9/11 and the Dangers of Conflation

Conflation: the process or result of fusing items into one entity.

10 years... September 11 I think will always be a scar that aches a bit, with the ache asserting itself more aggressively when that date rolls around every year. The round numbered anniversaries of course tend to be occasions to more consciously rub that ache and remember what that day means to us. This is one of those years. Christians living in the US remember along with everyone else. We were no less affected by the violence because of our faith, and struggled to make sense of the senselessness of it all just like all of our neighbors. Our anguish, fear and even our injuries and deaths were no different than those of our fellow Americans who don’t count themselves as followers of Christ. While we all experienced the attacks as Americans, those of us who identify ourselves with Christ also experienced the attacks as Christians, meaning both identities experienced the trauma simultaneously. I would suggest this experience and our response to it reveals a tension that exists between these two identities which plays itself out in our experiences of both our common communities and our communities of faith. I would suggest our attempts to resolve this tension between our Christian identity and our American identity can sometimes carry us to places which are dangerous to both our faith and our nation. It’s this danger, which also plays itself out in the shadow of this anniversary, that I think I’d like to briefly survey here.

I want to acknowledge up front that there are a lot of sacred cows in play here, and the probability of divergent takes and visions are a given, particularly given the brevity of this format. This will in no way be an even remotely exhaustive, comprehensive, or thorough exploration. It’s just a few thoughts on this tension played out in 500-600 words or so. That being said, I want to begin on the civic side of this tension and acknowledge the Biblical ideas and principles that found their way into much of the mythic narrative of our founding and into many of our founding documents. We are a nation born partially out of the frustration with the sectarian persecutions and wars which took place in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. This “new” land presented people of marginalized faith practices with economic and religious opportunities not accessible to them in their old home. Even as the Enlightenment pushed the theological heart of these nascent ideas toward the margins of public discourse in the 18th century, the country’s founding generation still leaned on the existing religious, philosophical and linguistic framework as they constructed the governing bodies and institutions of this country. Many were men and women of faith themselves. Many were not. But most kept to some form of faith, which was part of our collective national heritage to that point.

It’s because of this framework, and the founders’ choices to work within it that Jefferson is able to write, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” Jefferson is building on a Christian theological foundation, asserting that all are created equal because of a common Divine Creator who values all equally, while simultaneously tweaking those constructs to reflect contemporary Enlightenment thinking, citing, “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” just a few lines prior as the core foundation upon which his Declaration of Independence was being built. The point here is that this nation was built on a unique foundation of faith which was already morphing before the Constitution was even written. The nation was built on a civic faith in these ideals which was not necessarily a theologically “orthodox” faith. Christianity here was politically engaged toward a civil end, much as it has been throughout its history to both noble and ignoble ends, from Constantine to Jim Crow.

In contrast, the Christian experience, both individually and collectively, particularly as it is described in the New Testament, seems to be markedly unlike this civic faith. In fact both Jesus and Paul seem to acknowledge the tension in loyalties that exists within one choosing to follow after Christ, with both counseling their listeners and readers to show respect for and demonstrate appropriate loyalty to those in positions of civic authority and the political institutions they represent, Jesus in Matthew 22, Mark 12 and Luke 20 and Paul in Romans 13. However, these same readers and listeners are also instructed to actively resist immoral and corrupt cultural practices, replacing them with moral and just ones, which will of course have subversive political implications and thus reveals the tension I spoke of in the opening paragraph. This tension seems to be assumed in the Bible. It seems to be a subset of the larger tension between the Kingdom Jesus speaks of and every political establishment that demonstrates little or no interest in that kingdom.

The difficulty we as Americans face is that our political establishment does have some vestigial and perhaps even some active interest in the principles and actions that characterize Jesus’ Kingdom. I would suggest however that this seeming slackening of that tension is more apparent than it is real. Anecdotally, if this were not the case the reigning general consensus among Evangelicals regarding the state of our culture and government would probably not include the words “hell” or “hand basket.” So where does this leave us? I would suggest that Biblically speaking, this tension between the Christian and their government, even if that government takes a welcoming stance toward them, is a good thing and that some of the confusion we often feel and experience, which often makes it way into our liturgies around civic holidays and remembrances such as Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day and 9/11, has its roots in our attempts to resolve or work out this tension. We are right to want to recognize the faith of our country’s founders. We are right to recognize the unique role the ideas that rose from that faith have played in our national and political institutions. But we do a disservice to both our faith and our nation when we merge the two into one entity, and then merge both into one personal identity. Without the tension we lose the ability to speak prophetically to those in power. We become more easily co-opted by those in power as a means to accomplish the ends of this kingdom. And most dangerous of all we begin to lose our identity and the unique identity of Jesus’ Kingdom. This is dangerous then not only to us, but also for our nation in that it loses the unique Christian voice that in many ways serves as its conscience. Attempting to resolve this tension allows it to be quieted and silenced. Something to keep in mind as we struggle to live with both identities…