Articles - From the Vicar
One way of grasping the scale of the terrorist attacks on
the United States of America last month is to reflect on the fact that more
human lives were lost during a single morning than in thirty two years of
terrorism in Northern Ireland. The thousands of our brothers and sisters
who died on 11th September leave tens of thousands who grieve.
As we go to press there is no news of how the US Government might use its
military resources to respond to the attacks, but there seems only a slender
hope that further bloodshed can be avoided: the formidable forces that the
USA is mustering around the globe suggest that more families will soon know
the grief that is now being experienced across America.
We are rightly horrified at the sight of passenger aeroplanes
being used as terrorist missiles; but we should not allow our horror to
lead us to assume that those responsible were acting outside a wider political
context. Those who seek to understand this wider context, too easily dismissed
as apologists for terrorism, are actually prophetic troublers of western
conscience whose awkward questions we should welcome. The World Trade Centre
and the Pentagon were not accidental targets. From the perspective of the
landless Palestinian, for instance, they are powerfully symbolic of America's
economic and military capability to lend uncritical support to Israeli policy
in the Occupied Territories; and for many devout Muslims they are a reminder
of the continued presence of US forces near the holy cities of Mecca and
Medina in Saudi Arabia. Being tough on fanaticism is necessary but not sufficient:
we must also be tough on the causes of fanaticism. In this way it might
be possible both to answer the demands of grieving families for justice
and to begin to reap the fruits of God's Spirit, the love joy and peace
that are the surest building blocks of God's Kingdom.
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St Edmund's Church, Roundhay
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