Tone Down the Rhetoric of War

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Tone Down the Rhetoric of War				October 6, 2001

Despite presidential pleas for unity and unparalleled outpourings of patriotism during the last few weeks, the fact is that we have been so bombarded by the rhetoric of war that such pleas and their patriotic responses seem almost ironic, if not paradoxical. One need only to have read the last few issues of the Gazette to come to the conclusion that intellectual, political and religious polarization is afoot among us and that stereotypical notions still weigh heavily upon our minds. Trying to explain the causality involved in an Islamic Jihad to readers of the Gazette was no easier for Professor Sonn than would be an attempt by Billy Graham to infiltrate the minds of Afghan clerics with the tenets of Christianity. Part of the problem, of course, is that both Islam and Christianity use militaristic rhetoric to advance their political and religious agendas in the face of real or perceived threats from the outside. Indeed, it is this belief - that some almost uncontrollable threat exists - which generates reactive forces and unleashes from what should be peace-loving peoples a holy “war.”

Most Christians would assert, of course, that the concept of “holy war” is alien to their beliefs and that no Christian would hijack a plane, pilot it into a heavily populated building and kill thousands of people. And perhaps they’re right. Yet one need only look to the Crusades, the atrocities of the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch trials to find that Christians are just as capable of reacting viciously to perceived threats from “infidels” as are those involved in Islamic Jihads. Indeed, shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, the National Review’s web page featured a call to arms by TV commentator Ann Coulter, who urged our leaders to “invade the hijackers’ countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.”

More recently, and perhaps in consonance with the untimely innuendoes of the reverends Falwell and Robertson, the Family Foundation of Virginia, a religio/political lobbying group, issued a communiqué which calls for a “three-pronged attack” on its “adversaries” and urges them to “pray consistently and effectively for the cultural war.” Unsurprisingly, the “adversaries” in this case are gays and lesbians who have had the audacity to use the court system and their own lobbying groups to advance the cause of hate crimes legislation and the rights accorded by civil unions. As for the “attacks” of the Family Foundation, they will begin with a series of “training sessions” at various churches throughout Virginia, including one, which has already taken place, at the York River Baptist Church. While Reverend Bill Cashman, the pastor of the church, told me that the materials sent to him by the Family Foundation included no militaristic rhetoric, such invectives evidently did reach the leaders of the Cherrydale Baptist Church in Arlington, which immediately dissociated itself from the Foundation’s goals and canceled the training session there. In part, they concluded that “The church family in no way condones or promotes hate towards other people, and does not associate itself with people who do…We believe in Biblical values but promote them in love and grace.” Indeed, according to a front page article in the Arlington Journal of Sept. 20, Victoria Cobb, one of the directors of the Foundation, agreed that “We do use the term ‘cultural war.’ We do believe there is a war raging right now that seeks to harm Virginia families. It’s an ideological war.” She then conceded, however, that in light of recent events “we would have toned the language down.”

Not to be rhetorically outmaneuvered by the Family Foundation, Virginians for Justice, the gay lobbying group in Richmond, issued its own declaration of war, urging its members to “come together, one and all, and say to our oppressors, ‘NO MORE’…This is our Political Stonewall, and it begins now.”

It would seem, then, that, despite President Bush’s call for harmony and civility after the horrendous attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it is his rhetoric of war and retaliation that appears to be prevailing. And while Jihad might refer to what is oxymoronically translated as an Islamic “holy war,” the threats which seemingly justify it appear to be equally at work in the actions taken by an allegedly more civilized Christianity against its perceived “adversaries.” “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,” says the old hymn, and so reflects the religious militaristic rhetoric we hear even today. How deeply unfortunate it is, however, that, while we wage our war against terrorism, we are also waging war against ourselves. Perhaps it’s time that we all “tone the language down.”