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Many other newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, Reuters, and of course The New York Times and New York Daily News, give overviews of services in New York City. One of the most harrowing details is found in the New York Post, which notes that the wrought-iron fence around St. Paul's Chapel, Manhattan's oldest church, is strewn with the shoes of firefighters who were changing into boots—and will never be back to retrieve them.

But churches weren't the only place Americans found spiritual comfort this weekend. The Washington Post has a report on the ministry of military chaplains during this time, and no doubt other workplace chaplains (which the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports are rapidly increasing) are also being called upon.

Sandwiched between the two days of prayer came the AmericaPrays prayer vigil, which included sermons by Franklin Graham, Bruce Wilkinson, James Dobson, and Max Lucado. (Streaming video is available here.) Franklin Graham's message was markedly different from his father's at the National Cathedral. "We're fighting an enemy that is elusive," he said. But where Billy avoided referring to anyone specific, calling evil a "mystery," Franklin instead specifically lambasted Muslim extremists who "hate the United States because they see us as a Christian country. They hate the fact that America supports Israel and so I believe Christianity itself is under attack."

INJOY, the sponsoring organization of the AmericaPrays vigil, is trying to raise $1 million for relief efforts. This will add to an already tremendous pot. The Los Angeles Times reports that by Thursday night, U.S. companies and individuals had already pledged $40 million to relief efforts.

One relief agency you might not hear much about over the next few days is Operation Blessing. The organization, which is providing food to rescue workers, is headed by broadcaster Pat Robertson—who's in the doghouse for comments made on his 700 Club broadcast by Jerry Falwell. It only took a few paragraphs for columnists to go from "don't attack Muslims" to "attack religion in general."

"This is not a clash of civilizations—the Muslim world versus the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish worlds," wrote Thomas L. Friedman (apparently criticizing Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations) in The New York Times. "The real clash today is actually not between civilizations, but within them—between those Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews with a modern and progressive outlook and those with a medieval one."

Gordon McLauchlan was even more direct in the New Zealand Herald:

If all these people are right about God and they are all monotheists—then one can assume that, if we could identify and catch him, he would have to be tried for crimes against humanity. … What a shame we couldn't get all people to put God on hold for a while, and rebuff visions of the next world in a bid to put this one right. Then the psychopaths and the exclusivists would be seen to be what they are—murderers and bigots—and not be able to cite an invisible higher power as vindication for their violence and thus to hide behind the image of their God.

And again, from John Balzar in the Los Angeles Times: "These two clerics [Falwell and Robertson] share something basic with radical religious leaders on the other side of the world: fundamentalism. … The same hate-fear that drives fundamentalists in Afghanistan also works on the hearts of Christian fundamentalists in the U.S." Balzar does, however, qualify his remarks:

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September (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45