September 11: Bethel Responds

The tragic national events of September 11 left students, faculty, and staff at Bethel Seminary’s various locations shaken and saddened.

“It is very eerie and sad here on the East Coast,” said Wyndy Corbin, associate dean at Bethel Seminary of the East, shortly after the attacks. “We are grieving along with everyone else, while anticipating the ripple effect as the number of people on the missing list grows and we realize the connections our students, churches, faculty, and staff have with them.” Cheryl Gregg, registrar and director of admissions, has learned that a friend’s son was killed. Corbin also noted that several members of churches in New York City and New Jersey, which have been particularly supportive of Bethel Seminary of the East, are missing or have been identified among the dead.

Describing the commuter corridor between New York City and Philadelphia, Corbin said transit workers were marking the tires of cars left overnight in train station parking lots, believing they belonged to victims; military aircraft patrolled the skies between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia; and Philadelphia was virtually shut down for a couple of days in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, with downtown buildings evacuated and national monuments closed and barricaded.

Seminary of the East classes began on schedule September 24. “It is good to be together again,” Corbin said, “even though we are reminded of September 11 the minute we cross the Verrazano Bridge. The World Trade Center is no longer visible from our site in Brooklyn.”

On the opposite side of the country, Bethel Seminary San Diego responded to news of the attacks by holding a mid-morning prayer service for faculty and staff. Dean and Executive Officer John Lillis presented a devotional followed by a time of sharing and prayer. Because San Diego is a military area, several seminary students have family members who were deployed as the U.S. responded to the tragedy. At least one student was forced to drop his fall registration in order to remain on call for military duty. Others have scaled back their seminary schedules due to the changing economic situation following the attacks, as jobs or businesses continue to be affected.

On Bethel’s St. Paul campus, the institution canceled its annual major fundraiser, the Royal Investors Dinner, as an immediate response to the national crisis. The dinner was scheduled for the evening of September 11, and members of Bethel’s Office of Development worked frantically to contact the more than 500 guests scheduled to attend to inform them of the cancellation and the public prayer service being held instead.Then, prior to the prayer service, the Bethel community was stunned by a call to the seminary stating that there was a bomb in the building. Campus buildings and grounds were thoroughly searched by local fire and sheriff’s departments, ensuring the safety of Benson Great Hall in time for the prayer service to begin just 30 minutes late. As people gathered for the service, they spontaneously formed small groups and began to pray together. Later, President Brushaber opened the somber service by calling God’s people to prayer and action. “We are God’s people gathered here tonight,” he said. “Now we must understand how the people of God should live in times like this.” Seminary Provost Leland Eliason also spoke, sharing about the sense of outrage and violation that nearly all Americans were feeling. “Why does it matter to admit that we’ve been violated?” he asked. “Because it’s a way of valuing what is precious to us. Depth of grief is a measure of how much someone or something matters to us. So today, the grief over losses in this terrible time of violation declares: ‘There are things about this country that we value and that we take pride in.’ Owning the sense of violation enables us to identify a second truth,” Eliason continued. “We live in a fallen, broken world. There’s something tragically wrong with humankind.” Concluding on a note of hope, the provost asked the timeless and yet uniquely contemporary question, “What would Jesus do?” He used Matthew 9:35-36 as the basis for his answer: that Jesus has compassion, “a visceral, gut-level feeling, almost of pain because of the depth of caring,” for the hurting people of the world, including those suffering as a result of the day’s attacks. He encouraged his listeners to turn to this Jesus, who deeply cares for us in the midst of our need.