If you are of a certain age, you knew exactly where you were that fateful day, 24 years ago. I was just graduated from college and was working at a Christian ministry. The broadcast on a local Chicago talk show was interrupted by the news anchor, first with a low-key announcement that a “plane of some kind” had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. That’s odd. I thought. Perhaps a rogue single engine plane.
I stayed a minute to listen. Then, the news anchor dropped in again. “A second plane has hit the tower.” Terrorism wasn’t really in our vocabulary much in 2001, but I knew this was it. To say our lives dramatically changed in these moments is an understatement. In the days and weeks that followed, we huddled around the television screen and watched in horror the replay of the twin towers falling, the Pentagon attack, and the crash of the plane in a field in Pennsylvania. We heard the gut-wrenching, horrific stories of employees leaping from buildings, the search for bodies, and the dazed family members wandering the streets of New York in vain hope to find their loved ones.
Yet we also witnessed something rare in these times: a solidarity among Americans, however temporary. President Bush’s leadership and rhetoric after 9/11 matched the moment, calling the nation to both resolve in the face of terror and humble prayer before God. America’s pastor, Billy Graham, delivered words of comfort and hope at a special service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Democratic and Republican lawmakers put aside their fierce ideological battles to sing the words “God Bless America” on the capitol steps. Around the nation, churches hosted prayer meetings and blood drives. Restaurants offered free food to first responders. Rescue teams raced to Ground Zero to help find survivors. As a young, coming-of-age adult, this was our Pearl Harbor, our rallying moment to both patriotism and the cause of fighting evil. Sadly, this national solidarity didn’t last long enough.
9/11 was a watershed for the cultural shifts that followed in the 21st century. While the war on terror was successful in many ways in eliminating terror networks that prey on innocents in the West, the long-protracted wars that followed did not make an unstable world more stable. This, along with the financial meltdown that would follow not long after and the incompetence in handling Hurricane Katrina, would sow a deep distrust of key institutions and spark a populism whose impacts are still being felt today. One can draw a straight historical line from Iraq to Barrack Obama to Donald Trump.
Click Here to Read More (Originally Published at World Magazine)
Daniel is the director of the Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including The Dignity Revolution, Agents of Grace, and his forthcoming book, In Defense of Christian Patriotism. Dan is a graduate of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Angela, have four children.
