"When the regular professor asked me earlier that
spring to sub for her in the fall, the date and time seemed an innocuous
blank space: Tuesday, Sept. 11, 11 a.m. My assignment: a lecture on St.
Augustine's 'City of God,' a fifth-century masterpiece of theology and
politics written in response to the fall of Rome.
"It wasn't until I got into the car that day that I heard the news. The top of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, the radio announcer said, was missing. I could neither believe nor disbelieve what I was hearing; there was no reality to which I could connect the crumbling language of NPR anchors straining for barely adequate words. Half an hour later, on a television in the student lounge of Duke Divinity School, I watched as the North Tower exploded in a plume of particles. Students and faculty members huddled together, sobbing on strange shoulders, looking to one another for consolation, wisdom, anything.
"I didn't expect the students to show up when a no-name graduate student guest sub-lecturer was going to talk to them about St. Augustine. They had all just seen an unspeakable atrocity unfold right in front of their eyes. It was probably the best reason anyone ever had to cancel or skip class, to do something more profitable than attend a lecture. What was the point, in the face of such unconscionable, murderous tragedy, of talking about theology?
"But when I arrived, the class was packed so full that I had to squeeze past students crowding the doorway just to get into the classroom. They all just sat there, or stood along the back wall, expectantly. I felt exposed, as if I were being taken in for a police lineup. The students - and whatever bystanders had come to stand in the doorway to listen - were not there for me. They were there for St. Augustine."
In a commentary on its anniversary, writer Pete Candler reflected on this presentation, on the need for people to hear that "when the common interest of a public is not grounded in love for its own sake, and when human rights are not grounded in a universal human calling to love God and one another, then we inevitably serve some other god than the God of Love," and on how much theology matters (whether we admit it or not).
To access Mr. Candler's complete essay, please visit:
The Washington Post: How an ancient African saint helped me make sense of 9/11 (11 SEP 17)
"It wasn't until I got into the car that day that I heard the news. The top of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, the radio announcer said, was missing. I could neither believe nor disbelieve what I was hearing; there was no reality to which I could connect the crumbling language of NPR anchors straining for barely adequate words. Half an hour later, on a television in the student lounge of Duke Divinity School, I watched as the North Tower exploded in a plume of particles. Students and faculty members huddled together, sobbing on strange shoulders, looking to one another for consolation, wisdom, anything.
"I didn't expect the students to show up when a no-name graduate student guest sub-lecturer was going to talk to them about St. Augustine. They had all just seen an unspeakable atrocity unfold right in front of their eyes. It was probably the best reason anyone ever had to cancel or skip class, to do something more profitable than attend a lecture. What was the point, in the face of such unconscionable, murderous tragedy, of talking about theology?
"But when I arrived, the class was packed so full that I had to squeeze past students crowding the doorway just to get into the classroom. They all just sat there, or stood along the back wall, expectantly. I felt exposed, as if I were being taken in for a police lineup. The students - and whatever bystanders had come to stand in the doorway to listen - were not there for me. They were there for St. Augustine."
In a commentary on its anniversary, writer Pete Candler reflected on this presentation, on the need for people to hear that "when the common interest of a public is not grounded in love for its own sake, and when human rights are not grounded in a universal human calling to love God and one another, then we inevitably serve some other god than the God of Love," and on how much theology matters (whether we admit it or not).
To access Mr. Candler's complete essay, please visit:
The Washington Post: How an ancient African saint helped me make sense of 9/11 (11 SEP 17)
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