Faithful Memory Demands We Stand Up To Lies

Marking the 25th anniversary of September 11th this weekend has taken me back to my own experience of that fall morning in 2001. I was in the middle of a prayer service, having just held my infant son, when we heard the news of the first plane hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

I can’t forget that moment or the devastating moments that followed. None of us can.

But as our nation concludes another anniversary of September 11, those memories are being desecrated as we tragically find ourselves not only entangled in yet another war in the Middle East, but also once again driven by false information, unconstitutional mandates, and a profound moral failure.

None of us who were alive on September 11, 2001 can forget the anguish of that terrible day. We remember the violence and cowardice of the attacks. We remember the pain of the loss, and we remember the shock we felt as the world we knew was turned upside down.

But in the midst of that terror, we also remember the sincere outpouring of courage, compassion and neighborly love we saw from the first responders who ran towards tragedy to the families who held each other close to drive away the dread and the sorrow.

Unfortunately, in the days, months and years that followed the attacks, the American people were lied to again and again. So-called leaders exploited our national trauma, telling us for the sake of self preservation and to eliminate weapons of mass destruction that threatened our families, America needed to go to war.

Now we know not only that those claims were entirely untrue, but also that deception cost more than 100,000 lives and over $3 trillion.

It grieves me to see the nation mark this anniversary while we watch the same thing happening again.

Repeatedly for the past six months, the claims the current administration has made about operations in Iran have been proven false, if not by the facts on the ground then by their own contradictions. Meanwhile, we are engaged in an illegal and immoral war with no congressional approval, and the costs continue to rise as it steals our energy, steals our wages, and steals the lives of our service men and women and innocent civilians…even children.

Costs continue to rise because, while our leaders waste billions on bombs, bullets and madness, they fail to provide guaranteed healthcare for our people, refuse to pay poor and low-wage workers a living wage, and leave public education underfunded and ecological devastation unaddressed.

When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. broke his silence on the Vietnam War decades ago, he warned that a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. Today, we are living out that warning.

There is a tragic, gaping hole in the center of our national soul. We stamp “In God We Trust” on our currency, but our leaders demonstrate by their actions that their faith is only in the mechanics of war and fear.

This is the reality we face and, without deep national repentance and the courage of the people speaking up to challenge this violence, our society will continue to spiral downward.

This is why, for more than 15 weeks this year, we stood outside the White House to preach, protest, live-stream, and witness. This is why, alongside a diverse, unified coalition of religious leaders, we are fiercely critiquing not just the legality of this war, but its absolute immorality. This is why we are standing up and calling on all people of conscience to join us, lay down their comfort, and bear witness.

Our presence may not immediately alter the course of these so-called leaders. But there must be a faithful witness that demands we finally study war no more. We must tell the truth and call out that continuing to live by violence is a sign of the barbaric reality that lies unredeemed at the heart of our nation. We must be that witness.

I believe in the grace Americans showed 25 years ago in the wake of September 11, and I’m grateful for the first responders who ran towards the danger to save the lives of their brothers and sisters, the teachers who comforted students terrified that they would be next, and everyone who reached out a hand to a complete stranger because they believed we can count on one another.

I believe in the grace America showed on September 11. That’s why we must speak out against those who took advantage of that tragedy then - and those who continue to do so today.

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