Thursday, September 15, 2016

9-11, Anthem Protests and Prodigal Sons

This past Sunday was the fifteenth anniversary of the attacks on New York’s twin towers, the Pentagon, and (failed) congress. This is always a poignant day in the US, and a chance to remember the victims and much more besides.

What has been great about how the 9/11 legacy has developed is that it has become a day of service. Volunteers everywhere choose that date to do something to help others. I’m not really sure how or even why that started – perhaps it came out of some linkage of first responders to service, or maybe simply a wish to do something on the day. But it has become a good tradition, and many Americans show themselves at their generous best each time to anniversary comes around.

The other side of it is less good, as the nation uses 9/11 to glorify the military and its global dominance and talks of enemies and revenge. This year the anniversary came on the first day of the NFL season, unfortunately, and the games were surrounded by patriotism dressed up in flags, military uniforms and implicit threats to imagined enemies. The NFL does some of this even on normal days, selling itself somehow as a militarily patriotic institution.

I sort of don’t mind this aggressive patriotism, it passes over my head, but I do get angry when in the same breath the commentators refer to teams as world champions and games as world finals. This is having it both ways – Americans can portray the NFL as a global game (somehow) and display it for a global audience, or as a domestic game with domestic symbolism, but not both at the same time.

The excuse for the world champion description is that Baseball’s playoff finals were originally sponsored by a newspaper called the World, who labeled it World Series. The name outlasted the sponsorship, and has lazily drifted to a completely different meaning and to other sports. At least in major league Baseball there is one Canadian team playing – the NFL cannot even boast that.

At any US sporting event, there is likely to be a national anthem sung, or another patriotic song such as God Bless America, often woefully. Crowds generally spontaneously stand and remove headgear, which I suppose is impressive. And I can’t complain too much, they still play God Save the Queen in some British theatres before performances.

So it is an interesting choice by Colin Kaepernick, a fading NFL player, to start a new type of protest by ostentatiously sitting or kneeling during the national anthem. His protest is against unequal treatment of people of colour, which he says debases what the anthem stands for. The protest has spread, though so far not out of control, with some other players copying him or raising a clenched fist instead.

The protest has caused confusion among pundits, which has potentially created the desired effect of highlighting the cause. Many find it unpatriotic and disrespectful of the military, especially on a day such as 9/11, but most respect the right to protest, sneakily suggesting that it is not a good choice of method, or that he would be better served to seek solutions rather than merely complain. But great social changes have not generally come about by politely complaining. It will be interesting to see how this develops, and it might yet play a role in the upcoming elections.

For me, the other noteworthy juxtaposition on this 9/11 was the fact that it came on a Sunday, one where the Christian Gospel included the parable of the Prodigal Son. On a day when more Americans than usual will have attended Church, this will have posed challenges and opportunities to preachers throughout the land.

The Prodigal Son is a great parable, and also one amenable to many different interpretations and messages. The basic meaning is clear, that God’s mercy is infinite, and it is never too late to repent. But beyond that things are less clear. Do are we really like the father in the story, or indeed the like the other characters featured in the Gospel, a widow finding a lost coin or a shepherd leaving his flock to search after a stray sheep? If so, is that only a good thing? What about the elder son, who resents the special treatment of his brother, having toiled without blemish himself? Why might the second son have behaved so badly? And with whom should we identify and learn, the father or either of the sons?

It is rich material. I regretted going to our own local Catholic Church and not to the Episcopal St. Bart’s in Manhattan, which organised a special 9/11 service and where the preachers are invariably courageous. Our priest did highlight the elder son, but claimed that most of us would not act as the protagonist did with sheep and coins and forgiveness of errant offspring. I am not so sure, I think most of us do focus on fixing a problem at the expense of protecting a strong point, because our nature makes us and because the pleasure of turning situations around is so great. Our priest linked the exceptional mercy of God to the pain of those still suffering after 9/11, concluding that there was always hope.

I expect at St. Bart’s they were braver, and I wonder about how many other preachers were too. The key character is the elder son. While I have many times behaved like the prodigal son and been painfully aware of it, and sometimes behaved like the father for good or bad reasons, I have nearly always behaved like the elder son, often unawares. I guess most of us are the same.

It is significant that it is the elder son that loyally does his duty but resents his lack of adequate recognition and the special treatment of his errant brother. In traditional societies, even today, the elder son is the privileged one. He inherits most of the land, gets the best schooling, has first choice of wife and is generally well looked after. I am an elder son. Our risk is that we somehow treat these privileges as expectations, or even start to feel that somehow we have earned them, and have to defend them. Then we can sit on our high horses and judge others. Instead we should be counting our blessings, seeking to serve and share, and looking to improve.

The elder son can be analogous to anyone born to advantage. That’s most of us, folks! It is anyone white, or male, or straight, or born to a stable family or a family of adequate means, or of a beneficial nationality, or living in a time of relative peace. How often do we count those blessings, seek to serve and share, and look to improve? How often do we instead become defensive and judgemental of others? Listening to the US election campaign, I’d say too often – Clinton supporters as well as Trumps, especially if we were not repelled by her recent condemnation of his supporters as deplorable. Our reactions to Colin Kaepernick might betray something similar. As Europeans, our treatment of the migrant crisis certainly does.

On 9/11, the bravest might take the analogy one step further. Of course it is a time to mourn the dead and laud the first responders, and perhaps it is a step too far to forgive the perpetrators. But, as a nation, the US reacted to 9/11 in the role of the elder son, defending unearned privileges and exacting brutal revenge towards innocent people. There has been precious little evidence of counting blessings, seeking to serve and share globally, or looking to improve.


9/11 offered a chance to take a growing perspective as well as a mourning one. In his way, Colin Kaepernick and his cohorts nudged us in that direction. The Gospel of the day, if we cared to reflect deeply enough, screamed at us to take the wider perspective. I can only hope that a few brave preachers took the chance to help their congregants to do so.  

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