Hurricanes and the wrath of God

My friend Bob McElvaine has a new article up at the Martin Marty Center Web site: Weather of Mass Destruction 09/29/05.

He is the head of the history department at Millsaps College in Jackson, MS. (He was a professor of mine there, let's not say quite how many years ago.) I was at a seminar a couple of years ago at Millsaps about his book Eve's Seed, a provocative look at sex roles and Christianity. The president of the college opened the session with a brief talk. She mentioned that periodically, when one of Bob's columns appears in the local paper, she will get calls from concerned citizens anxious to inform her that she has a professor on her campus who is insulting great men of God like Jerry Falwell and people like that.

In this one, he takes on the idea that hurricanes are God's way of scourging people for the sins that the Christian Right doesn't support. He brings up an interesting alternative interpretation:

Why not think that God sent the tremendous storm with its horrible surge smashing into Mississippi (one of the reddest of states) as a way of slapping George W. Bush, his administration, and many Republicans upside the head for denying that global warming is a problem? "Don't believe in global warming, you fools? Look at what I can do with my Gulf through global warming!"

It is telling that many of the "Christian" faithful see God's hand in drowning radical Muslims. Yet when a similar wave hits America, including areas with high concentrations of adherents to a religion that calls itself Christian but has inverted the teachings of Jesus to be pro-rich, pro-war, and "what you do doesn't matter if you say you accept Jesus," there is no thought that God might be drowning radical Christians who warp the religion of Jesus.

You know, come to think of it ...

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