Okay, I said it awhile back and most of you have heard the comments that Katrina and Rita and God’s judgment on the sinful United States and wicked Gulf Coast.
Now it comes to you via a state senator from Alabama, the wrath of God on the Bayou country. Repent sinners and roll Tide, I guess.
Hooray for a loving God smacking us down with some tough love.
Senator says storms are punishment from God
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writer
Hurricane Katrina and other storms that battered the Gulf Coast were God’s judgment of sin, according to state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo.
“New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness,” Erwin wrote this week in a column he distributes to news outlets. “It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God.”
After touring Gulfport and Biloxi, Miss., and Bayou La Batre, Erwin said he was awed and humbled by the power of the storm. But he wasn’t surprised.
“Warnings year after year by godly evangelists and preachers went unheeded. So why were we surprised when finally the hand of judgment fell?” Erwin wrote. “Sadly, innocents suffered along with the guilty. Sin always brings suffering to good people as well as the bad.”
William Willimon, bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, suggested another response from Christians to the disaster.
“I have no idea what sort of senator or politician Mr. Erwin is, but he’s sure no theologian,” Willimon said. “I’m certainly against gambling and its hold on state government in Mississippi, but I expect there is as much sin, of possibly a different order, in Montevallo as on the Gulf Coast. If God punished all of us for our sin, who could stand?
“Next week, 300 United Methodist clergy from north Alabama are spending a week working together to help folks in trouble on the Gulf Coast,” he added. “That seems to me a much more appropriate Christian response than that of the senator.”
Erwin, a former conservative talk-radio host and now a media consultant and senator, is not alone in seeing God’s wrath at work in the storms.
The al-Qaida in Iraq group hailed the hurricane deaths in America as the “wrath of God,” and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan suggested the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for the violence America had inflicted on Iraq.
Televangelist Pat Robertson said Katrina might be linked to God’s judgment concerning legalized abortion, and some rabbis suggested Katrina was a retribution for supporting the Israeli pullout from Gaza.
Katrina caused flooding of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Erwin said the Baptists knew they had put themselves on the front lines ministering in a sinful place that could be targeted. He said he didn’t think the hard-hit residents of the low-income lower 9th Ward were singled out for especially harsh punishment but were merely in the way, as were the shrimpers in the struggling fishing town of Bayou La Batre on the Alabama coast.
“If you are believer and read the Bible, you know sin has judgment,” Erwin said. “New Orleans has always been know for sin. … The wages of sin is death.”
Erwin said hurricanes are part of a pattern that was also in evidence in the Sept. 11 attacks. The increase in abortion, pornography and prostitution have caused God to remove an umbrella of protection from America, he said.
`Moving away from God’:
“America has been moving away from God,” Erwin said. “We all need to embrace godliness and church-going and good, godly living, and we can get divine protection for that point.
“The Lord is sending appeals to us,” said Erwin, a member of Shades Mountain Independent Church. “As harsh as it may sound, those hurricanes do say that God is real, and we have to realize sin has consequences.”
Twinkle Andress, executive director of the Alabama Republican Party, said she had not seen Erwin’s column. But she praised his performance as a senator.
“Obviously, I think Hank Erwin is a great senator and been a real leader,” she said.
Not responding directly to Erwin, Samford University professor of divinity Fisher Humphreys said Christians do believe God cares about sin.
“There is a standard about right and wrong conduct, and God is fully aware of whether our conduct measured up to the standard or not,” Humphreys said.
As to God’s control of events, different believers answer the question differently, Humphreys said.
“A God that is irrational and vindictive, and filled with anger – that understanding of God is not the understanding we find in Christ. We don’t believe in a God that is vindictive or cruel.”
Humphreys said there are various schools of thought. One is that God causes some things to happen and permits others; another is that God causes them and we don’t know why; yet another is that He causes things and we do know why; and another is that God causes things and we know He can bring good out of it.
Humphreys said it is obvious that as terrible as the storm was, good has flowed from it. “Look at the outpouring of compassion,” he said.
Humphreys said he would never deny the right of someone rescued off a rooftop to thank God for the rescue, even if that suggests God didn’t answer the prayers of others.
“I have no answer for that,” he said.
E-mail: tspencer@bhamnews.com
© 2005 The Birmingham News
© 2005 al.com All Rights Reserved.
I’m from Alabama and I just wanted to say I’m embarrassed as a Christian and an Alabaman by his comments. I know there are many more in line with Bishop Willimon’s thinking and wish more people would show God’s love instead of spewing how disasters are “God’s Judgement”.
Will Willimon is one of the best preachers and one of the more insightful religious leaders in the country. This is my favorite quote by him.
When you work around the church a while it comes quite naturally, the laughter of cynical disbelief. In 1986 the United Methodist General Conference, on the last day of two weeks of meetings, passed a resolution that said we were going to make 9 million new United Methodists by about 1994–this in a denomination that had been losing about 65,000 members every year since the early seventies. Nine million new United Methodists!
Well, I laughed. I thought, Isn’t this typical! We don’t want to do the systemic changes in our church that would enable us to reach out and get new people. This is just window dressing, sloganeering, platitudes. We aren’t serious about it; it’s just more guilt to lay on pastors’ backs!
I went home and wrote an article, “My Dog the Methodist.” In it I argued that there was no way in heaven we were going to make 9 million new Methodists unless we started baptizing dogs. And I offered as a fit recipient for the sacrament of baptism my mixed-breed terrier sleeping in my garage. I said, “This dog, as far as I know, has shown no interest in biblical studies. Therefore, it would make a perfect Methodist.” I also said, “This dog has the sexual ethics of some members of my former congregations.”
I laughed. When the article came out in The Christian Century, not everybody laughed. The magazine lost about four subscriptions, and two Methodist bishops have not spoken to me since. But I was serious. The cynicism behind that move! We don’t intend to really change the way we would have to change to be that kind of church. I laughed.
Needless to say, inspiration for me. My hope is that Wired Jesus can be one place to connect to be the kind of church Will hopes for.