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Sept. 11 religious feelings were fleeting

By JULIE KIRKWOOD

Staff writer

In the days after the terrorist attacks, hundreds of people sought solace in local churches and synagogues. Religious groups across the North Shore held vigils, and attendance at religious services seemed to increase.

Now, a year after the attacks, the surge in religious feeling seems to have faded. A series of Gallup polls taken nationally last fall showed a short-lived surge in church attendance in late September. By December, however, interest in religion had returned to ordinary levels.

James Gubbins, who teaches comparative religion at Salem State College, said he's not surprised.

"There has been a steady decline in regular church and synagogue attendance starting around the turn of the century, 1900," Gubbins said. "Sept. 11 has just been a kind of blip, small numbers, short term."

It takes more than one tragic event to make adults embrace religion, he said.

"Kids need to be raised in the church," he said. "The way people come to be steady churchgoers is to be raised as steady churchgoers."

Greg Carmer, interim dean of the chapel at Gordon College in Wenham, noted that it's rare for an adult to convert to a religion, and when it happens it is usually a slow transition, not a reaction to one event.

"More often than not it's gradual, and it has to do with a whole way of life," Carmer said. "That they haven't converted hasn't surprised me at all, or disappointed me in any way."

He finds it healthy that people were drawn to worship during a national crisis, even if they didn't make a permanent change to a religious life.

"The Christian churches and Jewish synagogues and Islamic mosques were there and were open and a comfort to people in a time of crisis," Carmer said. "In that sense, religions and institutions are doing their jobs."

The change in religious feeling may be more internal after Sept. 11.

The Rev. Sylvia Howe, of First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church in Beverly, said attendance has remained strong at her church this year, but not everybody who came to services in September stayed.

In most ways her congregation has returned to normal life, Howe says. Yet she notices a subtle change that's difficult to describe.

"Outwardly people's lives may not have changed drastically, but I think there's been an inner change," she said.

"People are just as nasty to each other. Kids still fight, but that's life," she said. Yet people seem to cherish life more.

"I see it in parents and their children," Howe said. "There's a deeper reverence and awe and sacredness about this, and a real understanding that this is a gift and it's so temporal and it can be snatched away."

In Carmer's experience, many people after Sept. 11 had the thoughts like, "Oh my gosh, I'll never leave the house angry at my spouse again," he said. But if they reflect now, they would find they do leave the house angry.

The problem is they didn't take the extra step to examine their lives and make real changes.

"It's like New Year's resolutions," Carmer said. "We lacked the discipline to just follow through. That's just human nature, I guess."

Howe said the interfaith group planning the Sept. 11 service in Beverly this week was expecting lower attendance than they had the week of the terrorist attacks. Still, they are committed to providing a meaningful experience for those who do have religious feelings a year after the event.

"This is something which we shared as a community, and it deeply affected us all," Howe said. "We need to remember."