God's Wrath

 

“We took God out of schools, and we wonder how this evil comes in.” 

Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy

There is a proclivity among many religious Americans to blame failure to follow Christian fundamental dictates for so many disasters and tragedies. LZ Granderson, writing an OpEd for the June 1st LA Times, finds a history of bizarre political blame on “sinning” for all kinds of ills: “Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich blamed same-sex marriage for the 2008 economic crash. Former Sen. Rick Santorum blamed abortions for Social Security’s troubles.

“One of the all-time classic remarks came from John Hagee, pastor of a megachurch in San Antonio, who famously said, ‘God caused Hurricane Katrina to wipe out New Orleans because it had a gay pride parade the week before.’” Indeed, when Republicans get uncomfortable with a particular issue, more often than not, you will see a rising discussion of God’s plan or God’s wrath. Mass shootings are no exception:

“It’s an interesting theology that conservative Christians like Hagee, Santorum and Gingrich espouse. They clearly have a period in mind in which they believe God was happier with the direction of the country, but our history makes it impossible to pinpoint a date without looking racist. So they tend to talk in nostalgic Judeo-Christian generalities. Like Sen. Ron Johnson, who recently said, ‘I think the solution is renewed faith,’ as if there’s an agreed-upon faith or showing of that faith that we all should agree to return to.

“As the first funerals for the 21 victims of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, are happening this week, starting with services for 10-year-olds Amerie Jo Garza and Maite Rodriguez, we’re going to be hearing a lot more of these generalities. The services in Uvalde come less than three days after the funeral for the last of the 10 victims in Buffalo, N.Y.

“With each passing day, it is clear that conservatives want to move the national conversation on these mass shootings away from gun access and toward God. This despite Pew having found the U.S. to already be ‘the most devout of all the rich Western democracies.’… It’s not guns we have to fear, according to the Hagee-Santorum-Gingrich theology: It’s evil that threatens us. The adherents of this thinking say after any horror: We have to fight evil.” Granderson.

Too evangelical many followers have stepped up the rhetoric, with a large political movement within the GOP believing that it is time, notwithstanding the “freedom of religion” dictates of the First Amendment, to declare Christianity as our official religion. They call themselves “Christian Nationalists.” Wasn’t that the same description applied to Nazis in WWII?

The proliferation of guns in the United States is becoming an existential threat. Other nations which have imposed gun control (by mankind’s statutes and not relying on God to intervene) have uniformly experienced proportionate declines in murder rates. We also have another existential threat that requires a massive shift from fossil fuels to alternative energy, but GOP blockage in state legislatures and Congress has prevented the kind of progress we need to reverse the litany of “natural disasters” that explode before us. They say, “We can’t afford to change that fast” as the cost of the disasters is exceeding the cost of prevention and containment.

Climate change deniers, that 15% of Americans who believe that God totally controls climate, many of whom deeply believe that deviation from Christian values is what is making matters worse. If only we would adhere to that fundamentalist set of values, God would quickly fix the problem. A 2016 study by the Yale University Program on Climate Change Communication tells us:

[American] Groups that are more likely to believe “God controls the climate, therefore people can’t be causing global warming” (i.e., to say “yes, definitely” or “yes, probably”) include:

• Tea Party members (38%)
• Conservative Republicans (31%)
• Evangelical and Born-Again Christians (30%)
• Registered voters who supported Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton (30%)
• Republicans (26%)
• People who believe Earth was created in six days, as described in the Bible (26%)
• People who watch the Fox News Cable Channel often (24%) or sometimes (21%)
• People who do not believe humans evolved from earlier species (24%)
• African Americans (23%)
• High school graduates (22%)
• People whose household income is less than $30,000 annually (21%)

Bad news for Christians: fewer than a third of the planet’s people are Christians, and of that body of believers, fewer than a quarter are evangelicals. Not a whole lot of traditional Democrats in most of this. There are 15 states, virtually all of them GOP-controlled, where 30% or more of the population are self-described evangelicals. Some believe that, after the Great Flood, God promised no more global natural disasters, so our pain must be coming because we have offended Him. Anything but taking personal responsibility for issues that require proactive decisions from each of us, and particularly from our elected representatives.

I’m Peter Dekom, and isn’t it time for Americans to stop blaming God for our mistakes?