From All Sides

I don't suppose it was too surprising to hear from Venezuela's President Chavez that his theory was that the 9/11 tragedy was a conspiracy brought about by President Bush. I mean, we all know that the president of Venezuela isn't ... generous in his view of our president. Too bad it's not limited to the obvious.

You may not have heard of David Ray Griffin. Dr. Griffin is a retired professor of theology and philosophy of religion. Dr. Griffin is gathering a name for himself. According to the Washington Post, Dr. Griffin is a "conspiracy theorist". What is the conspiracy du jour? The same one from President Chavez.

Dr. Griffin wrote a book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9-11, in 2004. In it he claims that, just as at Pearl Harbor, the president was complicit in the events. Most standard readers will find his leaps of logic to be too easily refuted, but Griffin hangs on tenaciously.

How tenaciously? In his latest book, Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, Dr. Griffin goes further. He assures the reader that the terrorists were not Muslims. Better yet, they weren't even in the aircraft. They're alive today. And their leader, Osama Bin Laden? He's either an innocent man framed for the crimes or, perhaps, a CIA operative. Now, we were watching live as the aircraft hit the World Trade Center, but Dr. Griffin assures us that it wasn't the aircraft that brought it down; it was dynamite. And remember the heroic passengers of Flight 93? Well, they didn't bring that plane down; the government shot it down. (Why? No one is quite sure.) No plane hit the Pentagon at all, Dr. Griffin asserts.

And what motivation does he offer? Well, clearly it is President Bush's imperialism, his grand scheme to take over the world. He took Afghanistan because an oil company wanted to put a pipeline across it. He took Iraq for the oil.

Never mind that we're not getting rich off oil in Iraq. Don't look at the fact that no pipeline has been built in Afghanistan. And you can't believe all those Islamic Jihadists who are laying claim to and rejoicing over the events of 9/11. Then there's the fact that Bush's plan to take over the world is failing so miserably. One would think that someone so brilliant as to pull off this kind of conspiracy would be able to pull off that feat, too.

There's more to Dr. Griffin's claims. He claims that Jesus was actually against the concept of empires. He holds that the conspirators that wrote the Bible covered that up. And the real problem ... the ultimate reason for all this? Dr. Griffin believes that it is mostly due to the doctrine of the omnipotence of God. On the other hand, he is quite sure that America is evil and is the primary location of demonic power today.

All of this is disturbing, coming from a purported Christian, a professor, a theologian, but to me there's more. Dr. Griffin's book has been published. Who published it? The publisher was Westminster John Knox Press, the publishing arm of the PCUSA. Known for publishing many good works, one has to wonder why a publisher often associated with intellectualism would produce such a flight of fantasy. Now, it is said that the best proof of a conspiracy is the total lack of evidence, but one would think that a wise, Christian publisher would avoid joining in such nonsense.

So, we get it from all sides.