When 9/11 happened, it's the first thing I thought of within those first few days: "Wow. Religion still is pretty murderous when it comes down to it. It's really pretty murderous." Then the president used the word "crusade." I'm not saying he meant crusade that way. But the words that come out of our mouths do reflect some deep place in who we are. ...
The truth is, in the West, religion got put in its place. It got put in a private space, away from being able to affect and do any more damage than it had already done. Here we call it the separation of church and state. We had a French revolution, an American Revolution. So religion, when it's put in its place -- in the privacy of your home, not outside in the public square -- then it's OK. Let it do some nice stuff to your family. But let it out of that box, and look what it does.
... I realized that this is really fundamentally a religious issue, and if religious people don't confront this, and if we don't confront this as a religious issue ... that we were going to miss the boat on this, and this would reappear somewhere else. We will close the window here and it will come through the door. We'll close the door and it will come through the window.
When the president said, "This is not a religious issue," that's when I knew it actually was a religious issue. At the same time that Osama bin Laden and that group of people were claiming this was religious, we were claming it's not, but finishing every single sentence with "God bless America." I remember every seventh-inning stretch that had a "God bless America," and my body, literally ... I felt like I was repulsed. I was repulsed that basically all we were doing is, everybody was trotting out their own God.
So we, in America, were trotting out our God -- that's the God of sports, that's the God who comes in and says everything's good. You'll score a touchdown, you'll score, and your army will win. God bless America.
And they were trotting out their God. What really was the difference? Three weeks earlier, everybody was saying it's all the same God. It's all the same God, these monotheist Gods. So if it's all the same God, how come one God kills and one God affirms? I said, "I will never teach about that God again, because that's what that God does."
It was as superficial to say "God bless America" at the end of the presidential speech, as it was dangerous to say, "Our God commanded us to fly into the buildings." I'm still trying to figure out what to do with that realization, in all honesty, because I can't even pray to that God any more.
From PBS FRONTLINE: FAITH AND DOUBT AT GROUND ZERO. Read the rest of Rabbi Kula's interview HERE.
Or, take the LEAP.
