Terrorism: a problem for ethics or pastoral theology?

On Sept. 11, 2001, one of the witnesses beholding the stricken towers was a priest later interviewed on the PBS documentary "Frontline: Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero." With simple eloquence, Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete remembered, "From the first moment I looked into that horror on September 11, into that fireball, that explosion of horror, I knew it, I knew it before anything was said about those who did it or why. I recognized an old companion; I recognize religion.... The same passion that motivates religious people to do great things is the same one that that day brought all that destruction. When they said that the people who did it did it in the name of God, I was not in the slightest bit surprised. It only confirmed what I knew I recognized." (1)

These stunning words mark a new turn in American consciousness. While previously the public "knew about" acts of terrorism, albeit only through newscasts, now that bright September morning brought a horrifying new intimation. Our shock came not only from the immensity of the blow and its theatricality, but from the frightening thought that such violence somehow was linked to piety. "I recognize religion...."

Of course our childhood history books had taught us about early religious atrocities and crusading warriors driven by piety. But most Americans supposed these to be anomalies, over and done with. We thought we now lived in "normal times"--normal, that is, for white, middle-class suburbanites. So "religion" was reckoned to be warm and cuddly, an analgesic at hand to ease today's headaches, something like "sweetness and light" to assure anxious minds that somehow all is well. How could we even imagine that, behind the dust and roar of collapsing buildings, one might "recognize religion"?

Suddenly explanations were called for, as the public agonized, struggling to digest the enormity of these events. In our modern world, how did religion and mass violence ever manage to become entwined? Several recent books by religious scholars have responded, so let us begin by surveying their suggestions.

Charles Kimball (2), in When Religion Becomes Evil, asks if religion itself is the source of terrorism. As an ecumenist with wide experience in major faiths throughout the Middle East, his conclusion is No. It is the religious quest, indeed, that makes us human. But the danger arises when authentic religion is corrupted by fringe extremists. To signal this danger he lists five warning signs: absolute truth claims, blind obedience to charismatic leaders, fixating upon a utopian age gained by human action, believing that the end justifies any means to attain it, and declaring holy wars that are violent instead of channeled into struggles for justice and self-discipline. Each of these traits is a religious aberration. But, Kimball insists, at their best all the world's religions are far from pathological, but are paths to human fulfillment and harmony.

A second work is by Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God. (3) Masterfully she analyzes centuries of pious militancy by surveying ways that numbers of Jews, Muslims, and Western Christians have countered the erosions of modernity. Fundamentalisms arose as understandable reactions by a premodern society to the dizzying upheaval thrust upon it. They are, she writes,

       embattled forms of spirituality, which have emerged as a response
       to a perceived crisis. They are engaged in a conflict with
       enemies whose secularist policies and beliefs seem inimical to
       religion itself. Fundamentalists do not regard this battle as a
       conventional political struggle, but experience it as a cosmic
       war between the forces of good and evil. They fear annihilation,
       and try to fortify their beleaguered identity by means of a
       selective retrieval of certain doctrines and practices of the
       past. To avoid contamination, they often withdraw from mainstream
       society to create a counterculture; yet fundamentalists are not
       impractical dreamers. They have [also] absorbed the pragmatic
       rationalism of modernity, and, under the guidance of their
       charismatic leaders, they refine these 'fundamentals' so as to
       create an ideology that provides the faithful with a plan of
       action. Eventually they fight back and attempt to resacralize an
       increasingly skeptical world. (4)

By combining fragments of modern technology with a resuscitated mythos way of thinking, such groups are groping towards a pre-modern stability--but in vain. For centuries a conflict between traditionalism and modernity has raged in many societies, until moderating elements have been pulverized between the extremes. We Americans are an exception, having until very recently been spared most inklings of this crisis. But now the blindfold is gone. We will find, Armstrong maintains, that any solution must begin by recognizing the "void at the heart of modern culture." We dare not retreat to nostalgia for premodern traditional ways or resort to state coercion. Nor will civil arguments suffice. Since it is raw fear that is at the root of the fury, those fears must be forthrightly addressed, in making the adjustment to modernity. Desperate justifications for violence can only be displaced by resources from that religion's mainstream. In short, Armstrong urges both secularists and fundamentalists in dialogue to be more humane and faithful to the best in their respective traditions.

A third analysis is offered by Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, (5) in a book based on interviews with a wide range of religious extremists. He hesitates to use the label "terrorist," however. "To a large extent," he explains, "the use of the term depends on one's world view; if the world is perceived as peaceful, violent acts appear as terrorism. If the world is thought to be at war, violent acts may be regarded as legitimate." (6) Again, cosmic warfare sets the background for pious uprisings against a perceived militant secularism. Atrocities result which often are foolhardy, strategically pointless, but that is because their real purpose is sacred drama. They are cases of "performance violence" which reenact ancient metaphors of divine warfare, allowing human opponents to be demonized and suicidal attacks, even genocide, to be justified. It is especially alienated young males in a disintegrating society who find gratification in sublimated empowerment, through such acts of symbolic violence. And again existential dread, the threatened loss of one's cultural bearings, fuels the underlying motivation. The solution Juergensmeyer offers is for secular authorities to exercise civil gentleness and toleration, seeking a cooperation with the world's religions that puts them in partnership with Enlightenment values.

There are other recent authors, too, who touch on how one can "recognize religion" in terrorist attacks. For instance, Jessica Stern writes from a secular perspective in Terror in the Name of God, noting in passing that terrorists respond to the "'God-shaped hole' in modern culture," a "vacuity in human consciousness" that desires transcendence as a remedy to the widespread sense of alienation and humiliation. (7) Otherwise she has little to say directly about religion. Among religion scholars we should note also Lee Griffith's The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God and Bruce Lincoln's Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11. (8)

Among these works, the religious roots of terrorism are best addressed in my view by Armstrong and Juergensmeyer. These two authors probe the inner connections of mass violence to piety, the deeper mentality of those seeing themselves beleaguered in the face of rapid modernization. They recognize that the lethal mix begins with existential anxiety, a dread that new cultural shifts are causing a separation from the Absolute. We can appreciate how intolerable it is to feel one's very identity at risk. So we can understand why a generalized anxiety would turn to specific fears, then seek relief in finding targets on which to project those fears.

But then what? Up to this point Armstrong and Juergensmeyer provide a helpful diagnosis. It is puzzling, therefore, that neither takes the next step. Neither sketches a theological response to the very fears that are the seedbed of terrorism. Instead they stop with a plea for enlightened public policy by secular leaders, and ask that each religion return to its tolerant mainstream.

But is that enough? If terrorism, whether of the religious or secular variety, originates from a quest for meaning in the face of existential dread, then must not the antidote deal straightforwardly with that human need? (9) No one disputes the importance of civility, respect for tradition, and a more inclusive public forum. But surely more is required if we are to get to the heart of the matter. We know that the humanity has always tottered on the edge of uncertainty, disoriented by our distinctively complex condition of freedom and finitude, but today that uncertainty is greatly magnified by the onrush of modernity. Our age has witnessed social fabrics unraveling, roles disrupted, and ancestral heritages challenged by seismic cultural shifts. Centuries of tradition have been shaken by the near-universal trend toward urbanization, consumerism, mass media saturation, and globalization. Yet effective resistance to this onslaught is too often overwhelmed by the allure of technology and a seemingly omni-competent secularism.

Until recently most Americans have been shielded from commonplace anxieties familiar to much of the Third World. But 9/11 changed everything. That day, we were awakened rudely to our own vulnerability--a ghastly defenselessness which has long haunted most of the world's population. Now we privileged few, citizens of the former Pax Americana, join the rest of humanity in flailing about to regain our bearings--even though that may only make things worse. But perhaps this crisis offers some hope, for it is just possible that now we may stumble upon some answers to the driving forces behind terrorism. Indeed, what all of us need, First- and Third-World alike, may be a form of faith that enables us to cope with the acute sense of vulnerability imposed by engulfing modernity.

Unfortunately, fundamentalism and radicalism seem to have been the common response to collective vulnerability. And it is not only the terrorist perpetrators of 9/11 that resort to such easy answers, but also--albeit in more muted rhetoric--much of our political counter-terrorism. Ironically, both terrorists and counter-terrorists seem to adopt similar ideological postures. This combination only makes the dilemma more intractable, as each new outrage goes on to provoke its counterpart. Both sides take for granted a cosmic dualism of good vs. evil forces, now locked in human combat. This in turn invites paranoia and conspiracy theories as a way to account for any weakness or deviation from what is claimed to be normalcy; we share no blame, but displace it upon some sinister alien intrusion. A sense of an aggrieved innocence renders any dialogue or compromise with the other side unthinkable. Each antagonist thrives upon a contrived nostalgia for its past, an indigenous "monomyth" (10) to legitimize its aggressive heroism. Zealots often nurse an unspoken premise that violence is redemptive and must be rewarded by heaven, bestowing upon them an empire on earth.

To make matters worse, terrorists and their opponents fuse self-righteous piety with modern weaponry, resulting in a lethal combination. For instance, on October 7, 2001, the world heard a videotaped address by Osama bin Laden, from which the following is excerpted:

       Here is America struck by God Almighty in one of its vital
       organs, so that its greatest buildings are destroyed. Grace
       and gratitude to God.... Our Islamic nation has been tasting the
       same for more than 80 years of humiliation and disgrace.... [So]
       these events have divided the world into two camps, the camp of
       the faithful and the camp of infidels. May God shield us and you
       from them. Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion. The
       wind of faith is blowing and the wind of change is blowing to
       removed evil from the Peninsula of Muhammad, peace be upon
       him.... (11)

President George W. Bush addressed the nation that same day. As befits the civil leader of a secular society, his rhetoric was more restrained. However a similar religious dualism is discernible in his repeated references to the label "terrorists," as well as in the following language:

       Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader. Every
       nation has a choice to make. In this conflict there is no neutral
       ground. If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of
       innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers, themselves.
       And they will take that lonely path at their own peril.... We
       defend not only our precious freedoms, but also the freedom of
       people everywhere to live and raise their children free from
       fear.... To all the men and women in our military ... I say this:
       Your mission is defined,... your goal is just.... Peace and
       freedom will prevail. Thank you. May God continue to bless
       America. (12)

Notice the implicit parallels here. As Bruce Lincoln comments: "Both men constructed a Manichaean struggle, where Sons of Light confront Sons of Darkness, and all must enlist on one side or another." (13) The enemy is demonized, whether as "infidel" or "terrorist," whose infamy is clinched by the accusation of putting innocent children in danger. Granted, by comparison bin Laden resorts far more often to religious terminology (some sixty times more often, according to Lincoln (14)); but Bush routinely invokes God's sanction and employs prophetic or apocalyptic language that his conservative supporters easily recognize. In both cases, the rhetorical blustering is an attempt to protect followers from their feelings of helplessness amid crisis, by invoking cosmic forces that come to earth to champion our grievances and assure our victory.

Among secular leaders of this, the world's dominant superpower, it is of course prudent and responsible to mute any extremist religious language. But America's brand of militant fundamentalism finds an outlet through shameless fringe voices unencumbered by such responsibilities. Just two days after September 11, 2001, Jerry Falwell spoke on Pat Robertson's 700 Club, personifying the wounded innocence expected of a self-proclaimed messianic nation. Presuming a singular favor of Providence over America, he concluded the terror attacks can only mean that "God Almighty is lifting his protection from us." But why? The blame must fall upon certain traitors within the Chosen People, and Falwell wastes no words in identifying them: federal court decisions, abortionists, pagans, feminists, many gays and lesbians, the ACLU and other liberal organizations, "all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'" (15)

As Bruce Lincoln points out, this finger-pointing implicitly minimizes the guilt of the 9/11 highjackers by shifting it towards "enemies within," those renegades who resist fundamentalism's attempt to impose its private nostalgia upon modern society. (16) It is a blame game analogous to bin Laden's special wrath against "hypocrites" within Islamic countries, the moderates and secularizers. As Armstrong observes, many forms of fundamentalism begin by targeting centrists within their own religion and only later do they take up holy war against foreign moderates and outsiders. (17) In all this we recognize a human urge common in time of crisis: to seek a scapegoat within. Focusing group hatred on a familiar object becomes an easy way of evading the horror of glimpsing our own frailties and mortality. How much more satisfying it is to strike at an enemy close at hand, channeling our anxiety--thus continuing the cycle of violence.

Such impulses are understandable. At those junctures in history when people are afflicted unbearably with existential anxiety, finding themselves threatened with a loss of connection to the sacred, it may seem natural to seek refuge in a militant fundamentalism. It appears to offer certain benefits: imposition of a stable order with clear dichotomies, a satanic explanation for present ills, and a motivation for aggressive counter-action. No wonder fundamentalism holds great attraction for many captives of historic change--for instance, in the Islamic world today. But it does work both ways, bewitching power elites who feel challenged, and their allies, the Falwells and Robertsons of the day. Whether secular or religious, the official responses to fanaticism often replicate its binary world view, its easy answers. If victimized fundamentalists stage theatrical displays of power, governments often respond in kind with their own "war on terror," competing for popular support. "The greatest concession to terrorism is mimesis," Lee Griffith observes, "and it is also the most frequent concession." (18) When a downward spiral of violence begins, each side mimics and tries to intimidate the opponent. The result is a game of brinksmanship centered on who can cause the greater harm and horror to the other. "In short, the victor in a violent war on terrorism will be the party that is most adept at inflicting terror. The quest to win the war is ultimately nihilistic." (19)

Against religious terrorism, then, calls for civility and humane public policy are certainly needed. But tolerance and enlightened social programs alone are not enough. One hope is that the very depths of human anxiety may some-how be addressed, as more and more populations find themselves dislocated, cut off from traditional sources of meaning, and scrambling to recover their bearings. Once these darker sides of the psyche are recognized, we might conclude that, for individuals of faith, nothing short of a religious reformation is required--one that avoids the simplistic allure of fundamentalism.

What shape must such a reformation take within the major religions of the world? That I must leave to others to articulate. But for those claiming to be Christian, I argue that a new pastoral theology is needed, and one that is rooted in both depth psychology and Reformation theology. Nothing less, I maintain, can cope with our escalating religious violence.

Let us take these two components in turn. First, psychological analysis of the human fascination with violence is called for, if we are to understand why this is such an intractable religious problem. Many analysts have noted that organized aggression, warfare, has always had a mystique verging on the spiritual. Years ago von Clausewitz summarized three human faculties upon which warfare depends, the first of which is "primordial violence." (20) The other two, "the creative spirit" and being "subject to reason," are never far removed from that primal fury. The same mystique is echoed in the mid-twentieth century by J. Glenn Gray, who describes three "secret attractions of war," with illustrations from his World War II experiences. They are the thrill in seeing vast spectacle (an ecstasy the Bible calls "the lust of the eye"), the comradeship of small groups (the resolve not to let down one's buddies, a loyalty that trumps any ostensible ideals), and finally the sheer delight in destruction--an ecstatic frenzy in slaughter. (21) This latter, the intoxicating bloodlust that overwhelms any ethical principles or self-interest, is what defies rational explanation. The conclusion follows that within each human being, as Lee Griffith also illustrates amply, (22) lurks the potential for both compassionate empathy and a beserker's fury.

Further evidence is added by Chris Hedges, in a recent book distilled from decades of his experience as a journalist in many combat zones. The title summarizes his thesis, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, (23) which he goes on to explain:

       The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction
       and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give
       us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the
       midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of
       our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and
       increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It
       gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. (24)

Inevitably humans insist that life must have meaning, even amid chaos and desolation, and by its very extremity battle can meet that need. "War makes the world understandable, a black and white tableau of them and us. It suspends thought, especially self-critical thought. All bow before the supreme effort. We are one.... But war is a god, as the ancient Greeks and Romans knew, and its worship demands human sacrifice." (25) Naturally we devise impossible myths to deceive ourselves, lofty purposes to mask the barbarity. And since in real life events are often random, we contrive ideologies to bestow on them a false sense of divine purpose. This provides a cover, Hedges continues, that

       gives a justification to what is often nothing more than gross
       human cruelty and stupidity. It allows us to believe we have
       achieved our place in human society because of a long chain of
       heroic endeavors, rather than accept the sad reality that we
       stumble along a dimly lit corridor of disasters. It disguises our
       powerlessness. It hides from view our own impotence and the
       ordinariness of our own leaders. (26)

Hedges goes on to describe the addiction of some newsmen to battlefield orgies of mayhem, making it so impossible for them to adjust back home that they returned to combat zones to die. He himself struggled just to maintain his sanity, through reading poetry or visiting compassionate families. Perhaps Freud was correct in claiming that the instinct of life and the instinct of destruction, Eros vs. Thanatos, are locked in ceaseless tension within the human soul. In closing, Hedges is able to find meaning in life only when love is allowed to become all-embracing. (27)

These analyses make for sobering reading, laying bare the latent savagery within our psyches. But the news gets worse. Now a fresh urgency is added by the arrival of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which extend a diabolical reach to human madness. Such a ghastly linkage is explained, for instance, by Robert Jay Lifton, a neo-Freudian depth psychologist who writes widely on culture criticism and violence. He believes that it is death anxiety, or what Armstrong called the dread of annihilation, that lies behind the pathology we've described. Humans have always created symbol systems to soften the horror of mortality and to feel a "participation in some form of collective life-continuity." (28) Historically there have been five such systems: biological continuity through one's children, religious belief, creative works that endure over generations, the apparent timelessness of nature, and personal altered states of consciousness ("experiential transcendence" is his label). The first four, he claims, are now so eroded by modernity that the unconscious mind is driven to panic. Scrambling to preserve our equilibrium, we invoke a rush of "ideological totalisms" to fill the vacuum. This explains the fondness for totalitarianism as well as a range of fundamentalisms. Moreover, odd though it seems, the anguished psyche may be driven to WMD themselves as objects of religious veneration and awe. That would constitute the ultimate form of modern totalism.

In the Cold War years Lifton coined a term for this bizarre attachment: "nuclearism: the passionate embrace of nuclear weapons as a solution to death anxiety and a way of restoring a lost sense of immortality. Nuclearism is a secular religion, a total ideology in which 'grace' and even 'salvation'--the mastery of death and evil--are achieved through the power of a new technological deity." (29) In a world fragmented by relativism, somehow the Bomb seems to retrieve some of the comforts associated with religion: finality, invisible power, a sense of mystery at its manifold unknown effects, and a terrible presence of both nemesis yet generativity that taps into an ultimate force of the universe. For distraught psyches nowadays, prospects of orgiastic annihilation may be taken as a form of the fifth mode posited by Lifton, experiential transcendence--even at the sacrifice of life itself.

Although we may recoil at such suggestions, Lifton's theory does help us explain the curiously mesmerizing effect associated for decades with the Bomb and its spectacle of Armageddon. And now the same hypothesis would apply, in somewhat lesser degree, to newer chemical and biological forms of WMD, forms cheaper and more accessible to those in the Third World. True, the Cold War may be over, but humanity continues to face an uncertain future because of cut-rate Armageddons now available for low-budget antagonists. Any adequate response to terrorism, therefore, must recognize and cope with this dark side of human nature. And it must deal with depravity without lapsing into the simplistic cosmic dualisms we have noted, whether religious or secular--and certainly including the idolatrous infatuation with WMD.

That is why, in addition to psychoanalytic insight, we need a second component: theology--and preferably one based on the Reformation. Certainly it must be a theology focused on the pastoral task--that is, a belief-system able to calm people's dread of vulnerability and chaos, giving hope in the midst of stress and meaninglessness, yet not flinching at evidences of human evil. It should provide a sense of divine purposefulness and guidance amid all the tangles of our predicament: impending social unrest, loss of civil liberties, economic hardship, and possibly renewed terrorist attacks. And it must do so without displacing blame on human targets, or inviting self-righteous urges to retaliate. All of this, of course, presents a tall order indeed for any pastoral theology.

For the various world religions, its members must look for this within their own resources. But for those professing Christianity I propose a renewed appropriation of the heritage of Luther and Calvin. Granted, Reformation faith must be shorn of its easy compliance to political authority and its tendencies toward social conservativism in a changing world. But this heritage deserves to be "recognized," I maintain, as religion that is equal to the challenge of terrorist "religion." Its advantages include a realistic view of human sin, a dialectical model for living within competing loyalties, an image of a community dedicated to the common well-being of all, and a resurrection hope unshaken by the instruments of death. Of course on the secular level such a renewed pastoral theology must cooperate with the ethical dialogues proposed by Armstrong and Juergensmeyer, for instance. But it would then push beyond them to reach the deeper origins of terrorism as well as counter-terrorism.

How may all these attributes can be combined into a revitalized theology? I lack the expertise to outline a detailed proposal. But for ongoing discussion I suggest a prime model of blending the theological and pastoral tasks: Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The name is widely known, of course. But not everyone realizes that he was preeminently a pastoral theologian, ministering amid an earlier time of social nightmare. To the end he retained his Lutheran heritage of Christ-centered transcendence, yet he also managed to recast that legacy in quite earthly terms through his unusual sensitivity and activism. He balanced both of these dimensions, and both, I contend, are instructive for our own struggles with terror.

On the one hand, his orthodox Lutheranism equipped him to face squarely the Nazi tyranny and its studied nihilism. The dread of vulnerability, so new to us Americans, was at that time a daily intrusion in life. So atrocities and the darker side of the human soul were as well known to him as they are to today's analysts, Hedges and Lifton. Nor was mass death merely a fantasy, haunting us with its eruptions into the modern imagination, but--as World War II neared its climax--a terrible reality. Yet despite horrors everywhere, Bonhoeffer's sermons and letters are radiant with assurances of the meaning in life. He believed that such meaning comes, not through any human contrivance or effort, but solely through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the One who is ever present in the worst of circumstances. It is God united with humanity in Christ who is the final reality, the ultimate that gives purpose and solace to our penultimate struggles. Already the decisive Word has been spoken, surmounting both the silence of our desolations and the chatter of our organized illusions. In his own life and eventually his martyrdom, accordingly, Bonhoeffer encompassed the tensions of his Reformation heritage; he knew the dialectics of human complexity. So he lived out a theology of the cross, but in the light of eternity.

On the other hand, Bonhoeffer was also a man of the hour, immersed in contemporary social riptides in ways unrecognized by most Lutherans of that time. His activism, however, was not one springing from a shallow liberalism with its optimistic assumptions about human nature, its sentimental theism. The activism instead originated from his remarkable empathy with others, especially those who suffer, the victims of social injustice--in Barcelona, Harlem, and then the Third Reich. "Whoever from now on attacks the least of the people attacks Christ, who took on human form and who in himself has restored the image of God for all who bear a human countenance." (30) It is precisely in world-liness that we find the divine. God's transcendence, after all, is not otherworldly, some abstract omnipotence of a "stop-gap" deity who occasionally breaks through the ceiling of our secular lives. Transcendence instead is reformulated in a social-ethical way: "God is beyond in the midst of our life." (31) We find this paradox also in Jesus. "His 'being there for others' is the experience of transcendence" (32) for those following him. The heights of God's majesty, indeed, are manifest in a "sociality of being," (33) so that "God is free not from human beings but for them.... God is present, that is.... 'haveable,' graspable in the Word within the church." (34) Likewise the Risen Jesus, "Christ existing as community," (35) is to be found as present here and now, taking shape among us, and forming our development into a new human maturity.

Accordingly, in both these dimensions, his theology and his activism, Bonhoeffer can provide to us now a model for a new post-9/11 pastoral theology. His writings and witness continue to inspire later generations in situations of crisis. More specifically, then, let us note how he handled three of the questions typically asked by survivors of disaster. These grief-stricken outcries resounded in his day no less than ours: "Why do innocent people suffer in a just world?" "How can we trust a God who lets this happen?" "How can we become believers, living in what seems a God-forsaken world?" In other words, these are the questions of theodicy, providence, and discipleship.

First, theodicy, the problem of how evil could ever exist in a world created by a righteous God. It is only natural that such accusations arise whenever people are in agony. But Bonhoeffer, while sympathizing with whoever suffers, nevertheless rebuffs complaints which seem to presume an intruding devil-figure in Eden, or to pose us somehow as a victimized Adam. "The Bible does not seek to impart information about the origin of evil," he insists, "but to witness to its character as guilt and as the unending burden that humankind bears." (36) Speculation about how evil first began is not only futile, but serves to distract us from what is more important, namely accepting responsibility for the iniquity we ourselves have done. We should beware of harboring a covert self-righteousness by speculating about why God has not prevented tragedy. The real issue is not "how come?," after all, but "how to overcome?" "The theological question is not a question about the origin of evil but one about the actual overcoming of evil on the cross; it seeks the real forgiveness of guilt and the reconciliation of the fallen world." (37) So instead of pointing the finger at some perpetrator to blame, we had better point first of all to our own complicity in sin--and repent. (38) And secondly we are pointed to the cross, for that is where is found God's healing antidote for our guilt--as well as for the massive complicity shared across the world itself.

Second, Providence. Can a stricken people decipher some meaningful pattern amid the rubble of their lives, and so regain confidence in God's guidance? Again with characteristic sensitivity Bonhoeffer spoke cautiously, admitting that the divine purpose is not readily discernible. Providence and its cognate terms must not be derived from a simple theism or even from a doctrine of God as Creator. Instead it must come from a Christo-centric vision of reality, a readiness to accept the cruciform dialectics of history in which God is mysteriously at work. (39) And this happens on a quite personal level. In correspondence with his seminarians during the war and especially in his letters from prison near the end of his life, Bonhoeffer exhibited the most remarkable confidence in divine guidance, even in the darkest hour. Not long before being transferred to a Gestapo prison, with death looming near, he wrote "I am so sure of God's guiding hand that I hope I shall always be kept in that certainty. You must never doubt that I'm traveling with gratitude and cheerfulness along the road where I'm being led." (40) Providence is not a doctrine, a generalization derived from surveying history, but can only be glimpsed in personal, existential struggle. Indeed we humans are incapable of deducing any divine plan or pattern from current events, yet for the believer any happening has the potential of opening us to justifying grace. Yes, any happening. "Of course, not everything that happens is simply 'God's will'; yet in the last resort nothing happens 'without God's will' (Matt. 10:29), i.e. through every event, however, untoward, there is access to God." (41) A mature faith can learn God's ways, not by analysis, but in living for others unreservedly, in a dialectic of resistance and submission according to changing circumstances. What those specific responsibilities may be in the future is as unforeseeable as are God's mercies, but Bonhoeffer remained confident that God will ever respond to two things: "prayer and righteous action." (42) By we mortals, nothing further can be said about divine Providence.

Thirdly, discipleship. Bonhoeffer's response to the widespread fearfulness and loss of meaning in his time was a memorable call to discipleship, following the risen and present Jesus. In a 1935 sermon he declared this to be

       the first commandment, the entire gospel. "Fear God"--instead of
       the many things which you fear. Do not fear the coming day, do
       not fear other people, do not fear power and might, even if they
       are able to deprive you of property and life; do not fear the
       great ones of this world; do not even fear yourselves.... You are
       free from all this fear; it isn't there for you. But fear God and
       God alone.... [for] everything else is a game--only God is in
       earnest, entirely in earnest. Fear God's earnestness--and give
       God the glory. (43)

Not only are Christians to be liberated from fear, Bonhoeffer continues elsewhere, but also from anger and the lust for revenge. For by acting on Good Friday God has already exercised all the vengeance necessary, unleashing all the rightful anger needed. "If we look at him, the crucified one, we recognize God's true and living anger at us godless and at the same moment, our liberation from this anger, and we hear 'Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.'" (44) Revenge by mortals is ruled out because of God's incomprehensible magnanimity. "Is God's love any less for our enemies, for whom God just as much came, suffered, and died, as God did for us? The cross is nobody's private property, but belongs to all; it is intended for all mankind. God loves our enemies--the cross tells us that." (45) The practical application then is drawn by Bonhoeffer: "When evil befalls you, it is not you who are in danger, but the others who do you evil; and if you don't help them they will perish in it. Therefore, for the other's sake, and because of your responsibility to them-repay no one evil for evil. For has God ever repaid you in such a way?" (46)

Obviously such forbearance and good will is difficult for us mortals. Bonhoeffer offers no palliative for the general population, and indeed he does not speak for them. Instead it is to those who will commit to discipleship in a terror-filled world that he addresses his message. His words on costly grace are well known; but what may appear on those pages to be God's demand to comply is also an invitation to receive. The divine gift to such persons is in "pulling individuals out of their innate self-centeredness to a sense of their being for and belonging to others." (47) Those striving to be disciples are able to discover a new kind of freedom, a freedom echoing God's own sociality. God, after all, did not hoard freedom as a divine privilege, but chose to become free in self-giving. (48)

      For in the language of the Bible freedom is not something that
      people have for themselves but something they have for others. No
      one is free "in herself" or "in himself" [an sich]--free as it
      were in a vacuum.... it is not a possession, something to hand, an
      object.... Freedom is a relation between two persons. Being free
      means "being-free-for-the-other", because I am bound to the other.
      Only by being in relation with the other am I free. (49)

Because freedom is redefined in this interrelational way, Bonhoeffer today would surely warn against the word becoming a patriotic mindless mantra. Already in the 1930s he was critical of American Christianity as a "Protestantism without Reformation," charging that Americans boast of freedom as a self-contained property bestowed and guaranteed from the state, rather than accepting freedom as a gift received ever anew through preaching the Word of God. (50) Likewise he would be critical today of the national-security state we are feverishly constructing. Perhaps we should recall how he denounced the events of 1932 as "political extreme against political extreme, fanatic against fanatic, idol against idol, and behind it all a world which bristles with weapons as never before, a world which feverishly arms to guarantee peace through arming, a world whose idol has become the word security." (51) Freedom is instead a gift to be shared among those who dwell in God's own self-giving; it is quite the opposite of an obsessive search for security.

What then is discipleship? It is found in those who put aside their natural fearfulness and who are ready to risk being vulnerable in insecure times. They do so by following One who has passed through the worst that death can impose and who has begun among us already a resurrection life. The path of discipling/following [Nachfolge], Bonhoeffer maintained, is the only alternative to living in a seemingly God-forsaken world.

In conclusion, then, it becomes clear that the Bonhoeffer legacy is never an easy one. A pastoral theology modeled after him may not attract a large following among nominal Christians. But for those who do listen, his words address the depths in which we now find ourselves, as well as pledging unending hope for the meaning in life we seek. If the coming years be unprecedented times, then it may also be the time for a religious response that cuts to the root of things--a message as austere in its intensity as it is luxuriant in its promise.

Readers of Bonhoeffer are confronted with a choice. This essay opened with the shocking words of Fr. Albacete, who said "From the first moment I looked into that horror on September 11,... I knew it,.... I recognize religion." Later in the interview he explained, "I recognize that this thirst for the never-ending, the permanent, the Oneness of all things.... these are characteristics of religion. And I knew that that force can take you to do great things. But I knew there is no greater or [more] destructive force on the surface of this earth than the religious passion." (52)

So these words sharpen the choice presented us by "recognizing religion." Will such primal passions, wedded now to new technologies of mass death, destroy us? Or can they be healed and redirected through a revitalized pastoral theology, one that for Christians at least is based on Christ's death and resurrection? Poised before this decision, we should pay attention again to words of Bonhoeffer, words penned to colleagues just months before his arrest and his own descent into death:

      We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have
      some share in Christ's largeheartedness by acting with
      responsibility and in freedom when the hour of anger comes, and by
      showing a real compassion that springs, not from fear, but from
      the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer.
      Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians
      are called to compassion and action, not in the first place by
      their own sufferings, but by the sufferings of their brothers and
      sisters, for whose sake Christ suffered. (53)

Notes

1. Lorenzo Albacete, "Frontline: Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero," Act 4. 3 September 2002. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/albacete.html> (4 August 2003).

2. Charles Kimball, When Religion Becomes Evil (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002).

3. Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism (New York: Ballantine Books, 2001).

4. Armstrong, xiii.

5. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

6. Juergensmeyer, 9.

7. Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 282f and 9-62.

8. Lee Griffith, The War on Terrorism and the Terror of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), and Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003). Griffith's book was substantially completed before 9-11. It offers a series of essays on Holy Terror, each of which deals with the subject from three successive perspectives: radical social criticism, excurses into church history, and biblical interpretation. Studded with an impressive array of quotations and insights, the book moves episodically through a range of history and literature. In tone and content Griffith owes much to radical Anabaptism and the pacifist oracles of Dale Aukerman, Jacques Ellul, and William Stringfellow. But readers will find little analysis of the origins or motives of religious terrorism, except as exemplars of the human potential for extremes of good or evil. Griffith is intent only on a prophetic call for repentance from imperial hubris and military madness. By contrast, Bruce Lincoln's book casts a broader net in discussing "holy terror." Rather than excavating some underlying source for religious terrorism, he wants to widened the definition of religion itself to be "polythetic and flexible" (p. 5), to include virtually the range of human behavior, good as well as bad. Religion is said to be comprised of discourse, practices, an identifiable community, and a sustaining institutional structure. That expansive definition then easily embraces, for instance, Mohamed Atta's pious set of instructions for September 11, the October 7, 2001, speeches of both Osama bin Laden and President Bush, and also the diatribes of Jerry Falwell. Whether minimalist (e.g., church/state separation and religious privatism) or maximalist (e.g., fundamentalist disdain for any compromise with modernity), religion simply "invests specific human preferences with transcendent status" (p. 55). Lincoln then leaves it to the reader to evaluate which of these functional systems may best be considered normative--although implicitly he seems to favor accommodation among disputing claims to revelation. Like Griffith, he has little specifically to propose in countering religious terrorism.

9. See G. Clarke Chapman, Jr., "Antiterrorism and Religion: Searching for a Solution." Journal of Power and Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Review, forthcoming. See <http://www,spaef.com/JPE_PUB/index.html>

10. See John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett, The Myth of the American Superhero (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), and also Jewett and Lawrence, Captain America and the Crusade against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003).

11. Osama bin Laden, videotaped address of October 7, 2001, quoted by Lincoln, 102f.

12. George W. Bush, address to the nation of October 7, 2001, quoted by Lincoln, 99-101.

13. Lincoln, 20.

14. Lincoln, 28.

15. Transcript of Pat Robertson's Interview with Jerry Falwell broadcast on the 700 Club, September 13, 2001, quoted in Lincoln, 104-106.

16. Lincoln, 43f.

17. Armstrong, for instance 166, 178, 190f, 232, passim.

18. Griffith, 220.

19. Griffith, 220.

20. Clausewitz, Karl von, On War, eds. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 89.

21. Gray, J. Glenn, "The Enduring Appeals of Battle," The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (New York: Perennial Library, Harper & Row, 1973), 33-60.

22. Griffith, 31-60 and passim.

23. Hedges, Chris, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning (New York: Public Affairs, 2002).

24. Hedges, 3.

25. Hedges, 10.

26. Hedges, 23.

27. Hedges, 158, 185.

28. Lifton, Robert Jay, The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life (New York: Basic Books, Harper & Row, 1983), 17; see 18-35.

29. Lifton, Robert Jay, Boundaries: Psychological Man in Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), 26f. Also see Lifton, Broken Connection, ix, 87, and Chapman, G. Clarke, Facing the Nuclear Heresy: A Call to Reformation (Elgin, IL: Brethren Press, 1986), chapter 1. More recently, see Lifton's Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003).

30. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, "Discipleship," Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 4, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 285.

31. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Letters and Papers from Prison, the enlarged edition, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: Macmillan, 1971), "30 April 1944," 280, and passim.

32. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, "Outline for a Book," 381.

33. Green, Clifford J., Bonhoeffer, A Theology of Sociality (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999).

34. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, "Act and Being," Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 2, ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 90f.

35. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, The Communion of Saints in A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, rev. ed., eds. Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 62.

36. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, "Creation and the Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1-3," Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol 3, ed. John W. DeGruchy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 105.

37. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 120.

38. See Bonhoeffer's sermon on Luke 13:1-5, "Pilate's slaughter of Galileans," in which Jesus does not judge but calls for repentance, in Testament to Freedom, 230-33.

39. See Chapman, G. Clarke, Jr., "Lincoln, Bonhoeffer, and Providence: A Quest for Meaning in Wartime," Union Seminary Quarterly Review 55, no. 3-4 (2001): 129-149.

40. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, "23 August 1944," 393.

41. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, "18 December 1943," 167.

42. Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers, 300; see 11. This can also be translated as "prayer and action for justice on behalf of people"; see Kelly, Geffrey B. and F. Burton Nelson, The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 41ff and passim.

43. Bonhoeffer, in Testament of Freedom, 265.

44. Bonhoeffer, in Testament of Freedom, 282.

45. Bonhoeffer, in Testament of Freedom, 285.

46. Bonhoeffer, in Testament of Freedom, 286.

47. Kelly and Nelson, Cost, 56.

48. See Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 65, and Act and Being, 90f.

49. Bonhoeffer, Creation and Fall, 62f; see Testament of Freedom, 206.

50. Bonhoeffer, in Testament of Freedom, 524; see Kelly and Nelson, Cost, 85-88.

51. Bonhoeffer, in Testament of Freedom, 104; see 227-29, and Kelly and Nelson, Cost, 208-13.

52. Albacete, "Frontline."