Theological Weather Forecasting
Back in April I was watching a storm chaser doing what they do, live, and during a pause he said, “Weather events can cause tragedy. People think of tornadoes and weather as evil. They are, it is not, not evil. This is how the planet balances itself. We don’t really know why, but it happens. People are just in the way sometimes of the planet balancing itself.” This article from Religion Dispatches caught my attention. I don’t often watch the 700 Club or listen to Focus on the Family where one might readily hear this kind of “punishment theology”, but Robertson and his ilk must be keeping a low profile because the national news media have not booked him or others to talk about the sin of Midwestern states or that of the South that are causing the bad weather and flood waters.
Tornado Hits the Heartland: Is God Punishing Us?
By Jay MichaelsonThe city of Joplin, Missouri is in ruins today, the most recent casualty of the worst storm season in more than half a century. In April, tornadoes ripped through Alabama, and swaths of greater Memphis spent part of early May underwater thanks to record-high flooding of the Mississippi river. If you didn’t know better, you’d think this was some kind of Divine punishment visited upon the South—and now the Midwest, the American heartland.
Which is funny, because when earthquakes struck Haiti, wildfires burned Israel, and a tsunami drenched much of Indonesia, plenty of religious leaders didn’t know better. Remember? How Pat Robertson blamed the Haitian earthquake on an 18th century pact with the devil? Or when Sephardic Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Ovadia Yosef blamed Israel’s latest bout of wildfires on secular Israelis not keeping the Sabbath? Or how about the time some Christian fundamentalists said that he 2005 tsunami in Indonesia was punishment for, in the words of one, “worldliness, materialism, hedonism, uncleanness and pleasure-seeking”? Where are these self-proclaimed prophets of Godly vengeance now? Do storms only evince heavenly displeasure when they land on blue states?