May 20, 2002
Preachers ponder: What's the message after 9/11?
___By Jeffery MacDonald
___Religion News Service
___ACTON, Mass. (RNS)--As Ed Schroeder sees it, Sept. 11 left all Christian preachers with an enduring message to keep delivering: Repent, one and all, for God is clearly angry with America.
___"The only way to fight when God is your enemy is to repent," said Schroeder, a retired Lutheran theologian. "God is merciful to those who repent. It says so through the whole Bible. But if the imperial injustice persists, God finally presses the button: out."
___That might be true, conceded Pastor Paul Sangree, but he's not about to preach it from his pulpit at Bethany Congregational Church in Foxboro, Mass. That's because the tragedy hit close to home when hijackers took the life of the church's head deacon.
___"I think of what Ed said about this being God's judgment, but if you've lost someone beloved of the church, a very strong Christian, on Sept. 11, then it's a little bit harder to preach that," Sangree said. "Would you say to the widow, 'God took your husband as a wakeup call to America?' It's possible that this was God's wakeup call to America, but I don't feel comfortable saying that to the family."
___This exchange reflects one of many struggles Christian preachers face in 2002. With so many questions lingering from Sept. 11, three denominations brought together 70 preachers in late April at Acton Congregational Church to examine what they can--or must--say when the faithful gather in the long shadow of that fateful day.
___What emerged from liberals and conservatives in Lutheran, Roman Catholic and United Church of Christ traditions was agreement that America has ample cause to repent for sins ranging from pleasure-worship to exploitation of Third World nations. But preachers also found common ground on a second point: Those who preach repentance will surely face the people's wrath for allegedly blaming the victim or lacking patriotism.
___"All we hear from Washington is: 'We're good. They're bad. Case closed,'" said Warren Geier, pastor of Christ the King Lutheran Church in Wilbraham, Mass. "It's hard to get that message (of repentance) out without people saying you're un-American. It's tough."
___Preachers disagreed about whether to construe Sept. 11 in hindsight as God's own act of judgment to spur repentance. Schroeder reminded the group that in the Bible, God used Assyrians and other enemies of Israel to punish and inspire change, adding that God is apparently doing so again today: "It's 'apocalypse now' after 9/11."
___On the other side, Scott Spencer said to attribute terrorism to God would "engender a lot of anger" at his Rehoboth (Mass.) Congregational Church. So instead, "I went into my funeral mode" and preached comfort for two months in the face of inexplicable tragedy, he said.
___Now, nearly eight months after the incident, church attendance has generally leveled off, and preachers see their people living at times "as if nothing ever happened." Such normalcy among the flock is disconcerting to shepherds, they said, because it seems no incident of any magnitude can cause Americans to turn from their ways of over-consumption, indifference to poverty or unfettered self-indulgence.
___"Since Sept. 11, our culture has unfortunately not become more humane or genteel," said Deborah Rahn Clemens, a United Church of Christ professor of preaching at Moravian Theological Seminary. "Tragedies create panic responses. They themselves are not redemptive."
___Calling the people to repentance is, of course, not an end in itself but a presage to the preacher's offer of salvation through faith in Jesus. Preachers once again agreed this must be their definitive word after Sept. 11, even as a wider culture pressures the church to affirm the legitimacy of non-Christian paths to God.
___"There are no substitutes, no other gospels to preach," Clemens said. "Sept. 11 showed self-help philosophies to fail miserably, and all religions are not alike. ... I found that nothing but the good shepherd's voice can bring comfort to those who grieve."
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