The Gospel of Wrath
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That night I stood with friends and neighbors and parishioners in a street filled with upended asphalt, twisted metal and busted glass. I spent two years as a trauma chaplain in a pediatric hospital in Atlanta, but I had never seen devastation like I saw that night. It looked, quite literally, like a bomb had gone off.
The next Sunday I told my congregation that, contrary to what 44 percent of Americans think, God did not send the flood to our town as a punishment, a warning or a judgement. I still believe that. Others do not. We've had our fair share of bad theology here in Vermont. Missionaries disguised as trauma counselors. Judgmental Christian "leaders" calling us to repent for the sins that caused the flood. Even the Westboro Baptist Church had us in their sights.
What's sad is that some folks, the ones hardest hit and looking for answers, believe this Gospel of Wrath. Bad theology is often the second wave of trauma. And the Christian leaders who perpetuate these ideas move from natural disaster to natural disaster, tragedy to tragedy, spreading the same rhetoric of judgement. From Vermont to Aurora, Colorado to western wildfires, to Oak Creek, Mich., to midwestern droughts, to every other place you can name where blood was shed or destruction widespread, those voices of warning have followed, jockeying for airtime. They have somehow become the predominant public voices of Christian faith.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-emily-c-heath/hurricanes-and-judgement-reflections-a-year-after-hurricane-irene_b_1835031.html
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