Post by pim on Apr 20, 2013 7:53:20 GMT 10
I'm very impressed by this article and I'd like to park it here on the Religion Board because I think that this is where it belongs. I've read it once but I think I need to read it a couple of times before responding. I'd be especially interested in what Fat and Dib had to say about it ...
False comfort of the 'T' word: Patience in the aftermath of Boston
Christopher Brittain ABC Religion and Ethics 18 Apr 2013
As the tragic legacy of 9/11 demonstrates, making sense in the midst of a crisis requires that we transcend the immediacy of the situation. This is what a casual use of the word "terrorism" prevents.
www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/04/18/3739811.htm
Although I am deeply saddened to of hear of the anti-Muslim rants that have been occurring on Fox News following the tragic attack at the Boston Marathon this past Monday, unfortunately such knee-jerk bigotry has become too commonplace to find surprising. The fact that some Australian broadcasters have jumped on the bandwagon - to the point of accusing "left-wing radical students" at MIT and Harvard of planting the bombs - is alarming, but its only novelty is the fact that some Antipodean voices have begun to mimic their American cousins. Also to be expected were grim pronouncements such as those by Mohammad al-Chalabi, the head of the Jordanian extremist group Salafi, who pronounced, "Let the Americans feel the pain we endured by their armies occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and killing our people there." What is more striking than these pronouncements, however, is the sharp criticisms made of Barack Obama's decision not immediately to label the attacks as an act of "terrorism." The American President clearly sought to discourage his fellow citizens from randomly assigning blame for the attacks in the midst of their anger and grief: "We still do not know who did this or why. And people shouldn't jump to conclusions before we have all the facts." For many commentators, however, this fell short of the dramatic gestures they felt were called for.
On Fox News, the popular host Bill O'Reilly criticised the President for merely calling the situation a "tragedy," insisting instead that it was an "act of terrorism" and comparing it to the "well thought out military campaigns directed against civilians," like those performed by "the Nazis." Even outside of the United States, the President's speech has been accused of being "oddly flat," of "dancing around" and of "falling short of what the American people deserved." A British 'security expert', although admitting that making presumptuous conclusions was "dangerous," said in favour of labelling the event as a terrorist attack, "If it walks like a duck, it's a duck." On Tuesday, President Obama relented to such demands, and publically called the bombing an "act of terrorism." The fact that even a reluctant President must agree to utter the "T" word gives one pause. What explains this intense demand to use the word terrorism?
Immediately following the attacks of 9/11, theologian Stanley Hauerwas noted the way that a great deal of political and media commentary surrounding the event quickly migrated to talk of a "war" on terror. He suggested that, in the demand that something be said to give some meaning and clarity to the situation, and in the face of fear and confusion, people found the call to go to "war" comforting: "War is ... a normalizing discourse. Americans know war. This is our Pearl Harbour. Life can return to normal. We are frightened, and ironically war makes us feel safe." One surely cannot suggest that the word "terrorism" makes anyone feel safe, but the concern Hauerwas raises about the use of certain words to categorise a painful and shocking situation in clear, simple and "normalising" terms is highly relevant here. Faced with the understandable demand for explanation and meaning after a tragedy such as what has occurred in Boston, the security of a label - even a label as terrible as "terrorism" - at least offers the illusion of knowing what one is dealing with, what images and concepts to attach to the intense emotions one is feeling. The word "terrorism" thus offers the gift of analogy: what we are feeling is like the emotions we felt after 9/11. Then, perhaps, we know what to do, and what to expect ...
Sociologist Robert Wuthnow has noted the powerful need people experience during such times of fear. In the fact of catastrophes and disasters, he writes, the inability to comprehend them becomes a "source of profound anxiety." He continues, "the response to fear involves cognitive processes that organise information into patterns and enable the person to strategize about what act to take." We know what actions the fear wrought by 9/11 led to, and the benefit of hindsight has illuminated some of the mistakes these decisions resulted in: two costly wars with little to show for them, the normalisation of the use of torture by the western democracies and the proliferation of the use of drone bombings with countless civilian casualties. These sad legacies of the attacks on the Twin Towers suggest that making sense of the world in the midst of a crisis requires the effort to transcend the immediacy of the situation. This is precisely what a casual use of the word "terrorism" prevents. Prior the discovery of any substantial evidence that a specific terrorist organisation was involved, the "T" word can only function like an ideological band-aid: it might make us feel better because the bleeding has stopped, but it prevents us from being able to explore the nature of the wound. President Obama appears to understand this, so it is unfortunate that he has bowed to the pressure to parrot the language of Fox News.
"The disaster takes care of everything," writes Maurice Blanchot. A catastrophic event has the power to swallow one's sense of the entire world. The task for Christian theology at such a time, however, is to challenge such acquiescence to the power of death and its capacity to define human existence. American theologian William Stringfellow once wrote that the pain and fear of death "names a moral power claiming sovereignty over all people and all things in history." The problem, in other words, is that pain and death can consume a person's life and thoughts, and begin to define a person's entire existence. The Christian, however, is called to recognise that God - not death - is sovereign over all things, and that it is Jesus the Christ - not pain - who is to be the focus of one's life and thoughts. This is to say that, just as St Paul writes, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (Roman 8:18), the Christian ought to be cautious about reducing present fears and anxieties to simplistic formulas of consolation. This includes the frenzy to label something before one understands it. Apophatic silence - which one might also call "eschatological reserve" - is not the product of cowardice, confusion, or lack of rigour; rather, it is a sign of profound faith, determined humility and patient trust in the perseverance of divine justice and mercy. In the midst of very different fears and anxieties within ancient Israel, the Psalmist wrote: "Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods" (Psalm 40:4). The "T" word cannot save us, nor will it bring comfort. The challenge presented by events like the bombings in Boston is to have the courage to muster a determined patience to discern the truth. Only then might we find "a new song" to sing with our mouths (Psalm 40:3).
Christopher Brittain is Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology in the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. He is the author of Religion at Ground Zero: Theological Responses to Times of Crisis.
False comfort of the 'T' word: Patience in the aftermath of Boston
Christopher Brittain ABC Religion and Ethics 18 Apr 2013
As the tragic legacy of 9/11 demonstrates, making sense in the midst of a crisis requires that we transcend the immediacy of the situation. This is what a casual use of the word "terrorism" prevents.
www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/04/18/3739811.htm
Although I am deeply saddened to of hear of the anti-Muslim rants that have been occurring on Fox News following the tragic attack at the Boston Marathon this past Monday, unfortunately such knee-jerk bigotry has become too commonplace to find surprising. The fact that some Australian broadcasters have jumped on the bandwagon - to the point of accusing "left-wing radical students" at MIT and Harvard of planting the bombs - is alarming, but its only novelty is the fact that some Antipodean voices have begun to mimic their American cousins. Also to be expected were grim pronouncements such as those by Mohammad al-Chalabi, the head of the Jordanian extremist group Salafi, who pronounced, "Let the Americans feel the pain we endured by their armies occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and killing our people there." What is more striking than these pronouncements, however, is the sharp criticisms made of Barack Obama's decision not immediately to label the attacks as an act of "terrorism." The American President clearly sought to discourage his fellow citizens from randomly assigning blame for the attacks in the midst of their anger and grief: "We still do not know who did this or why. And people shouldn't jump to conclusions before we have all the facts." For many commentators, however, this fell short of the dramatic gestures they felt were called for.
On Fox News, the popular host Bill O'Reilly criticised the President for merely calling the situation a "tragedy," insisting instead that it was an "act of terrorism" and comparing it to the "well thought out military campaigns directed against civilians," like those performed by "the Nazis." Even outside of the United States, the President's speech has been accused of being "oddly flat," of "dancing around" and of "falling short of what the American people deserved." A British 'security expert', although admitting that making presumptuous conclusions was "dangerous," said in favour of labelling the event as a terrorist attack, "If it walks like a duck, it's a duck." On Tuesday, President Obama relented to such demands, and publically called the bombing an "act of terrorism." The fact that even a reluctant President must agree to utter the "T" word gives one pause. What explains this intense demand to use the word terrorism?
Immediately following the attacks of 9/11, theologian Stanley Hauerwas noted the way that a great deal of political and media commentary surrounding the event quickly migrated to talk of a "war" on terror. He suggested that, in the demand that something be said to give some meaning and clarity to the situation, and in the face of fear and confusion, people found the call to go to "war" comforting: "War is ... a normalizing discourse. Americans know war. This is our Pearl Harbour. Life can return to normal. We are frightened, and ironically war makes us feel safe." One surely cannot suggest that the word "terrorism" makes anyone feel safe, but the concern Hauerwas raises about the use of certain words to categorise a painful and shocking situation in clear, simple and "normalising" terms is highly relevant here. Faced with the understandable demand for explanation and meaning after a tragedy such as what has occurred in Boston, the security of a label - even a label as terrible as "terrorism" - at least offers the illusion of knowing what one is dealing with, what images and concepts to attach to the intense emotions one is feeling. The word "terrorism" thus offers the gift of analogy: what we are feeling is like the emotions we felt after 9/11. Then, perhaps, we know what to do, and what to expect ...
Sociologist Robert Wuthnow has noted the powerful need people experience during such times of fear. In the fact of catastrophes and disasters, he writes, the inability to comprehend them becomes a "source of profound anxiety." He continues, "the response to fear involves cognitive processes that organise information into patterns and enable the person to strategize about what act to take." We know what actions the fear wrought by 9/11 led to, and the benefit of hindsight has illuminated some of the mistakes these decisions resulted in: two costly wars with little to show for them, the normalisation of the use of torture by the western democracies and the proliferation of the use of drone bombings with countless civilian casualties. These sad legacies of the attacks on the Twin Towers suggest that making sense of the world in the midst of a crisis requires the effort to transcend the immediacy of the situation. This is precisely what a casual use of the word "terrorism" prevents. Prior the discovery of any substantial evidence that a specific terrorist organisation was involved, the "T" word can only function like an ideological band-aid: it might make us feel better because the bleeding has stopped, but it prevents us from being able to explore the nature of the wound. President Obama appears to understand this, so it is unfortunate that he has bowed to the pressure to parrot the language of Fox News.
"The disaster takes care of everything," writes Maurice Blanchot. A catastrophic event has the power to swallow one's sense of the entire world. The task for Christian theology at such a time, however, is to challenge such acquiescence to the power of death and its capacity to define human existence. American theologian William Stringfellow once wrote that the pain and fear of death "names a moral power claiming sovereignty over all people and all things in history." The problem, in other words, is that pain and death can consume a person's life and thoughts, and begin to define a person's entire existence. The Christian, however, is called to recognise that God - not death - is sovereign over all things, and that it is Jesus the Christ - not pain - who is to be the focus of one's life and thoughts. This is to say that, just as St Paul writes, "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (Roman 8:18), the Christian ought to be cautious about reducing present fears and anxieties to simplistic formulas of consolation. This includes the frenzy to label something before one understands it. Apophatic silence - which one might also call "eschatological reserve" - is not the product of cowardice, confusion, or lack of rigour; rather, it is a sign of profound faith, determined humility and patient trust in the perseverance of divine justice and mercy. In the midst of very different fears and anxieties within ancient Israel, the Psalmist wrote: "Happy are those who make the Lord their trust, who do not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after false gods" (Psalm 40:4). The "T" word cannot save us, nor will it bring comfort. The challenge presented by events like the bombings in Boston is to have the courage to muster a determined patience to discern the truth. Only then might we find "a new song" to sing with our mouths (Psalm 40:3).
Christopher Brittain is Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology in the School of Divinity, History and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. He is the author of Religion at Ground Zero: Theological Responses to Times of Crisis.
