The Culture Beat

The United States is in a religious war. Or it’s not. Or maybe the answer depends on what we mean.

If by “religious war” we mean that religion is part of Sept. 11, Afghanistan and Iraq — well, there’s no question.

Of course religion is a part — a central part — of the picture. But that’s not unique to our current crisis. Many, many conflicts have involved religion, but they weren’t necessarily “religious wars.”

But these days, talk about a “religious war” often means something different, a titanic struggle between religious systems, part of a “clash of civilizations,” to borrow Samuel Huntington’s book title.

Earlier this week, Congressman-elect David Davis (pictured) used words like those. “I think we’re in a religious war,” he told the Erwin (Tenn.) Kiwanis Club on Tuesday evening. “We’re going to fight people that hate us and hate our freedoms and hate our God.”

That kind of talk raises all sorts of questions. Just for starters, who is the “we” and “us” and the implied “they”? Christianity is the dominant faith in the U.S., but it’s not the only one and certainly not the official religion. If it’s a war between religions, where does the United States fit in that terrible equation? (President Bush has rejected the phrase, preferring to talk about “evil people” and “ideologies.”)

It seemed like a good idea to ask Davis to elaborate on his remarks.

“Many Muslims, primarily in the Middle East, primarily radical Islam, see us as a Christian nation, and they hate us,” he said during a phone interview on Thursday. “I’m not saying all people in the Middle East are evil or they hate us, but there are people willing to cause war. We didn’t start the war. Many of them hate us mostly for the support of Israel.” He said he was thinking mainly about “radicals,” and Davis was eager to point out that he has many “very dear friends” who are Muslim.

“They are not the people willing to blow up buildings with planes,” he said. “I don’t think we have any of those in East Tennessee; I hope we don’t.”

Taneem Aziz, leader of the Muslim Community in Northeast Tennessee, doesn’t consider the conflict as a war between religions.

“I would like to know … why some extremists want to frame this as war between the religions,” he said. “Terrorists from any nation need to be dealt with. I don’t see a majority of Muslim nations declaring war on Christianity. The people are definitely against the U.S. foreign policy actions and their results.”

But according to Davis, a devout Baptist, “The people who attacked us did so based on a religious belief other than those found typically in America. Yahweh — the God most Americans worship — is not the God they see. They want us to convert to their religion. People willing to kill us are using Islam as a reason for their hatred.”

Being at war can translate into clamp-downs on people viewed as potential enemies, as Japanese-Americans knew during World War II. But Davis rejects what might be called religious profiling. “That’s not the way our country is set up,” he said.

Profiling based on national origin is another matter. When asked if people who look like they could be from the Middle East should be suspect, he said, “That’s something we need to consider” because of recent events.

“A 65-year-old grandmother isn’t likely to strap on a bomb. There’s not a history of that,” Davis said. “The ones living, working and worshipping here have not shown themselves to do harm. You have to look at history, of a certain group of people in a certain part of the world. Anytime you can determine if a person is a threat, then you should take steps to protect from that threat.”

The threats are real, of course, and national security is important. Still, there’s something ironic — no, disturbing — in knowing that we could justify profiling Jesus himself because he was born in a Palestinian town, and we’d do it for the sake of protecting Christian America.

(Originally published in the Johnson City (Tenn.) Press, 16 Dec 2006)