Here we go again.

"I just think he’s being very insensitive to say it’s not hallowed ground because of who’s occupying the buildings," said Jim Riches, a former New York City deputy fire chief whose son, Jimmy, was killed at the trade center. "The strip club didn’t murder my son."

Imam says NYC mosque site is not ‘hallowed ground’ | General Headlines | Comcast.net

The Imman Rauf says that Ground Zero is not hallowed ground,  and so the firestorm lets loose.  Blasphemy!   That is,  if your religion is America and not Christianity.  Get a grip folks!   Ground zero is NOT the burning bush,  the Mount of Transfiguration,  the tomb of Jesus,  or any kind of “hallowed ground”.  Not if you’re a Christian (or a Muslim , Jew,  or any other person of faith). 

Ground Zero IS the site of a monstrous tragedy in history.  It is a place of deep significance in American and World history,  but it is NOT a time to be marked in the annals of faith history (unless we want to talk about the reactions to that event,  which form say much more about the importance of 9/11 than the event itself).  To call the site “hallowed ground” is to raise the event to a level to which it has no business being considered.  I hear people say “The world changed on 9/11”.  Stanley Hauerwas said in response:  “I thought the world changed in 33 AD”.  9/11 was not the pivotal event of the cosmos.  All this talk about “sacredness” is inappropriate.

I’m perfectly OK with anything that keeps this in perspective as a horrific and nationally tragic event.  It is certainly ,  to those who lost loved ones there,  a spiritually jolting reality.  One may even qualify it as a NATIONALLY HALLOWED GROUND,  but I am uncomfortable using theological language to refer to the experiences of nations.  It gives indication that nationalism is at work,  and that is a loyalty that will conflict with the allegiances we are to give to the Kingdom of God.  People can be citizens of both,  but there is a line where national loyalty takes a back seat. 

I understand the rarity of terms available to characterize the event on 9/11.  The loss that was suffered there. Lincoln himself could not help but invoke the sense of the sacred-ness of Gettysburg.  But he also was a president of a nation,  and he must have felt a deep sense of the relationship between the war between the states and the greater good of the abolition of slavery and the preservation of the Union.  But I just can’t go there.

And Jim Riches,  for the umpteenth time,  Islam didn’t murder your son, either.