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12.29.2001 00:11
2001: A year to test our faith
BY RICHARD C. DUJARDIN
Journal
Religion Writer
What a difference a day can make.
Four months ago, few would have predicted that Americans would soon be turning to prayer in phenomenal numbers, lighting candles on street corners and various public places, and joining in memorial services in mosques, synagogues and churches.
But then came Sept. 11. Moments after the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Americans knew instinctively America was now a very different place and that their lives had changed.
From the thousands of Rhode Islanders who prayed and stood with one another on the State House lawn, to the clergy from here and elsewhere who made time to minister at Ground Zero, there was an understanding that when the going gets tough, faith and prayer are needed more than ever.
Perhaps Roman Catholic Bishop Kenneth A. Angell of Burlington, Vt., said it best. At a Memorial Mass in Providence for his brother and sister-in-law one week after they lost their lives in one of the hijacked planes, the bishop said the terrorists thought they could bring America to its knees. And they did, he said, "but not in the way they intended."
It may well be true that many weeks following the attacks, when Americans saw the tide turn against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan, church attendance fell back to its pre-Sept. 11 levels.
Yet a poll of 1,500 Americans, released three weeks ago by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, makes clear that something has changed. Forty-four percent still say they are praying more than before the attacks, and 78 percent say they think religion's influence in America is growing. That's up from the mere 37 percent who felt that way last March, and the highest percentage that has been recorded in four decades.
And there have been other changes, too. American-Muslims who were concerned there would be an anti-Muslim backlash, soon found many more examples of the opposite: non-Muslims offering to shop for them in case they were afraid to go out in Muslim garb, churchgoers wanting to visit mosques, and ministers and priests urging flocks to avoid stereotyping.
In retrospect, the bizarre situation where a bevy of officers swooped down on the Providence station to arrest a man on a train wearing a turban could be seen as more of an aberration. The man, who was Sikh, not Muslim, had been arrested on a charge of wearing a symbol of his religion around his neck, a four-inch ceremonial knife.
President Bush's repeated calls for tolerance toward those who practice the Muslim faith also appeared to have an effect: This fall, 59 percent of Americans said they had a favorable view of Islam, up from the 45 percent who said that in March.
That's not to say that Muslims in the Middle East and Asia were becoming more tolerant of the United States. While most Islamic governments joined the anti-terrorist cause, many of their citizens in the street doubted Bush's insistence that the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan was not against Islam.
Much of the fury on the part of some of these Muslims in Asia and the Middle East was no doubt fueled by the highly charged situation in Israel and the feeling that the U.S. was doing little to stop the bulldozing of Palestinian homes in Gaza and the West Bank. That, along with scenes of Palestinian children killed by Israeli bullets and Jewish young people killed by suicide bombers, a wave of assassinations on both sides and new hard line rhetoric, made the prospects of peace more elusive.
In other top news:
• Pope John Paul II, continuing his drive to end the divisions within Christianity, became the first pope to visit Greece since the Great Schism of 1054. He also became the first to visit a Muslim mosque, the Great Mosque in Damascus, Syria. Still, his visits were not without bumps. His visit to Ukraine stirred accusations from Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox leaders that he was trying to steal their believers.
• Debate over the ethics and morality of research on stem cells from human embryos took a new turn with President Bush's order limiting federal research dollars to existing stem cell lines.
• Catholic Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo raised eyebrows when he took a bride in a marriage ceremony performed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. After meeting with Pope John Paul, he renounced the marriage and said he would return to his life as a Catholic prelate.
On the local front, Providence played host to the biennial national meeting of the American Baptist Churches (USA). During their four-day meeting, delegates approved, among other things, a call for a reinvention of the criminal justice system that would put less emphasis on meting out punishment and more on bringing "healing" to victims and offenders.
Also this year, Roman Catholic Bishop Robert E. Mulvee and the Rhode Island State Council of Churches' interim executive minister, the Rev. Sharonb Key, led a joint service in early September in support of six Rhode Island black ministers who had been singled out on a banner containing racial slurs.
A month later, in a signing ceremony at First Baptist Church in America, clergy and lay leaders from some 40 faith groups, including Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Jews, Baha'is, and Unitarians, vowed to bolster programs to make racism a thing of the past.
But it was the small band of clergy who said they could not stand by and watch Governor Almond freeze $5 million that had been earmarked for affordable housing who made the loudest statement. Refusing to leave after a Christmas lighting ceremony, the ministers -- three from the United Methodist Church and one from the United Church of Christ -- were arrested by State Police on charges of obstructing a police officer. A few days later, they were joined by a larger band of clergy who staged a similar demonstration before being thrown out.
Two of the state's largest ecumenical agencies picked new leaders this year:
• The Rev. John E. Holt, a Methodist minister from upstate New York, was elected, after a year-long search, to become the new executive minister for the Rhode Island State Council of Churches starting in February.
• The Rev. Marlowe Washington, the outspoken pastor of the Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church, was installed as the new head of the Ministers Alliance of Rhode Island.
In August, drawn by offers of free food, bicycles, boom boxes and supermarket gift certificates, thousands of adults and young people turned out for what was billed as a Providence WOW Jam in the city's West End and South Side, an evangelistic campaign that was organized locally by Living Waters Church in Smithfield and other Providence churches.
Back on the national front:
• Books on prayer became hot commodities, illustrated by sales of such books as Bruce Wilkinson's
Prayer of Jabez.
The
Left Behind
series by Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins also continued to set publishing records, while on schools and campuses, books and courses on Islam and the Koran found new popularity.,
• President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative encountered criticism from liberals and some religious conservatives. Though a modified version passed the U.S. House, it remained stalled in the Senate.
• The Vatican acknowledged that it had reports of nuns in Africa being sexually abused and, in some cases, impregnated by priests, saying it is a serious problem.
• The face and body of Pope John XXIII were found to be incorrupt 38 years after his death, though the Vatican played down talk of a miracle.
• The 5.2-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the 2.5-million-member U.S. Episcopal Church celebrated the launch of their "full communion," allowing them to share clergy and pool resources.
• In Boston, three Episcopal bishops joined in a demonstration in front of the Israeli consulate to protest Israel's policies toward Palestinians, drawing the ire of some Jewish leaders.
• In Washington, Bishop Wilton Gregory became the first black bishop to be elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
• On a ranch in Texas, the remains of atheist leader Madalyn Murry O'Hair and two family members were found buried, confirming the belief that the three were victims of foul play when they disappeared in 1995.
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