Although the airline and hospitality industries have been hammered by Sept. 11 and its aftermath, in churches, business is booming. The Friday after the terrorist attacks, my noontime prayer service at Fairfax Presbyterian swelled from the usual half-dozen participants to more than 100. Worship attendance that Sunday was up by 63 percent, from 286 to 466 -- more like a High Holy Day than a September Sunday. And participation in services has been 15 percent higher than normal ever since. Fellow pastors tell me they are seeing much the same pattern within their congregations: In response to an attack on our country that was perpetrated partly in the name of religion, people have been turning to religion in droves.

Most worshipers are coming to Fairfax Presbyterian in search of hope and assurance and a supportive community as they struggle with what it means to live with constant tension. But they are also coming with some more complexconcerns: Many are seeking solace in a faith that preaches forgiveness, for example, while expressing their conviction of the need for apunitive military response. Members of my congregation are talking more openly about their faith, asking questions about justice, the morality of violence and the role of the church in responding to conflict.

So while I take no pleasure in terrorist attacks or anthrax scares, in a sense it has been a good time to be the church. Larry Bowen, a professor at George Mason University and a church member for 27 years, tells me that the church has helped him live with the conflict between "fear of terrorism" and "business as usual." I think that is partly because the qualities that we all need in order to get through this period of uncertainty -- steadfastness, patience and faithfulness -- are better articulated and demonstrated by religious leaders than by most politicians.

The church is also coming into its own by offering a solid sense of community to people who are now keenly aware of their need for it. Few are feeling today's stress as acutely as airline employees. "The carefree attitude and ability to 'chum' with the passengers and cockpit crew members has diminished greatly," Karen Williams, a Fairfax member and United Airlines flight attendant, told me. And with this charged atmosphere exacerbated by the threat of layoffs, she says she has found real comfort in her connection to the church. "I ushered one Sunday and stood there looking at all the people sitting in the congregation. In my mind, I wondered who I could move in with, should I lose my job and my home." The fellow congregants seemed to her like extended family. "It was a reassuring thought," she added.

But beyond the comfort of community and shared values come more challenging questions -- about God's role, for example, in recent events. Some national Christian commentators have linked terrorism to divine judgment (Jerry Falwell, who later retracted the statement, and Pat Robertson) or to a call to repentance (Charles Colson). And some non-believers have cited the attacks as simply the latest example of evil being carried out in the name of religion. I don't agree with any of these views, not because I don't believe in the importance of judgment or repentance in religious life -- and not because I'm blind to the potential for people to deliberately misconstrue religious messages.

My problem with the commentators' speculation is that to find God's fingerprints on the events of Sept. 11 is to follow the reasoning of Osama bin Laden, who called the attacks "a punishment from Allah," saying the United States had invited Allah's wrath.While we are certainly flawed individuals in an imperfect country, I cannot believe that God would choose to punish a nation by allowing the slaughter of several thousand office workers. Yes, early biblical accounts do describe a vengeful God and a warrior God, but the Bible contains an evolving understanding of holiness, through both testaments, and eventually reveals a loving God who is willing to perform great acts of sacrifice. To see God as a killer is to be stuck in a religious time warp.

My church members aren't buying the hand-of-God arguments, either. "I do not believe that the attacks were in any way 'of God'," reflects Rob McLallen, a money manager and church elder. The bottom line for him is that there is good and evil in the world, and what happened on Sept. 11 "was clearly the result of the presence of evil."

So, much of what my parishioners and I are doing now is trying to find a context for dealing with -- and responding to -- evil. One member who works for one of the intelligence services says he has "a strong, personal need" to lean on his religious faith while helping our government fight terrorism. "The Islamic fundamentalists who started this war have declared it a holy war and point to their religious beliefs to explain everything they do," he said. "Our government, always extremely cautious to separate church from state, is not well-equipped to understand or deal with this dimension of the war." But, he says, by looking at the religious aspects of this conflict, he is better able to understand why our government's appeals to reason and logic "fall on deaf ears with people who are completely wrapped up in a mystical-messianic worldview where they believe that God will create miracles to overcome all obstacles." He's right: You can find statements in every religious textthat, taken alone, could be used to justify any kind of action. It is by exchanging ideas and challenging each other within the community of the church that we can try to make sense of those statements and learn to apply our interpretations to real life.

Exploring the morality of warfare has been the biggest of these challenges for me -- and the area in which my own thinking has changed the most as I try to guide my congregation. Until Sept. 11, I would have described myself as a pacifist. I grew up inspired by the nonviolent teachings and strategies of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and my preaching consistently opposed the use of violence. That is, until I learned about the passengers who downed the hijacked airplane in Pennsylvania.

Although I have always tried to encourage others to follow Jesus's command to "resist not evil" (Matthew 5:39), in this case resistance appeared to be the highest moral course. I see no virtue in allowing countless others to die -- as they surely would have if United Flight 93 had continued under the hijackers' control -- because of personal scruples about the use of violence.

And if resisting evil makes sense on a hijacked airplane, where else can it be justified? At Fairfax, we've all been wrestling with that issue. Church elder Jane Carlson, who manages a computer department in an Arlington nonprofit, tells me, "Use of force is the lesser of two evils. When you've got no good choices, you use the least offensive choice. You've got to live with a bad choice." And my parishioner Mike Nelson, a career Air Force officer, fighter pilot and combat veteran of Vietnam, believes that violence can certainly be moral. Defense of family, society, self and the right to worship all warrant violence, in his opinion, if that is the only course of action that will prevent defeat. "It has to be a last course," he explains, "but that does not mean it has to be chronologically last. I am perfectly comfortable exercising violence preemptively if reasonable judgment would conclude that inaction will result in outcomes I cannot accept."

In an effort to bring greater clarity to my own thinking as the United States engages in war, I've been asking colleagues how they believe such notions fit within their understanding of theology. A divinity school classmate, John Lentz, who is now a pastor in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, persuaded me that "violence is always an immoral act." John argues, though, that there may be times when immorality requires an immoral response. That reminded me of what Martin Luther wrote 480 years ago: "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world." A realist, Luther believed that every one of us is destined to sin, no matter how hard we try to avoid it.

So I've begun articulating the notion that a faithful response to terrorism is to sin boldly, never forgetting that violence is sinful, and that true righteousness lies beyond the realm of human effort: No matter how many bombs we drop or bullets we fire, international harmony is not going to be realized by military action. War cannot, by itself, create a lasting peace. In an imperfect world, I say, resisting evil through violence may sometimes be a necessary evil.

It was a desperate desire to find a philosophical explanation for the seemingly inexplicable acts of terrorism -- as well as a deep need to grieve -- that brought so many to church on that first September Sunday after the 11th. These desires, twinned with a need to find a moral context for the war against terrorism, have inspired many to continue coming over the past two months, even though my colleague Timothy Merrill, senior editor of the preaching journal "Homiletics," has reminded me that while adversity has historically been good for the church, those benefits may be short-lived.

So what about the people who rush to church in times of anxiety and fear -- "foul-weather friends," you might call them -- and don't come back? They are no better or worse than the parishioners who come to church only on Christmas and Easter, and I always try to offer them something of spiritual substance and hope they take some of it when they leave.

I can't help thinking, however, that they are going to miss out on the rewards that committed members enjoy -- the reassuring rhythm of weekly prayer, the support of a community and the willingness to hash out difficult problems -- unless they stick around. The Bible doesn't offer any easy answers to what we've been through. But the collective wisdom of a community of faith can help us cope with it.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

Henry Brinton is pastor of Fairfax Presbyterian Church.

Author's e-mail: hgbrinton@aol.com

Link to Henry Brinton's Washington Post Articles Index Page

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