Whacko Religious Zealots!

Senator says storms are punishment from God.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005
By THOMAS SPENCER
News staff writer, The Birmingham News

Hurricane Katrina and other storms that battered the Gulf Coast were God’s judgment of sin, according to state Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, Alabama. “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.”

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?

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.

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