Peace calls for "healthy tension" between faith, citizenship

Social justice news
October 2001

An Afghani timeline
Arab Americans become targets for domestic reprisals
Does the U.S. understand the Muslim world?
Donors pledge more aid for Afghanistan as refugee crisis worsens
Pax Christi USA calls for a "healthy tension" between faith and citizenship
Some responses and resources related to September 11 attacks

Pax Christi USA calls for a "healthy tension"
between faith and citizenship
Deciding how the nation should best respond to the worst terrorist assault in U.S. history will not be easy for most American Catholics who may be torn by a desire to see justice done for the victims of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington. D.C. and a faith tradition that teaches forgiveness and nonviolence. "We have to hold our citizenship and faith in a healthy tension," says David Robinson, national coordinator for Pax Christi USA. "We have to reflect the best of who we are as a people and as a church."

Pax Christi USA is endorsing a national call for action on October 7 against a military retaliation for the September 11 assaults. Robinson says the response of national peace organizations represents an attempt to provide some cultural counterweight to the "war fever" he fears is being whipped up in the American media and among hawkish government officials in the weeks following the killing of perhaps more than 6,000 people in the nation’s worst terrorist assault.

An accelerating series of prayer vigils and demonstrations has been the response of the U.S. faith and peace and justice community to the U.S. military buildup following the deadly terrorist assaults in New York and Washington. Robinson says. "There are so many things happening so fast it’s hard to keep track of them all" as new events organized throughout cities and college campuses across the country. He says Pax Christi USA will regularly update its website to publicize actions as soon as it becomes aware of them.

Though "the perpetrators have to be caught and brought to justice," Robinson argues that "we have to reject out of hand a military retaliation for the sake of a military retaliation." Robinson says the best military response would lead to the capture of the people responsible for the terrorist hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, followed by proceedings under the authority of the United Nations, "so that the whole world can put these criminals on trial." Such a process, says Robinson, would "reinforce the U.S. commitment to the rules of civilized behavior under international law."

Robinson is concerned that the U.S. response to these acts of terrorism appear more and more focused solely on the military option. "You can’t fight terror with more terror. Whether you do it selectively or randomly, killing the terrorists is not going to end terrorism. You only sow the seeds for more terrorism in the future.

"The military response is one tool; there are many other tools," says Robinson, noting that he has been encouraged by the Bush administration’s strenuous efforts to build an international coalition to broadly confront terrorism. Robinson says now is the time for American Catholics to speak up in support of the the diplomatic effort being undertaken by Secretary of State Colin Powell and against war-mongering calls for a broad military response against Middle Eastern nations, particularly, but not limited to, Afghanistan. "The hawks in the defense department really want to attack Iraq," he says, and may use a "war on terrorism" as an opportunity to once and for all resolve the ambiguities of the 1990 Persian Gulf War.

Such military adventurism poses real danger to Americans in the future, according to Robinson. "The whole region is a tinder box."

Robinson fears that one worst-case scenario that could result from a poorly defined war against terrorism is the violent alienation of Muslims across the globe and the destabilization and fall of the current Pakistani regime. Such a collapse would mean that a radicalized and nuclear-armed Pakistan would continue an ongoing confrontation over Kashmir with India, which has its own nuclear capabilities. Other even less desirable outcomes are possible, he says, even as the problem of international terrorism would likely persist.—Kevin Clarke

Back to page top