A
Tale of Two Cities
Forrest
Church • September
8, 2002
I
wonder sometimes how people without a community such
as ours make it successfully from one year to the
next. That may sound silly to you or self-serving,
but I really do wonder. For obvious reasons, I’ve
found myself pondering this question all the more
deeply over the past twelve months. Life is filled
with so many trap doors and such odd passageways.
We are tripping the light fantastic one moment, dancing
on our pedestal, and then–bang–toppled into
darkness the very next, shuffling through the wreckage,
taking baby steps again, relearning how to walk. It
is not an unmixed disaster when this happens by the
way. Spiritually it is useful every now and again
to be reminded that we are not in charge here. When
our minds are preoccupied by illusions, displaced
in an imagined future or trapped in an imagined past,
it can be cathartic for a demanding present to blow
our shuttered doors off their hinges. This is only
true, however, when we are not alone. Disruptions
are beneficial only to the extent that what otherwise
could weaken us or pit us against one another opens
our hearts instead and brings us together.
Think
about our national union. The lofty ideals of the
founders–that all are created equal and endowed
by their creator with certain inalienable rights–not
only represent America at its best, but anticipate
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Unitarian
Universalist Denominational Principles. I call this
the American Creed. It has inspired and chastened
our nation’s greatest leaders. In a way, our
entire history can be measured according to the extent
that our deeds have lived up the promise of our creed.
In his "I have a Dream" speech, Martin Luther
King, Jr., looked "forward to the day that this
nation will rise up and live out the true meaning
of its creed." The essence of that creed, is
E pluribus unum, "out of many, one,"
Today
this ideal is in jeopardy. With freedom in a pitched
battle against faith–pluribus pitted against
unum–we find ourselves in a situation where the
sovereign individualism fostered by post-modernism
and the totalistic imperatives of post-traditional
fundamentalism are increasingly unable to co-exist.
E pluribus unum may once have represented the
founders’ idealism, but today–both for this
nation and for our shrinking world–it signifies
nothing less than hard-headed realism. In the nuclear
age, either we learn somehow to co-operate or else
we all perish. Given our technical capacity for murder-suicide,
it can truly be said that a world divided against
itself cannot stand.
E
pluribus unum has redemptive consequence not only
for America, but, with our shrinking globe, for the
entire world as well. Abraham Lincoln said, "that
sentiment in the Declaration of Independence . . .
gave liberty not alone to the people of this country,
but hope to all the world, for all future time."
Among the many ironies that followed hard on the premature
declaration last fall that irony is now passe, is
the irony that, one year later, many in the world
perceive us not as a harbinger of hope but as a danger
to world peace.
The
United States should and must lead the world in the
war against terror. We are the world’s only super-power.
We also are founded on a set of democratic ideals
that represent the world’s best hope. The irony,
even tragedy, is that today we are more alone in the
world and more hated, than we were before 9/11 united
the world’s leaders against the Taliban and Osama
bin Laden and evoked enormous popular sympathy for
our nation and its people. I spent a week this summer
with Karen Armstrong, the great religious historian.
She told me that when she visits places like Brazil
and Germany instead of being called on to defend Islam
by, as she does, differentiating it as a whole from
the actions of its most zealous crusaders, she finds
herself instead having to defend the United States.
In short, our self-image and our image abroad are
in sharp and increasing opposition to each other.
For
this reason, I am particularly concerned–terrified
might be a better word–by the administration’s
apparent eagerness to instigate a war against Iraq.
Not that the object of our aversion is in any way
noble. On the contrary. Simply that this solution
in so many ways seems to compound our own and the
world’s problem. One only sets a backfire to
control a burning forest when the conditions are favorable.
Otherwise the backfire spreads the very flames that
it was intended to quench.
Anyone
who glibly claims to know for sure what we should
or should not do in response to the menace posed by
Saddam Hussein possesses a knowledge that simply does
not exist. The situation is exasperatingly complicated.
It would be naïve and irresponsible to ignore
his apparent attempts to develop instruments of mass
destruction. The question is not whether to respond
to the threat Iraq poses, but how, and for this there
are no easy answers.
Before
acting, however, we must ask ourselves some hard questions,
the very questions our allies are asking. Would a
war on Iraq, even a successful war, impede terrorism
or foster it? Would it stabilize or de-stabilize the
Middle-East. Would it keep Iraq from employing biological
and chemical weapons, or prompt Iraq to use them on
our own soldiers? What if an American invasion of
the Middle East leads to revolution and a new anti-American
government in Pakistan, which already has nuclear
weapons? Do we then take out Pakistan, say, which
would be, by our own definition, a much greater danger
to world peace than Iraq is? What if Israel, as they
have said they would, retaliates against an Iraqi
scud attack with nuclear force? And that is just the
war. What about the peace?
With
no disrespect for those who actually suffer from this
condition, I sometimes wonder whether those who are
shaping our nation’s foreign policy are suffering
from ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder. The present
administration ran on a platform of no nation building,
no foreign adventures that were not easily explained
to and broadly supported by the American people, and
clear exit strategies for any overseas engagement.
In response to 9/11 that policy was abandoned, in
part for good reason. But our first experiment in
nation building is stalled, a victim of neglect; the
first war against terrorism has certainly not proved
victorious; and, the American people are more divided
than they have been since Vietnam. Yet today all we
hear about is Iraq.
As
great a concern, and one that surely affects America’s
stature overseas, is that while we proclaim ourselves
ready to act unilaterally if need be against Iraq,
we are more doggedly isolationist and imperious than
ever before in all the collegial work being done by
the world’s leaders in response to the shared
environmental threat, racism, the establishment of
a workable world court, and so many other area of
joint concern. At a time when E pluribus unum–however
idealistic, however difficult to accomplish–is
becoming the world’s motto, the United States,
whose founders gave this vision as a gift to the world,
stands apart.
This
explains the greatest post-9/11 irony. Why we, in
so short at time, have moved from a position of leadership
in a world-wide campaign against terrorism, in to
one of isolation. In the weeks after 9/11, we won
not only unprecedented sympathy around the world,
but also the support of almost every world leader
in our campaign against the Taliban and Osama bin
Laden. Were we to give as much attention and provide
as much leadership in fostering democracy in Afghanistan
as we did in toppling tyranny there, however difficult
the challenge we might still be in that same position.
Moreover, we would be working to establish a model
that would inspire aspirations for democracy throughout
the Arab world. We would be modeling our values of
liberty and justice for all, not applying them rhetorically
and hypocritically only when they suit our nation’s
self-interest. Almost everything our leaders have
said in condemning Iraqi tyranny could as easily be
said of Saudi Arabia, whose outrages against human
rights go almost unmentioned. It is hardly surprising
that many in the world see the United States not as
a beacon of liberty and hope but as a self-serving
super-power bent on revenge and insensitive to any
but its own economic concerns.
I
can follow the emotional logic of those who want to
attack Iraq. Not only are hurt national pride and
chauvinistic expressions of patriotism understandable
following the first foreign attack on the continental
United States in almost two centuries, but Iraq does
pose a danger to world peace. In concert with the
United Nations, we should be doing everything we can
to disarm Saadam Hussein. If this effort fails, as
well it may, we will then be in a much stronger position
convincingly to muster an international coalition
as we did the last time we invaded Iraq. Beyond this,
there is no moral equivalency between anything America
has done and the slaughter of innocents on September
11. We do no honor to the memory of those who died
by indulging in paroxysms of guilt. But there is some
truth in how America’s critics view our influence
in the world. The United States exports no goods or
services more intrinsically valuable than our standard
of living and dedication to liberty. Yet, when the
former can be caricatured as decadence and the latter
as libertinism, the immense moral capital we have
to offer is squandered. Faith, as we know too well,
can serve as the handmaiden of terror, but freedom
alone offers insufficient moral sinew to answer faith’s
critique. Freedom finds its meaning–moral, amoral,
or immoral–in the nature of its expression. Though
predicated on the virtue of freedom, both untrammeled
free-market capitalism and unfettered personal liberty
can have unintended consequence. Free markets open
themselves to exploitation; free morals contribute
to social dissolution.
If
free global markets have a stabilizing effect on the
world (and in many ways they do), economic efficiency
is independent of civic responsibility. Democracy
may be naturally suited to free market capitalism
but free markets in no way guarantee democratic ideals.
Corporations have a more natural affinity with stability
than they do with democracy. The transnational corporation
has no home and no loyalty beyond the bottom line.
In oppressive societies that collaborate efficiently
with global free market forces, to the extent that
Western culture is identified with Western commerce
America is more likely to be perceived as the oppressor
than as a liberator
Beyond
this, any struggle to the death between faith and
freedom can only cripple both. When Osama bin Laden
said of the terrorist destruction of the World Trade
Center that America was "hit by God in one of
its softest spots," he may actually have been
right–not in imputing this act of terror to God,
but in recognizing that American economic power alone,
uncoupled to an underlying trust in something higher
and more eternal, is indeed vulnerable to the hatred
that it, as an idol, can inspire. By the same token,
the radical faith that bin Laden confesses and enforces
may also prove to be one of fundamentalism’s
softest spots, for it too inspires an international
backlash dedicated to its eradication. In 410,
Alaric and his Goths sacked the city of Rome. Four
years later, St. Augustine began writing his response
to the end of the world as he had known it. The
City of God is, in fact, a tale of two
cities: the Earthly City (which he calls the City
of Man) and the Celestial City (or City of God). These
cities, Augustine argues, are ruled by contrasting
loves. Citizens of the Earthly City are driven "by
the love of self in contempt of God;" in the
celestial city, they are lovingly "united in
the enjoyment of God and of one another in God."
To Augustine, Rome’s ruin was a foregone conclusion.
At
the turn of the third millennium, Islamicist Fundamentalism
and Western modernism epitomize equally conflicting
worldviews: the City of Faith versus the Secular City.
The increasingly explosive struggle between their
citizens can be summed up, respectively, either as
a war between freedom and evil or one between faith
and evil. Though one could argue that today the barbarians
and the faithful are one and the same, unless common
ground can be established, this tale of two cities
is a preordained tragedy.
So
long as the City of Faith and the Secular City are
trapped in a zero-sum game, there is little hope but
that the tale of two cities will continue to be a
tragic one. Benjamin Barber argues that "Democracy
remains both a form of coherence as binding as McWorld
and a secular faith potentially as inspiring as Jihad,"
but a "secular state" without spiritual
underpinnings lacks the grounding necessary to answer
the language of faith. Mark Juergeusmeyer comes closer
to the vision of America’s founders when he concludes,
"Religious violence cannot end until some accommodation
can be forged between the two–some acknowledgment
of religion in elevating the spiritual and moral values
of public life . . .. The cure for religious violence
may ultimately lie in a renewed appreciation for religion
itself." Fortunately, our nation does have spiritual
underpinnings. We were founded as a union of faith
and freedom. E pluribus unum is a sacred construct.
Our freedoms are based on a higher faith, one that
should, as Abraham Lincoln said, "give hope to
all the world, for all future time."
St.
Augustine (whose City of God was a city of peace)
set down his vision as the walls of Rome were crumbling
before the onset of barbarian hoards and Rome itself
crumbling within, a victim of its own decadence. Today,
he would have recognized his Celestial City neither
in the metropoli of modernism nor in the citadels
of fundamentalism. If the former show little respect
for God, the latter show as little respect for humanity.
Augustine would call on both parties to answer to
a higher law.
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