ABSTRACT
In an hour the event of 9/11 seemed to destroy the assumed invulnerability of the world’s only superpower. It shook to their foundations all sorts of assumptions about politics, culture and religion. It suggested that we were all living in an apocalyptic age and that we need a new language – or an old language revived – if we are to understand and respond appropriately and faithfully to what is happening. The conventional forms of language and of political and religious discourse in the secular West seemed inadequate to the new task, understanding and responding to this turning point in history.
