Religion and violence

Christian Century, Sept 11, 2002 by Robin W. Lovin

Not everything changed on September 11, but what happened that day signaled how much everything had been changing, some of it for a very long time. Though we continue to fear another terrorist attack, it may well be that the particular network that planned September 11 has already been effectively destroyed. That would be a victory of sorts, but it should free our attention for the larger problems.

The massive nuclear threat we had faced since the beginning of the cold war has been replaced by a more random violence that comes without immediate provocation and without warning. The predictable calculus of enemies who were protecting empires of their own has been replaced by martyrs who have nothing to protect and who aim only to inflict the most devastating blow they can. In that new world, conventional military forces are often ineffective, and religiously motivated violence is a factor to be reckoned with. The modern state, which has served for at least half a millennium to wield military power in the national interest and to contain the threat of other kinds of violence, suddenly appears incapable of doing the main job for which it was created.

In this new situation, religious leadership across all lines of creed and culture will have to take new responsibility for dealing with religiously motivated violence, because governments are no longer able to do so. The idea that our deepest beliefs about the value and destiny of human life are "private," so that we need not concern ourselves about how others think about these things, is about to disappear, along with the equally outdated idea that the threat of state coercion is sufficient to keep the effects of those beliefs under control.