We Gather Together

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It's not just the decision about where to go to school that weighs on families; it is simply harder to send children out into an uncertain world, whether for the traditional eighth-grade school trip to Washington, a spring-vacation trip south or a summer abroad. The Teitelmans of Oak Park, Ill., have an idea what they will be talking about around the table next week: What will son Matt, 15, do for his summer vacation? Matt has been saving since he was a little kid for a summer trip to Israel. His sister Joan, 18, who went there last summer, says it was a great adventure: "I basically came home and said, 'Matt, you're going.'" Then the world changed, and now parents Andy and Nancy are struggling. When Israel was just about the only place on earth with frequent suicide bombings, Andy says, "I really had my doubts about what kind of responsible parent sent their child into the only country that has that potential. But now we've all been shocked into realizing that we're not particularly safe anywhere. If the risk is imminent anywhere, then I have a lot less hesitation about Matt going to Israel." Nancy has reacted in the opposite way. "The things that have happened since Sept. 11 are just so horrendous that it's difficult to get your brain around them," she says. "It seems as if the Middle East is dissolving into anarchy."

THE GREAT AWAKENING

Along with the reaffirmation of family values, there has been a much-discussed reaffirmation of faith, a religious revival triggered by trauma that saw churches and synagogues and mosques flooded with worshippers in the days following the attacks. But how do you measure the breadth and depth of rediscovered belief? The American Bible Society says sales of Bibles since Sept. 11 are up 42% over the same period last year. Zales Jewelers is selling more crosses. The Religion News Service says Koran sales in the U.S. have quintupled since the attacks. Even after the initial burst of fervor subsided, many churches and synagogues report, attendance is up 5% to 10%, though some in places like Manhattan are still seeing twice as many people as before. Ministers find that people are not simply more interested in faith than before; they are especially interested in evil. "Since Sept. 11, I have to confess, I've had as many thoughts about the devil as I have about God," says David Marutiak, a senior manager at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. "You have to wonder just how evil something has to be before it's a sign of something incarnate rather than just another human issue."

Where interfaith alliances were once viewed as sort of poor stepchildren to mainstream denominations, such groups find themselves flooded with interest and inquiries from people whose hope for a peaceful outcome rests in cross-cultural religious understanding. A Judaism and World Religions program at Valley Beth Shalom, a conservative synagogue in Sherman Oaks, Calif., drew 1,400 people to hear a speaker on Buddhism. "I hear people say, 'Isn't it wonderful how we're coming together as a nation?'" observes the Rev. Don Sperber, pastor of the 700-member Grace United Methodist Church in Denver. "I'm troubled when the most common song I hear sung today is God Bless America, and I keep saying, '...as well as the other nations.' I'm not opposed to patriotism, but I'm opposed to having it be blind to the reality of the total world. I've been trying to select hymns that have a more global perspective."