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Doug Fromm, Reformed Church in America
Those suffering from xenophobia, who fear strangers and foreigners, will generalize about certain groups labelling them potential terrorists and threats to our way of life. Religious extremists will use the tragedy to denigrate other faith traditions in order to promote their own. Some will go so shamelessly extreme as Rev Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson when they asserted on television that an angry God allowed the terrorists to succeed in their deadly mission because the United States has become a nation of pagans, abortionists, homosexuals, feminists, secular schools and courts, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Such language is an embarrassment to the Christian faith. We have choices to make in responding to such tragedy. We can choose the demagogues...and follow down even more destructive paths. We can become blindly nationalistic...and ignore the larger, more comprehensive, long range issues...of living as part of a global village where life is interrelated. We can live with the vulnerability and discomfort we feel...plunging deeper into the mystery of our minds and hearts.
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Extreme nationalists will use the moment to further their agenda of
attacking any nation that is not in complete alliance with ours...or to our liking.
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