Special September,
2001 Editorial
by Ken Atchity
Every human being should have the right to worship the god of his or
her choosing, whether that be Jesus, Mohammed, Yahweh, Buddha, yoga,
"the Force," Fate, Destiny, or "the Ultimate Reality."
But our gods continue to cause us a lot of trouble because we continually
confound organized religion with politics--witness the Islamic jihad
that swept through northern Africa and Europe, the Crusades that "won
back the Holy Land," the Spanish Inquisition, the massacres perpetrated
in the name of the Protestant Revolution and Catholic Reformation, the
righteous destruction of Amerindian culture, the Irish quagmire, and
above all the Holocaust.
The ceremonies at National Cathedral saddened, but also perplexed and
angered me in a way that had nothing directly to do with the victims
of last week's catastrophic attacks--who were of all nations and religions.
To hear American leaders invoking "the God of Israel" and
"all those--Christians, Jews, Muslims--who believe in One God"
was to foresee a fatally myopic continuation of an endless cycle of
denial in the name of religion.
Because, well, that's the current lamentable human condition: lots of
people throughout the world continue to trust in gods that are not delivering
a better world, a "kinder, gentler" humanity. Only humans,
working together against the worst in our own nature, can do that.
On other broadcasts, the question Albert Camus asked in The Plague,
was debated: Why does god allow such things to happen? (because he's
not in charge; we are). And on other broadcasts that day, leaders of
several Christian churches reiterated, seemingly oblivious to the needless
provocation they were offering to American Buddhists, Hindus, Shintoists,
Muslims, and Jews, that Jesus clearly said that, "he alone was
the way to heaven." They may be entitled to believe that, but such
"exclusive" beliefs are part of the problem we as a United
Nations have been facing for centuries--and broadcasting these words
in a time of international grief and sorrow seems inhumane.
Somehow, despite the pious words from all directions, I find it hard
to believe that Americans are so blinded by the religion of "their
fathers" (in itself a term that bears reexamining) that we don't
see the cataclysmic irony here--that the perpetrators of this horror
were also doing what they did in the name of a god. With the insurance
of immediate entry into Paradise, they thought nothing of taking their
own lives along with the lives of thousands. All civilized groups have
responded that these acts were despicable, and they undeniably are.
But they are despicable not because their perpetrators were godless
infidels, but because the terrorists' "exclusive" concept
of god rendered them inhuman, not worthy of being part of the human
polis.
The President has promised to "seek out evil and destroy it."
Will that include the evil of those who inhumanly collected and auctioned
artifacts of destruction from the World Trade Center on E-bay? And inhumanly
raised the price of gas to $5 the same day? And inhumanly gouged people
in the limo and rental car lines? Or will our righteous vindication
be directed only at those whose view of god differs from "ours"?
Let this not be an excuse for us to exercise our macho frustration at
the expense of innocent people of any nationality or religious belief.
It's all pretty jumbled, and it's time we started figuring it out. We've
all heard what they say about those doomed to repeat history because
they have ignored the lessons of past behavior.
Plato and Aristotle, spokesmen for a society that dared to question
the efficacy of gods in day-to-day human affairs--gods whose behavior
seemed all too capricious and inhumane--offered a humanistic vision
that demanded we ourselves accept responsibility for actions like the
ones we witnessed in the last few days. Their vision has been known
throughout history as "the Body Politic," likening the political
organization of humans into cities and nations to that of the limbs
and organs to the human body. One of the corollaries of their vision
was that parts of the body that threaten the vitality of the entire
body must be identified and cut away without compunction. But the surgical
process they recommended had nothing to do with gods or organized religion;
it was merely a rational, humanistic, political necessity: Do what must
be done to protect the health of the Body Politic. Their vision was
studied and applauded by those who crafted this nation's Constitution--a
nation founded not upon the worship of one god or another, but upon
the recognition of humanity as the custodian of its own fate.
The country they envisioned was established upon principles of freedom
and separation of church and state, in a world where they saw clearly
that organized religion accounted for more death in the past three millennia
than all the world's plagues and natural disasters combined. Freedom
of worship, yes, but not freedom to use your own individual view of
the divine to justify your actions, political, social, military, or
otherwise. Let's get justice, yes; but, please not "in the name
of god." That is as inhumanely counterproductive as thinking that
"war" is an appropriate description for the unprecedented
situation now upon us all. Waving flags of any kind, except the flag
of a united humanity against evil, is ultimately counterproductive.
Instead of "In God We Trust," perhaps we should put on our
currency "Gravitas, Auctoritas, Humanitas"--gravitas,
for the seriousness that comes from unforced, unhasty due deliberation
of the clearest and noblest political principles; auctoritas,
from the highest sense of authority that can come only from full acceptance
of responsibility; and humanitas, the noblest expression of human
nature that the mind and heart and spirit are capable of. We have seen
so much humanitas in those who are digging through the rubble
and those who are dealing with the loss of a loved one, that we should
expect no less in our leaders' response to this great tragedy.
Let the 21st Century be the era when we realize that not
only were human beings made "in the image and likeness of God,"
but that our bickering gods have all too often been fashioned in "our
own image and likeness" (as Dante the pilgrim recognized in the
final canto of the Divine Comedy, when he stared into the face
of his God and found it "depicted with our own effigy"). I,
for one, will welcome the day when ecumenicism becomes a reality among
all organized religions. On that day the splendid churches, synagogues,
shrines, temples, and mosques of this great country, and of the world,
will rededicate themselves not just to their respective gods, but above
all to striving to achieve only the noblest expression of humanity,
defined in the spirit of Goethe's idealistic admonition: "If you
treat people the way they are, you make them worse; if you treat them
as they ought to be, you make them capable of becoming as they ought
to be."
Meanwhile, there is plenty of humanistic wisdom for us to consult in
dealing with bringing whatever force is appropriate to bring these terrorists
to civilized justice, and moving on to building a more peaceful, more
tolerant, more humane and more humanistic world. Our efforts will only
be muddled and hampered until we start insisting on leaving gods out
of civic action, even while choosing to invoke them in the privacy of
our homes or sanctuaries.
Ken Atchity (Yale Ph.D.) former Fulbright Professor of American Studies,
author of The Classical Roman and Greek Readers (Oxford
U.P.) and The Renaissance Reader, is chairman of Atchity Editorial/Entertainment
International, Inc.
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