We at The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society and The World Congress of Families join with our fellow Americans and with our friends around the globe in expressing shock and revulsion over the terrorist events of September 11, 2001. These were assaults on people; they were also assaults on the integrity of thousands of families. Our thoughts and prayers are with those families who have lost a father or mother, a child or a brother, a sister or a grandchild….

A commentary on these events 
by Dr. John A. Howard  -Senior Fellow, The Howard Center

Into a New Wilderness...

America's age of innocence has been shattered. The comfortable security provided by two oceans and a supremely powerful military force has proven to be a frail shield, no longer able to insulate us from the slaughter which savage passions have brought to many lands. We, too, now find ourselves in a situation where fear and uncertainty have become elements of daily living.

Americans have been catapulted into a new wilderness where unforeseen and unforeseeable hazards and difficulties will add new stress to their lives. The American nation is suddenly a major player in cruel and seemingly insoluble international tensions which most American citizens have been observing from the balcony. There is, and will continue to be a somewhat greater likelihood of military conflict involving our country.

A front-page item on the 9/12 Wall Street Journal notes that the bombings "threaten to push an already fragile economy into widespread recession, smashing consumer confidence and disrupting basic commercial functions such as air travel and financial markets."

Some years ago, Rev. Harold Blake Walker observed that Americans have mistaken a standard of living for a purpose in life. September 11 will prove to be a day of reckoning if it results in a serious economic decline and if what Dr. Walker stated applies to a substantial portion of the populace. Will people have the inner resources to deal calmly and wisely with the new worries and with the sacrifices which will be required of them?

The pioneers who settled and brought civilization to a continental wilderness had no illusions about the dangers they faced and ordeals they must endure. They knew they faced a life of toil and hardship, but they were fortified for these rigors by their determination to procure a better life for themselves and their families, by a solid sense of community and mutual support with their neighbors, and for a large majority of the populace, by a religious faith which provided the fortitude to stand up to whatever came their way.

The new wilderness that has engulfed the American reality is not simply the instant product of the Kamikaze attacks. The process of transforming a condition of raw savagery into a civilization necessarily involves the development of restraints and obligations that govern the behavior of the individuals so that group projects may be carried out. The success of that change from an every-man-for-himself jungle to a civilized society depends upon the articulation of ideals from which are derived the agreed upon standards of conduct. And those ideals must be embedded in the culture as positive elements of the society that must be protected, justifying sacrifices from the individual when necessary.

For thirty-five years, the New Morality has been tearing down and replacing the accumulated wisdom of Western Civilization. The cherished ideals and standards of proper behavior were, it was said, outmoded nuisances that had to go. Previously, just as Americans would learn the language as an automatic part of growing up, they also learned how to behave responsibly, living by standards of right and wrong woven into the culture and taken for granted by the citizens. Now those standards have been so thoroughly trashed that many, many Americans live their lives deciding for themselves how to live and behave, oblivious to any sense of community responsibility.

This transformation reflects the twilight of Christianity that has descended on America. The individual of deep religious faith begins with a fundamental subordination of his desires to what the deity requires of him. For that individual, the subordination of his preferences to the well-being of the family and the community is a natural and readily acceptable aspect of living. Santayana wrote that Americans had developed a comfortable Christianity without thorns. As churches have downgraded an individual's obligations within his faith, parishioners tend to become indifferent to the obligations of family and community.

As a Christian, I recognize in the period following the September 11 devastation an opportunity as well as a need for people to rethink the purposes of their lives as a foundation for the decisions they will be making in meeting the trials and demands of 21st Century living. The other large option would seem to be a continuation of the long trend of escape into suicide, drugs and alcohol, sensationalized and degenerate entertainment and the accumulation of things and travels to brag about.

One hopes that Harold Blake Walker was wrong. Certainly the generous and noble response of the fireman and police and blood-doners and other engaged citizens in the two tragic cities leads one to hope he was wrong.