Southern Baptists Examine 9/11

Like Duke Divinity School, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) in Lousville, KY pulled from its faculty ranks for thoughtful commentary on the decade anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The panel, entitled “Terror, Theology, and the Passage of Time: September 11, 2001 in Review,” observed trends, problems, and wisdom gained from the past decade.

Contrasting with the United Methodist seminary, SBTS’s participants were all Christians. They included Albert Mohler, seminary president; Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology; Zane Pratt, dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism; and Heath Lambert, Assistant Professor of Biblical Counseling at Boyce College. SBTS, with over 2000 students, is one of the world’s largest seminaries and one of six seminaries affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

“I think it is honest and straightforward to say that when the events of September 11^th, 2001 took place, we immediately knew it raised all the important theological issues simultaneously,” Mohler remarked in his opening. “All the world knew that theology matters once again.” He observed that people started to say the awkward word “evil,” “which had been banished by postmodern relativism, by political correctness, by a sort of humanism, by perhaps an American triumphalism…”

Lambert commented: “Having 9/11 happen…was humbling. It reminded us of the frailty of humanity.” Moore remarked that 9/11 witnessed a “piercing through of the illusion of cynicism in American culture” where “silliness and self-protection” became “shallow and hollow.” He remarked that the destruction of symbols for American power by a small band armed with box cutters caused “a disturbance that reached into other areas of life.”

The panel did regret pre-9/11 inaction in the face of encroaching radical Islam. Mohler declared: “We had already been warned…We had witnessed the U.S.S. Cole…Osama bin Laden had threatened us already…We had been filtering out too much.”

Pratt, who served as a director of missionary work in predominantly-Muslim Central Asia, was not as surprised by the terrorist attacks. “For us the names Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden had already been well-known,” he recounted. Pratt pursued the heart of the issue: “Islam at its core has a theology that says, ‘We should be in charge. We need to be on top’…And after centuries in their mind of humiliation at the hands of the Christian West, this was a chance to get back.” He further explained, “Since the creation of Israel, there was a faction within Islam that felt itself increasingly helpless in the face of precisely the kind of technological and military might that America had…It didn’t have anything to do with the usual ‘They’re the poor, they’re the oppressed.’ Those that carried out the attacks were wealthy educated men…They simply had found a way to humble the Great Satan.”

Russell Moore was especially concerned with how the liberal West now portrays religion post-9/11. “Religion and faith is dangerous” became a common perception by media elites. He perceptively noted: “One of the most disturbing things I felt coming out of September 11^th and happening immediately was that the answers seemed to be, ‘Let’s try to cool the passions out there when it comes to religion, when it comes to Islam and to Christianity.’ And so when you see the public services at that time, you see that they are these watered down, Christ-less civil religion, precisely because this is the kind of religion that keeps you from bombing one another and fighting one another, and that was the picture that was being drawn for what needed to happen in the Middle East.”

The SBTS event included admission of America’s sins. Moore noted that America leads the way in internationally available internet pornography. “How much Americanism do we celebrate in light of this?” he questioned. This clashes with Jim Wallis’ contention that as long as America does not engage in force, the world will think well of the United States and leave it alone. Pratt recalled the phone calls he received to retrieve missionaries from their fields and wondered: “How deeply rooted is the sense of entitlement” of a “safe comfortable life?”

Mohler warned against over-reading contemporary events as God’s Judgment: “Some Christian leaders said things that are horribly embarrassing to us.” He noted that there are those who speak for God “who forget that we are bound by Scripture.” Moore was less veiled in his assessment: “I think we’re used to it by now—when any world event happens, Pat Robertson’s going to say something crazy and embarrassing on television that’s going to humiliate evangelical Christianity. The same tendency is in all of us with individual ministry.”

The Southern Baptist leaders called into question the usefulness and purpose of 9/11 interfaith panels. Lambert remembered sitting on such a panel after attending a heartfelt service of mourning soon after the attacks. He remembered the majority of the panelists saying in essence, “Sure this is evil, but has this evil been done to us or were we the perpetrators of this?” Lambert, an undergraduate at the time, found “no moral clarity in a room of a panel filled with people with Ph.D.’s.”

In conclusion, the SBTS panel realized that 9/11 did not ignite a revival but still represents a call for evangelism. Moore and Mohler both believed that crowded pews on the first Sunday after the attacks did not represent a radical spiritual awakening, but rather a “scared straight” mentality and desire for fellowship with other people. Not all was useless. Lambert thought that Billy Graham and Alan Jackson “captured the shock and horror of evil. And everyone has to run straight to God…[9/11] has the power to remind you of your weakness, but not the power to save.” Reaching the Islamic world for Christ became a top priority.

Mohler complained: “We are now culturally and intellectually disarmed in this country to have a discussion about Islam” thanks to relativism. Pratt argued: “Islam and biblical Christianity fundamentally contradict each other and they can’t both be right.” Christians can authentically love Muslims and “at the same time believe they are deeply eternally fundamentally wrong.” Mohler sagely observed that the terrorist attacks cause men to “yearn for the realm of peace” where God makes all things well. Recalling the Great Commission, Mohler declared: “We have work to do.”