In the final weeks of Campaign 2008, presidential candidates are lavishing promises to keep America safe from terrorist attacks and from economic meltdown. But some Christian thinkers are wondering aloud whether America might be truer to Christian ideals — and a safer country — if voters and candidates would accept the idea that some things are more important than security. Christian scholars and activists discussed related issues earlier last month (Sept. 18-19) at a Yale Divinity School conference, “Are We Safe Yet? Vulnerability and Security in an Anxious Age.” Among the speakers was Scott Bader-Saye, a University of Scranton theologian and author of Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear. Bader-Saye talked by telephone from his home in Scranton, Pa. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Why do you say we live in a culture of fear?
A: After 9/11, the fear of terrorist attacks became the dominant political concern, and that continues to be one of the dominant concerns. Fear is also used in marketing and in the production of news. News stations tend toward the sensational and the frightening because these are things that grip us. Religious leaders sometimes use threats of hell as part of the arsenal of church. And because we have such a strong response to fear, it's easy to manipulate people.
Q: How does fear affect our politics?
A: The issue of experience gains more mileage. Fear turns us toward that which feels more comfortable, feels predictable, and toward somebody who's been there before.
Q: You say in your book that “security often comes at a price that is too high to pay.” What do you mean by that?
A: You could try to become secure by destroying everything that could potentially threaten you. But then you'd have to do, as Dick Cheney said after the attacks of 9/11, “work the dark side.” Are we willing to work the dark side? It's too high a price to pay to become like those we are resisting. It doesn't matter if torture would produce helpful information. Preserving my own life or my own safety is not worth becoming the kind of person who would torture someone else.
Q: Do we need to resign ourselves to the prospect of being attacked by terrorists?
A: We have to resign ourselves as human beings to the fact that we are vulnerable. There are lots of ways in which we are threatened every day. There's always a chance of dying in a car crash, for example. We need to remember that the highest good in the Christian tradition is this good of love, of glorifying God, of enjoyment of God. This is higher than the good of preserving our own safety or even preserving our own lives. That's not to say security or safety is not important. It's to say that within the Christian tradition, safety is not the highest good. We should take security seriously, but there are limits to what we should do to be secure.
Q: If we as a culture were more accepting of vulnerability, would we somehow be safer?
A: I think it's possible. In seeking to be invulnerable, we turn quite quickly to violence. So an act of violence is met with an act of counter-violence. The idea that we can crush the enemy, or crush that which is evil, through force might feel good at the moment, but it may not in fact be the thing that makes us safest.
Q: So when our Christian political leaders resolve to wipe out the things that threaten us, are they working from a perverse reading of their religious tradition?
A: We have been too quick to assume that the interests of God, as we understand them in the Christian tradition, are always going to align with the interests of our nation. I think this is a human tendency, and we call it “sin.” It's the tendency to pursue our interests at the expense of someone else.