by Jayden Harlow

Created on: November 04, 2008

I believe that the attacks of September 11, 2001, have impacted the search for religious faith in America in a number of ways: some obvious and some less so. Probably one of the most visible changes has been a narrowing of the general understanding of what "faith" entails. In 1958, religious scholar Paul Tillich defined faith as one's "ultimate concern." Although he was a Protestant, he made no restrictions on a particular brand of faith, saying that the "conflict between religions is not a conflict between forms of belief, but between expressions of our ultimate concern." Using Tillich's model, all true faiths have validity, and is possible to see a common ground across different religions since all exist to address a connection with the "ultimate concern."

I don't think we could fairly say that Tillich's model holds much popularity in post-9/11 America, where "having faith" has come to be synonymous with "having Evangelical Christian" faith. During the recent presidential elections, I saw several television interviews with prospective voters who voiced concern that Barack Obama was "a secret Muslim." Leaving aside the question of whether the color of his skin prompted these "fears," my immediate question was, "Yes, and?" What if our presidential candidate was of Muslim faith? So are more than a billion people worldwide and around two million Americans. Yes, the 19 terrorists associated with the 9/11 attacks were Muslim. Timothy McVey, who orchestrated the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil prior to 2001, was a Catholic. If you start going back in history, you'll be hard pressed to find any organized religion not connected in some way with slaughtering others in the name of faith. Yet, somehow, large groups of Americans emerged from the tragedy in 2001 with the idea that Evangelical Christianity was the only acceptable, trustworthy faith. To bolster their fear and cast Islam in the most unwholesome light possible, many will often whisper about the "72 virgins" supposedly promised to Islamic terrorists in the afterlife. Frankly, the best remedy for this misconception is a bit of research because this bit of religious ignorance is akin to suggesting that any Christian who believes in transubstantiation and attends mass is a practicing cannibal.

What's also interesting to me, given the post 9/11 narrowing of "acceptable faith," is the fear that has grown up around the concept of atheism: a term which seems to have expanded to include anyone who doesn't

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