9/11 Lessons in Civil Religion

In Jean-Jacque Rousseau’s model of civil religion, the state is unified and strengthened by public displays of faith that refer to deity, point to the afterlife, draw attention to the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice, and that exclude religious intolerance. Two of the three memorial services I attended on 9/11/11 fulfilled Rouseau's requirements. The opener fell short. 

Naming Enemies and Learning to See and Speak to Each Other

Three times, Rev. Joseph Hein, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Middletown, mentioned “Muslim extremists” or “jihadis” in his invocation at the Monmouth County Memorial Ceremony on Mount Mitchell Scenic Overlook in Atlantic Highlands.

He said the media inaccurately describes 9/11 as a “tragedy” when in fact it was a “monstrous, intentional act of evil.”

While I was asking Hein about his statements, a woman approached and affirmed them.

“I think it’s important to name our enemy and to name evil in this day and age. It’s the only way we can confront evil is if we name it. It was one of my primary goals in what I had to say today,” said Hein.

“I came to say thank you so much for doing that, because no one’s brave enough to do it anymore,” the woman said, but moments before I approached Hein another woman had complained to me about these same comments.

Naval Weapons Station Earle Commanding Officer Capt. David J. Harrison broke down as he spoke, and was rewarded with applause. He described the citizens of Monmouth County as "the most patriotic people I've ever known" and expressed pride in the fact that 95 percent of Operation Enduring Freedom's initial munitions had come from Earle.

Rabbi Michelle Pearlman of Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls delivered the benediction at the ceremony and prayed we would do battle against fear, hate, and bigotry with weapons of the spirit and loving hearts.

Pearlman said she felt a "huge sense of gratitude" to be memorializing 9/11 at an interfaith gathering that also represented the military and victims’ families.

I asked her if she thought Hein had struck the right tone with his repeated references to Islamic extremism. She declined to comment directly, but said, “Everybody needs to say what they have to say.”

“My remarks were around how we’re all human beings and we have to learn to really see each other and speak with each other,” Pearlman added.

Community of Remembrance Keeps Demon Memories at Bay

Tom Momyer told his of surviving the World Trade Center attack at the Interfaith Gathering hosted by St. Joseph’s Parish in Keyport. Momyer said it wasn’t until years later that he began to feel the pain of what he saw and experienced that day. Then he was gripped by fear and despair.

“From the moment 9/11 started, we all were brought together by our collective memory,” said Momyer. “By the hand of a master weaver, we have all been woven together, each thread making the fabric stronger.”

The community of remembrance is what keeps the “demon memories” at bay, Momyer said.

Kay Hetherington talked about reasons to remember. Remembering honors the moment and the people who were lost, she said. It teaches us and allows us to teach others so that we can change.

“Let’s not ever choose to hurt another person so we can make a point,” said Hetherington.

St. Joseph’s choir joined with the choir from Temple Shalom in Aberdeen to sing a song composed by Temple Shalom’s cantor, Leon Sher.

“Heal Us Now” was written in  2002 when Sher was in cantor school in lower Manhattan, Sher said. It was inspired by a loved one's illness and by the Intafada in Israel, but 9/11 was probably its backdrop.

“Every day during weekday prayer, there’s a lot of little prayers and one of them says ‘לרפא אותנו, אלוהים, ואנו להירפא. שמור לנו, אלוהים, ואנחנו יישמר.,’ which means ‘Heal us, Oh God, and we will be healed. Save us, oh God, and we will be saved,’ the first words I sang,” said Sher.

The service concluded with the congregation singing, in three party harmony, the Latin prayer, Dona Nobis Pacem, which means “Grant Us Peace.”

When All the Words That Can Be Said Have Been Said

I was unable to attend the that was sponsored by the Monmouth Center for World Religions and Ethical Thought, but spoke to MCWRET coordinator Dr. Stevi Lischin Monday.

The sunset gathering was not a service, Lischin explained, but a silent memorial at which about 50 people faced the World Trade Center site for 10 minutes and then spent another 10 minutes or so greeting one another.

“It was purposely conducted that way because there were so many spoken services all over the country,” said Lischin.

“Words really eluded me and I think that’s part of what was so spectacular yesterday, especially by the end of the day when I think people had heard all the words that could be said,” Lischin said.

She couldn’t identify the religious affiliations of the participants, but said there are usually 10-to-12 religions represented at MCWRET events.

Sheepdogs in Our Midst

The September 11th Remembrance Service at the Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove was a decidedly Christian extravaganza that included an orchestra, the Newark Boys Choir, a trio called The Couriers, the Monmouth County Pipes & Drums Corp, and messages from two members of the clergy.

Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association Chief Administrative Officer Scott Hoffman said the goal was “to appropriately commemorate the tenth anniversary of that terrible day, but at the same time to transition at the tenth year to a proclamation of hope and looking forward with victory.”

Brick Police Department chaplain Rev. Dan Schafer, who mobilized clergy for The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after 9/11, used the biblical story of Lazarus’s resurrection to make the point that “from the day of this attack, we knew that we would not be defeated.”

Schafer compared police, fire department, and emergency service personnel to “sheepdogs” who live to protect the rest of us “sheep” from wolves that would attack us.

“Tonight we have sheepdogs in our midst to keep us grazing and blessed,” said Schafer.

After the service, Schafer said he served with the Port Authority until May 30, 2002.

“We went up as a team,” he said. “Basically we worked all of the Port Authority locations: the bridges, the tunnels, the airports, the pile, the morgue. My responsibility was to make sure that chaplains were at those locations to serve whatever was needed.”

In addition to praying over hundreds of bodies and body parts, a listening ear was the predominant need, Schafer said.

“Nobody would accept counseling. There wasn’t a place for counseling. It was a place for allowing people to talk, allowing them to talk about the horror, the loss, the impact,and basically justifying the fact that they aren’t crazy.”

“It’s difficult right now for all of us. It’s a trigger,” Schafer added. “We’ve tried to turn the television off because we were there. We had the sights, the sounds, the smells, and there’s a time when you just need to separate yourself from that in order to get to some kind of normalcy. We’ll never be normal again, but we find a new normalcy.”

A Reasonable Response to Enemies

was New Jersey Secretary of State on September 11, 2001. He delivered a rousing sermon based on the biblical story of David and Goliath and talked about being charged by the governor with coordinating the state’s emergency response at Liberty State Park in Jersey City. By the time he got there on 9/11, survivors were no longer escaping New York City by ferry.

“Those who could come had come,” said Soaries.

Hesitant to release the 300 medical volunteers at the park, he traveled by boat amidst clouds of smoke and falling ash to gather enough information to make a decision.

“Fear is a reasonable response to enemies that attack you,” Soaries said, as he described his own fear of traveling toward the site that others were fleeing.

“Nobody is so strong that he or she isn’t impacted by the events of September 11, 2001,” he said. “I felt like I had seen our Goliath.”

We had seen Goliaths before, he added, at embassies overseas, but this time “Goliath had the audacity to enter into our house.”

“We know how the story ends,” Soaries countered. “David had a power that the world can’t give and that the world can’t take away.”

“We’ve read stories of the Davids in our midst,” he said, but declined to consider himself one of them and respectfully objected to Schafer’s sheepdog analogy.

The former Secretary of State concluded by launching into a fiery barrage of patriot declarations.

“We may not be a perfect country, but we are the envy of the world,” he said--one that has the most noble founding documents of any nation and is the most benevolent in history.

“If you want our weaknesses to outshine our strengths, then get out of here. Leave. Go someplace else,” Soaries shouted to vigorous applause.

“Nations that disagree with our policies should stop taking our money,” he added, saying he is tired of them criticizing America “out of one side of their mouths and begging for money out of the other.”

Like Hein, who delivered the first invocation of the day, Soaries declared that enemies are real and evil exists in the world. And like Hein, he said that good and God will ultimately triumph.

Unlike Hein, however, he reminded us that America climbed out of its own bigoted history without the help of any other nation, and he admonished us to not allow any enemy to let us forget who we are.