WHAT ARE THE TWO most powerful weapons the terrorists possess? First, the element of surprise, which we will try to reduce with closer surveillance, air marshals, biological and missile defenses, etc. A more powerful weapon of radical Islam is its ability to erase from the brains of recruits the basic will to live. The normal survival instinct is replaced with a pseudo- religious fantasy of a killer's self-martyrdom leading to eternity in paradise surrounded by adoring virgins. This perversion of one of the world's great faiths produces suicide bombers. William Safire New York Times THE U.S. CONFERENCE of Catholic Bishops and American Muslim Council, Islamic Circle of North America, Islamic Society of North America, Muslim American Society and numerous Islamic centers and councils have co-sponsored dialogues on religious themes and we commit ourselves to the many noble goals of interreligious cooperation. We believe that the one God calls us to be peoples of peace. Nothing in our Holy Scriptures, nothing in our understanding of God's revelation, nothing that is Christian or Islamic justifies terrorist acts and disruption of millions of lives which we have witnessed this week. Together we condemn those actions as evil and diametrically opposed to true religion. Joint statement of U.S. Conference Bishops, American Muslim Council and numerous other Islamic groups THE PEOPLE WHO DID this to us are monsters; the people who cheered them have hate-sickened minds. One reason they can cheer is that they know we would never do to them what their heroes did to us, even though we could, a thousand times worse. They know that when we hunt down the monsters, we will try hard not to harm the innocent. Those are the handcuffs we willingly wear, because for all our flaws, we are a decent people. Dave Barry Syndicated humor columnists (with this notable exception) AND THE REALIZATION that we don't yet know how to fight this evil in the Afghan heart of darkness, a place that rebuffed the British empire and the Russians, described by Kipling in "The Man Who Would Be King" as "one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has been through it. . . . The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached them you couldn't do anything." Maureen Dowd Syndicated columnist THE HIJACKERS who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were Muslim in name only. Several of them were involved in drunk driving and visiting strip bars, things no religious Muslim would ever do. In reality they were anarchists seeking to destroy, destabilize, and make us slaves to fear. Charles Colson AS CHRISTIANS, it is important that we behave responsibly at this time and not act harshly. We offer prayers for our leaders, who must reassure a shaken nation and investigate today's terrible deeds. We pray that those who have been affected most will find comfort and peace in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our first thoughts should be to respond to our fellow human beings with love and compassion. The Rev. H. George Anderson, presiding bishop Evangelical Lutheran Church in America FOR FAR TOO LONG, we have been queasy about responding to terrorism. Two decades ago, when those with real or imagined grievances against the United States began picking off Americans overseas on military or diplomatic assignments or on business, singly or in groups, we delivered pinprick retaliations or none at all. We said we did not want to risk harming innocent people in striking back. But that gave license to the leaders of those nations that shelter known terrorists. The time is long overdue to tell those leaders that if you do not rid yourselves of the terrorists living within your borders or mingling with your people, you have a big problem: We are coming after you as well as them. David Broder The Washington Post RELIGION HAS HELPED America cope; even the New York Stock Exchange preceded its resumption of trading with a rendition of "God Bless America." But religion also has tempered the nation's passions. Many religious leaders' message has been: Seek justice, don't lust for revenge. That sentiment was put well by Dean Nathan Baxter at the prayer service, when he urged that "as we act, we not become the evil we deplore." Gerald Seib The Wall Street Journal I CALL UPON the members of the United Church of Christ to join in reflection about the culture of violence that consumes our world, to pray night and day for God's presence and to resist the impulse to respond to violence with violence. This is a time of testing for our souls. May we remember that our only comfort is that we belong to Christ. John Thomas, President United Church of Christ IT HAS BEEN CLEAR for months now that George W. Bush did not really understand the difference between being the governor of a very large state and being president of a great country. Well, sir, it's time to learn – fast. This was what a fellow Texan, Lyndon Johnson, meant when he said we have only one president at a time. Richard Reeves THOSE RESPONSIBLE must be found and punished for their evil and disregard for human life, but through the heart of this violence we are called to another way. May our response be to engage with all our hearts and minds and strength in God's project of transforming the world into a garden, a place of peace where swords can become plowshares and spears are changed into pruning hooks. The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop and primate The Episcopal Church ONE OF THE THINGS I believe we must keep in mind is that God is on his throne, and that he is the sovereign ruler over all the world. God is effecting his will among the nations. The Biblical writers, again and again, speak of God in the rising and the falling of nations and of empires. Certainly in the midst of this, we need to be asking the question, what is God doing? I believe he is humbling us. He's showing our dependence [on him]. R. Albert Mohler Jr. president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary RESOLVED, That we especially honor those heroic persons who died attempting to thwart the attacks and those who gave their lives in rescue efforts following the attacks, and that we offer our heartfelt sympathy and gratitude to their families; and be it further … That we pledge hearty prayer and unreserved support for our President, his advisors, Congress, and the members of the armed forces as they fulfill their God-given duties in responding to this attack … Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee

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