Most of the time, we do not necessarily know that we are going through a significant historical event. We usually recognize it years, if not decades down the road. Not so with 9/11.
Many of us who witnessed 9/11 on our television screens, even if we were not sure what we were seeing, did recognize that our world was changing before our eyes.
Not only did the world change in general, the religious landscape changed as well. How some saw Islam is only one aspect of this.
One of the changes was that this was a crucial event in the rise of the New Atheists. Atheism has been around for a long time but in the 2000s, we saw the emergence of a new presentation of atheism that was particularly critical of religion.
These atheists saw religion as not just incorrect in their beliefs about God but actually dangerous to society. The destruction of the World Trade Centre was dramatic proof at how dangerous religion was.
While the New Atheists are not as active now and many atheists reacted negatively to their vitriol, they had significant impact on the church. Much of the Christian apologetics of the last couple of decades has been a response to the New Atheists.
The other change we saw was a greater pushback against conservative and evangelical Christianity. For right or wrong, some on the left (including in the church) identified George Bush with Christianity. While many praised him for his initial response to 9/11, they were very critical of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some liberal Christians began looking at evangelicals not just as those with a different theological interpretation but as those with the political clout to cause wars. This widened the divide between the left and the right.
While 9/11 was before the time of many people studying in university today, it is still something affects us today. The church today has been shaped by the events of 9/11 and the things that took place in response.
