A Personal and Political Inflection Reflection on 9/11

This year’s anniversary also fell on the eve of Rosh Hashana, a tradition that centers around blowing the shofar as a call to a month of repentance—which is to say the practice of political and personal turning. As I thought about all that, I realized that 9/11 happened exactly at the mid-point of 50 years (to date) of my involvement in faith and justice work. So I wrote this meditation on Sept 11^th—and intentionally waited for several days to release it—as an exercise in looking back on three inflection points, as I try to make sense of the present kairos.  

Fall, 1976.

Twenty-five years before the 9/11 attack, I was hitchhiking across the country, traveling to Jonah House community in Baltimore—my most dramatic step in a second conversion unfolding that year. I was 21, going to university at U.C. Berkeley, sharing an apartment off campus with Neil Jacobson, who was becoming a significant leader in the Independent Living/Disability Rights movement being birthed in the Bay Area. The country’s bicentennial was well underway—a two century-old inflection point that offered a moment for public reflection. Yet it was a fraught and contested time, in the wake of military defeat in Vietnam, an energy crisis twinned with stagflation, the Watergate debacle and Nixon’s resulting resignation. Such cracks stimulated my awakening to a more socially response-able faith.
It started early that year through encounters with calls to radical discipleship by two Baptists: visiting Australian John Hirt and Texan Ladon Sheats, who both became lifelong companions. Their take on what it meant to follow Jesus animated a thirst for the deep traditions of gospel faith and practice that I thought I’d signed up for as a new convert three years earlier in the context of Orange County fundamentalism.
Then, in May I encountered Jesuit Daniel Berrigan, who spoke at the local Newman Center during a nationwide bicentennial tour in which he was “reading America” through the lens of the book of Revelation’s critique of empire. This glimpse of the prophetic power of scripture grabbed me and has never let me go. Shortly afterward, I met local Catholic Workers, and participated in my first anti-war protest. In September, I dropped out of school to go sleep on the floor of Ladon’s room at Jonah House, where my heart and soul were further rearranged by the fierce love of gospel justice and peace exuded by Elizabeth McAlister and Phil Berrigan. This year of re-conversion culminated in helping to start an intentional community back in Berkeley, named after Mark’s blind disciple Bartimaeus—a moniker under which I still march a half-century on.

Fall, 2001

That fall Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries had just become an independent nonprofit (and has been our “nontraditional gospel ministry” platform since). And we were deep into birthing and building the Word & World schools project with a national collaborative, work that defined our vocation going forward as organizing “between seminary, sanctuary and streets.”
There was already widespread angst when the new century opened: Y2K concerns, the triumph of neo-liberal economic hegemony, and a new Bush administration under an electoral cloud. When the Twin Towers came down, we at BCM shared in the trepidation it brought; the grieving for lost lives (especially for friends personally affected); and the appreciation for work of courageous first responders and community organizers at the sites. But schooled in the history of U.S. economic and military colonization and a theology of the principalities, we did not share in the widespread shock grounded in ignorance of geopolitics, or in resurgent national myths of innocence, or in righteous calls for broad retaliation that defined the political afterlife of 9/11.
We did our best to resist both the demonization of Muslim and Middle Eastern communities at home, and the hyper-militarization of U.S. policy abroad, as Bush Jr’s regime parlayed the crisis into what has become endless U.S. war on/in the greater Middle East and South Asia. We held on to the gospel nonviolence that inspired colleagues in September 11^th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows at home and Christian Peacemaker Teams abroad. But we also saw an immediate dissipation of momentum around international debt release and anti-globalization movements. And in the months following 9/11, as the U.S. geared up for war, we lost both Ladon and Phil, my fathers in the faith, and the first of so many of our beloved elders to pass.
Looking back on that inflection point, it’s not hard to see how 9-11 shaped our commitments at BCM for the next quarter century. The unilateralism of U.S. empire had been laid bare, even as our consciousness of the ecological apocalypse grew, adding a “fourth triplet” to MLK’s trenchant indictment of militarism, poverty and racism. We labored through our Institutes to build capacity among a rising generation for gospel resistance to empire, as we had been mentored. Meanwhile our emerging apprenticeship to the Ventura River watershed was teaching us what we are for. But the eruption of the first Trump regime in 2017 revealed that the shadow side of 9/11 had taken firm hold on much of the country’s political imagination, as white nationalism—now with toxic religious backing—supercharged a weaponized contempt for democratic and multicultural ideals at home and abroad.  

Fall, 2026.

When the shofar sounded on 9/11/26, it called us yet again at this inflection point to take stock of who we are personally and politically.
It is clear that the powers that be did not learn new lessons from 9/11, only old ones of imperial retaliation. Halfway through Trump2, every political institution in the country is in crisis, and everything is up for sale to and by plutocrats (which I tried to capture in my HARP book). And we are now reckoning with deepening and interlocking crises of democracy (about to be played out in the upcoming mid-term elections), of climate catastrophe, and of a suddenly looming AI technocratic coup. It is true that we should not overlook expressions of incredible resilience: the last quarter century of terrorism-baiting could not prevent a progressive Muslim-American from becoming mayor of New York City, for example, and ICE immigrant-hunting in the heartland could not break the spirit of resistance in Minneapolis. Still, it’s a bit disheartening that throughout five decades devoted to trying to broaden and deepen the radical discipleship movement, I’ve witnessed the steady expansion of American empire alongside the atrophy of American ideals, and the decay of American churches alongside the apostate rise of Christian nationalism.
On the personal side, amidst all these challenges we are trying to figure out what “rewirement” means for us at BCM, as revenues and energies decline. And I’m dealing with some deterioration in physical health, and with so many losses of mentors and friends. It seems a good time for a pilgrimage.

Two hundred years ago.

Denise Jacobson (partner of the aforementioned Neil) sent me a note this week from Rabbi Jacqueline Mates-Muchin of Temple Sinai (Oakland):

Why do we say “our spirits rise” and “we return to repose” at? We used to say, “please rise” and “please be seated.” The inspiration for the terminology change at Temple Sinai was a conversation with Disabilities Rights Activist, Judy Heumann z”l. In an Access Committee sponsored program during COVID, Judy shared that she felt alienated as a child when her rabbi asked the congregation to sit and stand. She explained that while no one was upset that she didn’t stand, as she used a wheelchair from a young age, no one expected her to participate in any way, either. The exemption felt like being discounted.
Temple Sinai congregant Neil Jacobson z”l often made this same crucial point: true inclusion is communicated through the expectation of participation and contribution. Of course, people will contribute in different ways, but everyone can contribute. And in a community like ours, everyone must contribute to ensure that we are all that we can be. So, we moved from “please rise” to “our spirits rise.” After all, the tradition of standing is not actually about standing, but rather to transition to a new part of the service or to emphasize the importance of a theme or statement. Standing is symbolic of the shift; it is not the goal of the ritual. No matter the position of one’s body, everyone can alert their minds, their emotions, and their spirits to meet the heightened attention of the communal experience. And when that time closes, everyone returns to their former “at ease” state as “we return to repose.”

–Blessings as we turn toward Autumn.  Ched