The REAL Enemy

From Joseph Bottum’s An Anxious Age:

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, I was at the Episcopalians’ National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., to participate on a panel to discuss violence and religion.  The evening began with a prayer from Jane Dixon, the cathedral’s acting bishop, and her invocation was as revealing as any short speech could be of the concerns of the contemporary Episcopal Church.

While asking the divine gifts of wisdom for the speakers and understanding for the listeners, Bishop Dixon was vague – not merely failing to name the name of Jesus but straining to phrase all her requests in the passive voice to avoid even naming God:  “May we be given . . . , may it be granted to us . . .”  When her prayer unexpectedly swerved toward abortion, however, her language suddenly snapped into hard specificity as she reminded God that “America at its best stands for the spread of right around the world, especially the right of women to choose.”  The discussion that evening, she prayed, would not turn vindictive, for we could not condemn the destruction of the World Trade Center until we remembered that “even in the United States, people have bombed abortion clinics.”

Bottum goes on to explain how representative this attitude is among the class of people from which Episcopalians are usually drawn.  But I want to foot-stomp the perversity:  just shy 3000 Americans had just been killed by Muslim terrorists, and Bishop Dixon wants to remind everyone not to lose sight of the real enemy:  pro-lifers!

Liberals have no loyalty to America and her people.  They only have tribal loyalties to People Like Themselves, and designated minorities, be they blacks or Muslims, are mere weapons in their unyielding war against the hated conservatives.

I remember reading how there was a surge in church attendance after 9-11 that quickly died off.  If this was the message being preached, then who can blame people for losing interest?