ABSTRACT
The events of 11 September 2001 transformed everything in a moment. The pressing issue is no longer how to present the claims of contemporary Christian theology to a hearing in the secular public arenas of the North Atlantic countries, or how to gain and sustain a constructive Christian theological presence in the Western public sphere. There was a great deal of unabashedly and irreducibly religious language used about the events of 11 September, on both sides. The hijackers received a kind of perverse spiritual discipline as they prepared for what they understood as martyrdom, a way of witnessing with one's life to the truth. Events such as those of 11 September 2001 seem to demand religious, even apocalyptic, language if they are to be adequately described and understood. The straining for the recovery of old keys for the interpretation of what is radically new and threatening has its dangers, of course.
