Harvard’s “Indecent” 9/11 Remembrances
Posted on September 18th, 2011 in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
Writing in the New Republic, Adam Lior Hirst, a Yale 2010 grad and student at Yeshiva Law, chastises the various 9/11 commemorations held at Harvard as focusing more on post-9/11 politics than on the victims—and terrorists.
The events on the tenth anniversary of September 11 in Cambridge did little remembering of 9/11 and a whole lot of rehashing of the events in the post-9/11 world. Those people who did talk about 9/11 universalized it ad absurdum. Those people who talked about America’s response to 9/11, at home and abroad, spent little time memorializing the dead and a great deal of time admonishing Americans.
It’s always hard to judge from an account like this what really happened—honestly, if you’re a Jew who goes to Christian ceremonies four times in one day (as Hirst describes himself), you’re clearly looking for writing material, and no one’s going to publish an article about how wonderful Harvard’s celebrations were.
(Then again, I suspect that these were intended to be inter-faith events.)
But I was struck—and somewhat depressed—by this fact.
David Gergen, who, among other things, has served as an influential adviser to four Presidents, delivered the sermon. His remarks almost managed to avoid the actual events of 9/11, focusing almost exclusively instead on the political dynamics since that day: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Great Recession, economic inequality.
David Gergen was asked to deliver the sermon at the main service at Memorial Church on 9/11? I don’t get that at all. Nothing against David Gergen—well, a little bit, maybe, I’m fascinated by how Gergen has used the Kennedy School to brand himself as a statement, when, honestly, he’s a political operative, and there is a difference—but Gergen can deliver his message in, well, the Kennedy School. H’e s a very smart guy and good at many things, but I don’t think anyone, including Gergen himself, would consider him a spiritual leader. Asking him to deliver a sermon on 9/11 is bizarre.
Presumably Gergen was a “secular” choice because any ecclesiastic choice might not be “inclusive.” If that’s the thinking, why call Memorial Church a church at all? Call it the Center for Political-Spiritual Thought, or something.
But again—I only know what I’ve read in this article, and I’d be curious to hear other thoughts.
(Actually, you can hear http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBU4grgEM8U. He begins it by apologizing for having to leave early to go to a grandchild’s soccer game. Which you may not or may find promising.)
4 Responses
9/18/2011 11:00 am
I didn’t go to any of these remembrances, so I can’t comment on them. I have no idea what kind of events I would have planned if I ran the zoo. (I did watch the NYC ceremonies, which I thought were well done. The Brooklyn Youth Chorus did as good a National Anthem as I have ever heard.)
On this one I found very intriguingGeorge Will’s take on the memorializing. His particular explanation may or may not be right. But why is it that the tenth anniversary of Pearl Harbor was a non-event but we are ashamed for our failure to deeply and sincerely enough memorialize 9/11/01? What has changed in national social norms that has caused that? Did the Pearl Harbor widows grieve less than the 9/11 widows and widowers, or was the significance of that event for the nation thought any less significant? I doubt it. It must have something to do with our feelings about past and future, and about blame and guilt and optimism.
I am reminded of Peter Gomes arguing on the floor of the Faculty against observance of the Martin Luther King holiday. (This was the year before it became a national holiday, but the bill had been passed; Harvard decided to jump the gun by making it a school holiday.) The way to honor King’s memory, he said, was not to take the day off.
9/18/2011 11:32 am
Apologies for poor editing — drop the “significant” at the end of my question. Also “resilience” might be a word to add to the end of that para.
9/18/2011 2:39 pm
I did attend Memorial Church last Sunday (as I typically do). Hirst’s summary of the sermon is quite inaccurate, which is strange because the actual content might have served his rhetorical purposes.
I, too, found it strange that David Gergen delivered the sermon; it’s the first time I recall a Mem Church sermon delivered by someone not of the cloth. However, I was pleasantly surprised. What Gergen did was discuss 9/11 through the prism of Rev Peter Gomes’s words, especially Gomes’s sermon on Sept 9, 2001, and his first sermon following 9/11. Gergen noted that, long before 9/11, Gomes preached on the need to find strength in following God and not expecting God to follow us, a theme that Gergen argued was discovered by the public in the wake of 9/11. Though I don’t remember everything, I was quite impressed with Gergen’s ability to weave together various spiritual and public themes that arise from 9/11.
I was also very pleased at the focus on Rev Gomes, whom I dearly miss since his untimely death last spring. In fact, the sermon was arguably more of a memorial to Gomes than to 9/11. From my perspective as a member of the congregation, this was wholly appropriate. But I could understand if others disagree.
References to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the like were entirely subsidiary to Gergen’s focus on larger themes of overcoming adversity. I’m not sure whether Hirst was simply blind to such abstract intellectual notions, and only heard Gergen when he spoke of current events, or whether Hirst decided to mischaracterize the sermon to serve his article.
9/18/2011 4:15 pm
Unfortunately, the preacher on September 16, 2001, was Bishop John Spong of New Jersey. He decided to deliver a harangue afflicting the afflicted: it was a true dereliction of ministerial duty.
It sounds as if Gergen did very well in striving to give an appropriate sermon in Peter’s world. I agree the choice seems a little strange but it seems to have worked well liturgically.