Pondering national ideals in a
post-September 11th world
by Julie A. Wortman

The October issue was at the printer’s and the November copy was flowing in when I got word of the hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As soon as it was possible to think, our staff began reshaping our editorial work in light of a post-September 11th world. We are still feeling our way.

Eerily, November’s topic – how people of faith are fighting for the soul of our global cities – was very much germane to the question on everyone’s mind: How could this tragedy have happened? As many pointed out, the World Trade Center and Pentagon were "national symbols." True enough, but what seemed crucial was that they were national symbols that to some had become so powerfully emblematic of the demonic that their bloody destruction could seem justified.

Longtime urban theologian and activist Laurie Green, the Bishop of Bradwell (in the Church of England’s Chelmsford Diocese), writes in The Impact of the Global: An Urban Theology (2001) that "the crucifixion of Christ is to be found constantly in our urbanized world, for the commodification of people and things and the ruthless exploitation of technology and resources which [have become] the dominant values of globalized urban capitalism, threaten to enslave both rich and poor alike."

To many, the World Trade Center was synonymous with the values of which Green writes. The process by which those values corrupt, Green says, runs as follows: "The poor countries are awash with advertisements for and symbols of the benefits of the wealth of the rich developed world and so naturally look to that rich world for aid. The World Bank offers to assist them but only if they will emulate the values and priorities of the rich world. A loan will be offered only if the poor nation reduces its internal food subsidies, reduces spending on health and education and ploughs its meager resources into engagement in the world market, seeking to earn foreign currency rather than maintaining its own internal local market. But the international market is so designed that a poor country may never be able to succeed within it. The terms of trade and the advantages which the already-wealthy countries have, lead to the poor new players being pushed ever lower down the league of trade; they eventually find that the initial promise of increasing wealth for all proves illusory. The poor country becomes ever more dependent and the vast majority of its population is driven to deeper anguish and worse conditions than even pertained in their previous wretched state. All this is far removed from the holy promise offered by Christ that when God’s Reign comes there shall be a banquet prepared for all the nations. The evidence of the streets of Jakarta, Harare or Lima is that the promise offered by globalization is hollow, driving the rich to hardness of heart and the poor to destitution."

On September 11 the World Trade Center was a place of business inhabited by thousands of people trying to make a living. In the Pentagon thousands of people were working hard to protect that enterprise from coming to harm. Very likely no one in either place thought of themselves as caught up in activities or policies or processes by any stretch of the imagination brutal or demonic. But we here in the U.S. have become identified with an enterprise of globalization, urbanization and militarism which symbolizes death rather than life-giving possibility. We owe it to our beloved sisters and brothers who died in the September 11 attacks – and to all those who have endeavored to aid them and their families – to try to figure out how better to live the ideals we would hope would mark us as a people in the years to come.

Julie A. Wortman is The Witness’ editor/publisher