GERMAN TRANSLATION

Here, where New York’s model agencies, textile factories and fashion showrooms lie, a few hundred restless people are drawn in to a windowless auditorium. Their mission is, as it is stated in the program that is handed out at the door, “a new vision for life.”

The public is a carefree mixture of young and old, conservative and progressive, black and white, gay and straight. Elderly ladies with wool hats. A family with a quiet baby. A bodybuilder with tattoos. Up front on the stage stands Reverend August Gold. The name is deceptive: “Reverend August”, as her fans refer to her, is a woman. She has a short brunette haircut and wears a pants suit. Her face beams warmth and comfort, but also a certain mischiefness. Not one minute goes by that she does not either laugh out loud or at least smiles.

“Take charge of your own life!” she yells in the auditorium. “Be the master of your life, not just a victim of circumstances!” A few congregants jump to their feet.

August Gold, 50, is the co-founder and spiritual director for Sacred Center New York, a rapidly expanding, interfaith congregation. Gold hand an intuition over five years ago when she founded it [Sacred Center] as an alternative to the rigid, established churches. The first service was in a yoga center in Soho.

The date that first Sunday was September 9, 2001.

Two days later, the world broke down. The following Sunday all 125 seats at Sacred Center were full. In the back people stood 3 rows deep against the wall and into the foyer.

It was, as if all the pent up emotions over those days displaced in the rescue effort were unloaded this first Sunday after 9/11: pain, mourning, rage, despair, fear, calls for revenge.

At Sacred Center, however, the people got to hear another message—forgiveness, understanding. “In God’s world there are no enemies. God was in the World trade center. God was in the airplanes. God was in you, in us all, in everyone”, said Gold. With that the woman hit a nerve. Sacred Center grew and grew, up to more than 1,800 participants. Beside Gold, the group has 10 additional ministers, and there are additional Wednesday services, prayer groups and regular seminars.

The phenomenon is not new: “The meaning of religion seems to snap after a great crisis”, explains George Gallup, son of the same-named opinion polls. The historical examples, he adds, are most remarkably war situations: Japan’s attack of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the first Gulf war in 1991.

And now, 9/11.