Out of Babylon

by Walter Brueggemann

Now practitioners of this local tradition in the United States practice faith yet again in the midst of empire. The U.S. empire, since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, is beyond challenge.10 As a consequence, it has become bold about imposing its will everywhere that it can; it is a will imposed militarily, a will imposed economically through the required "reforms" of the World Bank and the IMF, a will imposed by an arbitrary refusal to participate in treaties or accept application of the rule of law to agents of the empire. But then, in the midst of a waxing empire that was the beneficiary of "the end of history," came 9/11.11 In one way of assessment, 9/11 was a fairly modest event with a relatively small number of deaths. However, the symbolic significance of the event has grossly outweighed its "factual" reality. That disjunction results partly from the fact that 9/11 occurred in the center of media attention in New York and Washington, partly because it was aimed at the core power icon and the core money icon of our society, and