At the time, many declared that 9-11 had changed “everything.” The world would never be same.  President George W. Bush forecast that the “war on terror” would endure for many decades. The rest of our lives would be affected by 9-11. Islamist terror groups were the definitive enemy for the foreseeable future.

Pacifist theologian Stanley Hauerwas, who is typically irritating, but sometimes insightful, contrastingly noted that “the world was not changed on September 11, 2001. The world was changed during the celebration of Passover in AD 33.”

Twenty-five years later, 9-11, although horrific and momentous, turns out not to have been the decisive event of the early 20^th century. Mercifully, al Qaeda was defeated.  Osama bin Laden is dead.  No successor has emerged. It was justifiably feared at the time that non-state terror groups were the new major threat, able to kills thousands with demonic simplicity and innovation. And ultimately, they would gain weapons of mass destruction.  The vaporization of a major city by a terror group seemed almost inevitable. 

Perhaps these fears were overstated.  Or perhaps the comprehensive response to 9-11 was essentially effective.  Either way, independent Islamist terror groups, although still lethal, are not the ongoing major threat that many understandably expected 25 years go. Today’s threats are states, chiefly China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.  We have essentially returned to a Cold War era type situation, with the world divided into blocs, but now multipolar and not bipolar.

Of course, another 9-11 could again change this dynamic overnight.  But for now, the world is essentially how it would have been absent 9-11.  The events of that day not significantly affect the rise of China or impede the sinister trajectories of Russia, Iran and North Korea.

In his rare nugget of wisdom, Hauerwas reminded Christians that we should not be inextricably shaken by dreadful horrible events.  We live permanently with the confidence and hope of Christ’s resurrection.  God in Christ has redeemed us, and He is redeeming the world, on His schedule.

This confidence and hope, of course, do not make us indifferent or less engaged with all the challenges of contemporary events.  Hauerwas insisted Christian pacifists should double down on their rejection of all force in the wake of 9-11.  More discerning Christians, operating on some understanding of the ecumenical consensus about the just use of force, understood al Qaeda must be defeated and dismantled. And other groups like it must be deterred. Terrorism as a threat will never go away.

Today, discerning Christians must be alert to the pressing dangers of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Each must be deterred. Ideally, Russia’s war in Ukraine will be defeated.  Ideally, each despotic regime will meet its end, or at least shift its sails, in our lifetimes. Tyrannies typically claim cosmic permanence, and then, often suddenly, they are gone. May the Lord hasten that day.  Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies must counteract the regimes that wish to counter and ultimately replace the West with an alternative, darker world order.  In their preferred scenario, the world would suffer under tyrannical police/surveillance states, subject to the caprice of dictators, chiefly arbitrated by China.

The scenario can only be prevented, in earthly terms, by the power and will of the United States.  Whether we have that will can be justly doubted. As horrifying as 9-11 was, we can nostalgically recall the national unity it generated, the spontaneous bipartisan patriotism, the moral sobriety, the heroism of the 9-11 rescuers, the magnificence of the passengers on Flight 93, and subsequently the skills of the U.S. armed forces.  The enemy was clear, and America was certain, more so even than during the Cold War.  There was even a brief renewed interest in religion and God, demonstrated by some increased church attendance, among other evidence.

Such national moments cannot last long.  But those who were then alive and aware will never forget. As with all such episodes of good spirit, tragedy and division followed. The Taliban was toppled but now has returned to power.  The Iraq War was divisive from the start and became far costlier than imagined.  Ironically, the regime the U.S. installed there has endured even as the one in Afghanistan collapsed.  Nearly universally supported after 9-11, George W. Bush became deeply unpopular.

Those tragedies fueled our current national moment of cynicism, deeper polarization, vulgarization, and contempt for democracy and the principles that guided America through the Cold War and its aftermath.  No longer is America the clear leader of the West, as its president spars with Allies like Canada, is ambivalent towards Ukraine and Taiwan, and threatens NATO. The notion of universal principles about human dignity are out of favor, even deemed weak and woke.

Hauerwas’s reminder that Passover 33AD trumps all else is timelessly true.  But that eternal verity does not tell us how to pursue approximate peace and justice now. Hauerwas would say that hard realities of statecraft should not concern Christians, who are not of this world.  But Christian Realism says otherwise.

How can principled American global leadership return?  Can it return, or has the path towards disenchantment and misanthropy been traveled to the point of no return?

Christian Realism is distinct from pure Realism, which believes pure self-interest, untrammeled by altruism or ideals, rules the world.  Divine grace is always operative in the world. What seems unlikely or even impossible often unfolds, against all prognostications.

If our current despair responds to the unfulfilled hopes that followed 9-11, then the next national chapter might crave a return to ideals. Or maybe not.  God knows.  And whatever happens, the year 33AD remains decisive and more important than all else.

In a 1939 broadcast, King George VI cited the poem “God Knows” by Minnie Louise Haskins, which seems as pertinent now as then:

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”