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Voices of Peace
Mourning 9/11, Politically and Prophetically
And yet, at the same time, the service was charged with a subtle geopolitical message.
By Dr Nick Megoran
Posted on Nov 20, 2006 |
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This September marked the fifth anniversary of the 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks in the USA. Services were held in churches throughout the USA, Britain, and other countries, to mark an event that has proved to be a defining moment in recent U.S. foreign policy. Many people find comfort in these services - but do they have a more troubling side?
However well intentioned, such public events of commemoration are always ambiguous. On the one hand, they reflect a genuine need to grieve the dead and seek consolation. On the other, they are highly political moments. They reveal whose deaths a society considers worth mourning, offer subtle explanations of events, and can either reinforce or question the rationales that states provide for wars. Because British church leaders have not readily grasped this ambiguity, they have not only failed to address 9/11 in a truly Christian manner, but have
actually contributed to the world-wide escalation of violence in the war on terror'.
In an age where the Church of England appears to be in continual decline, this may seem a wildly implausible claim. Yet at moments of national mourning, the church often comes to centre stage. From the death of Princess Diana to the service marking the loss of life in the 2005 London transport bombs, the nation often turns to the church to
address its grief and bewilderment. With state leaders in attendance and live television coverage, the church has a unique opportunity to present its interpretation of events to a significant audience.
There is no better example of this than the Service of Remembrance with the American Community, which was held at St Paul's Cathedral on September 14, 2001. The Queen, the heads of the government and opposition, all living past Prime Ministers, representatives of Christian denominations and other major faith communities, as well as leading figures from the world of finance, gathered together to hear
what the Church of England would say to them. The service, which followed a widely-observed three-minute silence, was broadcast live and extensively reported around the world. At the fifth anniversary of 9/11, what lessons can be learnt from that first service?
Responses to 9/11
The Service of Remembrance was significant not merely because it became the most high-profile event in the immediate British response to 9/11, but because of its timing. It came at a crucial moment of debate as to the causes of the 9/11 attacks, and what place Britain should play in the expected U.S. military retaliation. Broadly speaking, there were two major explanations. The first was the moral-metaphysical account that portrayed the USA as an innocent victim of pure evil. This was President Bush's explanation. He told Congress that the attackers hate
"our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."
The second general explanation was historical-political, locating the attacks in the context of recent US Middle Eastern foreign policy, including backing of various unpleasant client states, and its 1980s anti-Soviet alliance with Osama Bin Laden that eventually turned sour. In this account, the 9/11 assassins did not 'attack America', but rather American foreign policy.
These explanations inevitably suggested different responses. The first logically pointed towards a zero-sum war of destruction, the second towards long-term changes in the general conduct of U.S. foreign policy. These explanations were hotly contested in Britain in the days following
9/11, as Prime Minister Blair seemed determined to prepare Britain for war.
The geopolitics of mourning
It was at that crucial moment that the Church of England hosted the nation for one hour to listen to and participate in its response to the events three days earlier. The service was intended to mourn all who died on September 11, and, as John Moses, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, put it in his bidding prayer, 'to stand alongside the people of the
United States of America in their grief'. Undoubtedly, it achieved that in a way that it would be difficult to imagine any other setting equalling. Prayers, exhortations, hymns and psalms gave voice to the grief, shock and anger, yet encouraged mourners to move beyond those emotions, offering in Christ comfort, hope and confidence for a future of peace.
And yet, at the same time, the service was charged with a subtle geopolitical message.
Geopolitics is about the power to define some events as of global importance, and relegating others to local or regional significance. The very act of holding such a service reveals whose death a society considers worth mourning. Around that time, 5,000 Iraqi children were dying a month due to UN sanctions and US-UK bombings, and 20,000 Indians had perished in the Gujurati earthquake earlier in the year. As an African Archbishop visiting the UK at the time said privately, "So, five thousand people died on one day in New York. Do you know that 5,000 people a day die in Africa of AIDs?"
Ordinary life in Britain came to a standstill after 9/11 - sporting events were cancelled, radio comedy programming suspended, and top-selling tabloid The Sun even suspended its infamous 'Page 3' topless woman slot. It was apparently deemed appropriate to continue laughing and ogling naked women when these other deaths had occurred, but not when the people died in America. In holding such a high-profile service for 9/11 and not for these other tragedies, the Church of England risked reinforcing the notion that the lives of people living in America mattered more than the lives of non-white races in far-away places.
Furthermore, the service sanctified the idea of a mythical geopolitical alliance between the U.S. and UK. The national anthems of the UK and USA were sung alongside hymns of praise to God, hallowing the existence of those nations. The Dean of St Paul's, John Moses, began his bidding prayer by declaring, 'we are gathered together as members of the free world.' Reprising this contentious Cold War anti-Communist slogan was an extraordinary way to begin an act of Christian worship, yet one that revealed the service's geopolitical subtext. As the USA was to become
increasingly isolated in its conduct of the controversial 'war on terror' over the coming years, this UK alliance served to bolster the position of President Bush and enable him to pursue his long-planned invasion of Iraq.
Explanation and retribution
Archbishop George Carey's sermon was the only part of the service that offered an explanation of the Tuesday attacks. The Archbishop resorted to the moral-metaphysical account that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair were using as they prepared their countries for war. For Archbishop Carey, it was apparently enough to assert that the attackers
were 'evil' and 'barbaric', and seemingly acted without motive by committing a 'senseless evil'. Rather than a reaction to U.S. governments' foreign policy, the attacks were an 'assault on their freedom' and, by virtue of some implicit system of alliances, a strike against 'the free world'.
As Lord Carey ominously concluded by praying that God would give the leaders of America wisdom to 'use their great power' wisely to 'battle with evil', the congregation rose to a stirring rendition of 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic', singing 'Glory, glory, hallelujah' as God 'loosed
the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword.' The theological assertion of this patriotic Civil War battle anthem is clear from a later verse: 'As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free/ While God is marching on'. It is, as Clifford Longley argues, 'plainly a battle hymn for an elect nation'. Covering the service the next day, the Daily Mail summed it up extremely well. 'More than a memorial', it wrote, 'it was a statement of alliance between two peoples, an alliance that should use its military power to "crush the terror".
I have personally interviewed key individuals involved in organising the service from St Paul's, Lambeth Palace, Buckingham Palace, and the US embassy (Downing Street, unfortunately, ignored requests for a meeting). I am convinced that there is no sense in which they attempted to script a geopolitical message to the service. On the contrary, all parties genuinely sought to put together an event that was apolitical, an expression of grief and a space for mourning. Nonetheless, the service became part of a public process of framing the events that resonated
with the geopolitical understandings of those public voices that advocated war. In so doing, it made the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq more likely, and alternative peaceful responses to the crisis of 9/11 less likely.
The 'war on terror' and the church
Alongside media comment, political speeches, and popular culture, the Service of Remembrance helped lay the conceptual foundations for the 'war on terror'. The effects of this pseudo-conflict on the world-wide church have been disastrous.
As the Pope prayed for peace and some US and UK churches prayed for victory, deep divisions were exposed in front of a mocking media. But the greatest cost was born by the church in majority Muslim areas. I have met Christian asylum seekers from Nigeria who fled as their brothers and sisters were killed in retaliation for the US attack on Afghanistan. In September 2001, Mano Rumalshah, formerly Bishop of
Peshawar in Pakistan, warned "We will suffer the day the first stone is thrown." His prediction proved tragically accurate, as Christians in his own city and throughout Pakistan were murdered in revenge in unprecedented numbers in the days and weeks following the US-UK attack on Afghanistan.
These attacks were not symptoms of a 'clash of civilisations', but the result of a relatively recent identification of all Christians with US foreign policy. That identification needs to be resisted. Bishop
Rumalshah once told me how different popular Pakistani reaction was to the 2003 US-UK attack on Iraq. He said that the Pope and the present Archbishop of Canterbury had spoken out against the war and millions in the UK had marched against it, and this was well known in Pakistan due
to satellite television. Indeed, even what he termed 'the gutter press' were reporting that Christians were supporting Muslims, and as a result there were no reprisal attacks on Christians in his home area. The position that church leaders and Western populations take can have an enormous impact on our fellow Christians elsewhere. Services of
remembrance are a fine place to start rethinking the church's often unhealthy alliance with warring states.
Mourning prophetically
In April 2003, the media reported that US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, cried in public. But his tears were not for the thousands of Iraqis killed as his forces bombarded the helpless country. Rather, it was at the words of a pro-war song performed at the Pentagon by country crooner Darryl Worley. Worley's number 1 hit song, 'Have you
forgotten?', asked his fellow Americans to recall the outrage of 9/11, in order to rededicate themselves to the war effort. Public commemoration is always political. As the each anniversary of the 9/11 or 7/7 atrocity approaches, both Al Qaeda and the White House / Downing Street try to use the process of remembering to further their own political ends. Churches do well to consider extremely carefully how they mark these anniversaries.
Services of remembrance are rare moments when the church, especially the Church of England, can speak to the country in the midst of a national or international crisis. They present unique opportunities both for service and evangelism, and should be taken in confidence that what Paul
calls the 'gospel of peace' offers hope and comfort to a warring and grieving world. That applies not only to Archbishops leading televised national services, but also ordinary clergy addressing the same questions before local congregations Sunday by Sunday. We in the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship need to help the church think imaginatively
about how to do that.
Precisely because they are so important, they need doing carefully. Such services inevitably provide frameworks for understanding events, and it is imperative that these are purged of the assumptions and prejudices of political commentators, the military, the media, and war-bent politicians. The church should not confuse the bloody wars between fallen human political systems with the struggle between the kingdom of God and evil. In deciding whom to mourn and how, it should be lead by the Holy Spirit and scripture, not CNN. As Charles Spurgeon found in preaching about the 1858 'Indian Mutiny', and Archbishop Runcie discovered in refusing to turn the Falklands Islands service into a victory celebration, this can lead to criticism. If the price is popularity, so be it. Whilst politicians seek to make mourning political, it is the church's job to ensure that it remains prophetic.
Copyright 2006 by Dr. Nick Megoran
Dr. Nick Megoran is a Lecturer in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Dr. Nick writes: "This is the text of an article published in the October 2006 issue (6.4), pages 1-2,5 of The Anglican Peacemaker magazine. It is based on a longer scholarly version in the journal Geopolitics (http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/nick.megoran/mourning_9-11.pdf), and comes from research I did whilst at Cambridge."
"In our time of wars, of national self-conceit, of national jealousies and hatreds ably nourished by people who pursue their own egotistic, personal or class interests, geography must be - in so far as the school may do anything to counterbalance hostile influences - a means of dissipating these prejudices and of creating other feelings more worthy of humanity."
Peter Kropotkin, 'What geography ought to be', 1885.
© Copyright 2000-2006 by West By Northwest.org
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