Disasters and the fear

of an angry god

The nefarious politics of collective

divine punishment

C. A. Ackers
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

One evil-doer may ruin not his own house alone, but the whole city, and even all Italy.*

© C. A. Ackers, 2023

*
San Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444).

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 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Table of contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5
A note on prejudice .............................................................................................................. 9
1. ‘Woe to the wicked man and woe to his neighbor’...................................................... 11
Why the fear of divine punishment is worrisome ................................................................. 12
Collective divine punishment ............................................................................................ 17
2. The roots of the fear of collective divine punishment ................................................. 21
Sumer ............................................................................................................................ 23
Egypt ............................................................................................................................. 24
Greece ........................................................................................................................... 27
Palestine ........................................................................................................................ 28
Rome ............................................................................................................................. 30
3. The many different ‘rods of the wrath of God’ ........................................................... 39
Earthquakes ................................................................................................................... 40
Volcanoes ....................................................................................................................... 44
Storms and hurricanes ..................................................................................................... 47
Hail, fire, flooding, and drought ........................................................................................ 51
Violence ......................................................................................................................... 53
Epidemics ....................................................................................................................... 56
Covid-19 ........................................................................................................................ 59
4. Failed attempts at a counter-narrative ......................................................................... 81
The rationale of CDP ...................................................................................................... 81
Denials of CDP .............................................................................................................. 84
Obfuscation.................................................................................................................... 89
Alternative explanations .................................................................................................. 91
5. The repressive forms of remedy ................................................................................ 103
Placation: taking the ‘Ninevehan’ approach ..................................................................... 103
Regulation: eliminating the ‘Achans’ ............................................................................... 112
6. The peculiar reasons for divine anger ....................................................................... 131
Moral motivations ......................................................................................................... 131
Heresy and sacrilege....................................................................................................... 138
The wrong kind of sex .................................................................................................... 145
Abortions ..................................................................................................................... 155
7. The nefarious politics of collective divine punishment ............................................. 163
The little we know ......................................................................................................... 164
The problem of what we do know .................................................................................... 169
Significance .................................................................................................................. 181
Index ................................................................................................................................ 185
Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 193
Notes ................................................................................................................................ 211

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Disasters and the fear of an angry god

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 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Introduction

Since the emergence of religion, a terror has pervaded our earthly atmosphere. It is the age-
old fear that the gods, or the one God, are capable of great, violent anger towards us, mortals.
It is, moreover, the fear that human behavior, even of just one isolated individual, may
provoke the Heavens to strike out in a manner that is so horrific in scale that a much larger
number of people get hit in the process. Others sin but you get hurt, because a deity in its
wrath does not discern between degrees of culpability.
With old beliefs about the role of the divine in everyday events eroding and
loosening, the general fear of personal godly punishment has slowly been laid to rest. Even
to the point of becoming, in places, nearly unnoticeable. But every so often, when sudden
crises and calamities confront us with our physical vulnerability, and religious leaders, eager
for relevance, stand ready to stoke it up, the fear of collective divine punishment wakes up
from its slumber. When in 2020, the world fell into the grip of the continually evolving
coronavirus, among people of faith, the fear that God is punishing us for sins committed
mostly by other people returned once more, but now for the first time everywhere, almost
simultaneously, and because of the same predicament. While the notion that unfortunate
events are God’s response to sinful behavior is the predominant view in more religiously
conservative countries, even in some relatively secularized ones, where the fear of God’s
anger appears almost absent, numerous priests of all denominations set out to milk it for all
it was worth.
Therefore, the shared experience of the Covid-19 pandemic provides us with a
unique opportunity to make comparisons across the globe to see how the fear of collective
divine punishment waxes and wanes, who promotes or restrains it, who benefits from it, and
who bears the burden of getting blamed for bringing down the wrath of God. This is
relevant, I will show, because that fear is a driving force in decision-making both at an
individual and a group level. How the Covid pandemic and previous crises have been viewed
through a religious lens can tell us what response by believers to future disasters we may
expect and should prepare for. This will be increasingly relevant, since any epidemic is ever
more likely to become a pandemic, and the effects of climate change span the planet. What
happens locally, affects us globally, ever more often, producing more fuel for the fear of
divine punishment to spread and grow.

Below I will show, first, that the fear of divine punishment has been quite real from the
distant past up to the present with regard to a wide variety of crises and disasters. Its origins
lie in the notion that the gods might get angry with humans and react in a similar way to
how any mortal would, with one major difference: in inflicting punishment, they might
harm even those who bear no responsibility for making them angry. In chapter 2, I will track
the development of divine punishment in the earliest human civilizations from Sumer to

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the Roman Empire, and in chapter 3 treat a number of different types of crises and disasters
and their interpretation by believers throughout history. While there would be a link
between the severity of suffering caused by divine punishment and some level of sinfulness,
it will become clear that it is not the sinfulness of the victims per se that has been imagined
to have determined their fate, but often the bad behavior of some other individuals in the
victims’ vicinity. Initially, those other sinful individuals were priests and secular rulers who
represented the masses and who failed to observe their God-given duty. Later on, divine
anger leading to collective divine punishment was also imagined to have been caused by
ordinary sinners.
In chapter 4, I will discuss current attempts by mainstream clerics and theologians to
disprove or at least throw doubt on causal links presumed to exist between sins and disasters.
Thankfully, moderate religious professionals appear to have become aware of the harmful
consequences of the belief in collective divine punishment in the here and now. Their efforts
are well-intended but inconsistencies prevent them from being as effective as they could be.
In chapter 5, I will argue that it is probable that a fear of collective sin attracting
collective punishment has also been quite consequential for the public order. Demonstrating
the belief in the relationship between national conduct and collective divine punishment,
an American Christian woman wrote in 2008: “911, [hurricane] Katrina and the present
economic crisis are directly related to the sins of this nation.” 1 The reasoning logically
resulting from this fear is that no disaster should befall us, if only we would all help to reduce
our shared amount of sin, by changing our ways, and worshiping God more fervently. This
way of thinking may well have had a strong effect on religious practice, on submission to
priestly and secular authorities, and on the manner these authorities have exercised their
powers. Who would be more capable to guide us in divine disaster prevention than the
priests? Who else could enforce preventative measures designed by religious authorities but
their armed secular counterparts? The fear of divine punishment provides an unassailable
argument for organized religion, and for the merging of church and state.*
In chapter 6, I will present evidence for the sins supposedly underlying disasters all
being of a certain type. These sins are almost always believed to be a direct personal insult
to the highest heavenly authority: blasphemy, sacrilege, and (supposedly) unbridled
expressions of nonstandard sexuality. They almost never include violations of the rights of
other living beings. This is extremely relevant, because if these sins had been about social
justice, human rights, democracy, and other interpersonal values, the impact of the fear of
divine punishment on governments would not have been so deplorable: deplorable because
it promotes a style of government that is both tyrannical and highly intrusive. The fear, or
rather the argument provided by the fear, has prompted and allowed rulers to imprison the
minds of their subjects, oppress religious and sexual minorities, and neglect far more
worthwhile public endeavors. Even though it is often left to be expressed by preachers and

*
This process is also referred to as ‘confessionalization’.

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 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

theologians, deliberately hidden beneath a bewildering webbing of distortive quasi-logical

arguments, collective divine punishment seems to be the driving argument behind such hot
political issues as abortions and the rights of LGBT individuals.*
In the concluding chapter, I will show that the belief in collective divine punishment
has not left our planet and is still having depressingly negative consequences. How much of
an impact on our rulers this fear once had is a matter of further study, but I dare claim that
it has been significant. Without it the lives of millions of people in the past would have been
significantly happier, healthier, and easier. But more relevantly, this fear is still able to sway
political decision-making towards repressive policies, and bring power to supposedly God-
pleasing authoritarians.

*
In the following pages, I will be using the abbreviation ‘LGBT’ to denote the various forms of non-heterosexual
orientations. It should be considered as including other similar abbreviations like ‘LGBTIQ’ and ‘LGBTQI’.

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 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

A note on prejudice

Naturally, what lies in front is not without bias.

Also, hopefully, it is not without some new insights: insights that per sum bring us
closer to understanding human behavior amidst some of the worst human experiences. But
unfortunately, definitely, despite my best intentions, any such insights are floating in a pool
of prejudice. Most of this prejudice will be obvious and quickly recognizable. Nonetheless, I
think it is right to point out what to look for, so it will be easier to spot the places where you
might have extra reason to lean back, and to ponder the possibility of different conclusions
than the ones I arrived at. My excuse: this terrain has hardly ever been explored
comprehensively.
Some of my bias is the result of this book’s genesis, thirty years ago. The question,
whether the fear of an angry God has, or had, any impact on public policy, first dawned on
me, when I was doing a Master’s in public administration. If the answer to that question
were affirmative, I felt that this fear of angering God would explain and justify why
governments throughout history had been so intrusive in the lives of their citizens, more
than seemed reasonable. Here, two things that I happen to dislike came together: one, what
I take to be a primitive and wrongful notion of the divine, and, two, illiberal, authoritarian
governmental policies. I admit I have felt a personal desire to establish a causal connection
between the one and the other. So that is one instance of prejudice to which I plead guilty.
While I never doubted the intellectual relevance of the possible impact of God’s
anger, I had no enthusiasm at the time to investigate the matter properly. This was perhaps
because I had moved my attention to other areas of knowledge besides public administration
and politics. But the question came back into my awareness a year ago, when I had reached
the end stage of a project to map the effects on public morality of Bible exegesis – how
theologians interpret and often excuse and justify ‘Holy Scripture’ – and I wanted to dig
deeper into the significance of theological logic with regard to public policy from the earliest
days of Christianity up to the present. Here is the second instance of prejudice you might
encounter: I have come to conclude – I dare claim for sound reasons – that most biblical
exegesis has been, and still is, the pastime of religiously conservative hobbyists with a political
agenda. This is a side issue to the central theme of this book, but it has likely colored my
view on the use of Bible texts to explain the many crises and disasters that I presented in the
previous pages. A historian with a more sympathetic (or neutral) view on Christian theology
is likely to make a different presentation of the facts I unearthed, and reach a different
understanding.
Then there are some serious shortcomings related to a lack of time to explore a wider
area of historical events and to dig deeper into the motives of the actors. If time had not
been in short supply, I might have been more successful at avoiding and overcoming the
pitfalls of being overly fond of a theory, and neither having an abundance of data – much is

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scarce and difficult to access and accumulate – nor the quantitative means of analysis to put
that beloved theory to a rigorous test. Cherry-picking is one of the unintended consequences,
and so is the tendency to overlook alternative theories.
Yet another pitfall I may not have avoided is to overstate the theory’s importance in
understanding human behavior. I am well aware of deeper individual motives at play. For
instance, I have come to realize that a lot of an individual’s public behavior can be explained
by the requirement to strike a balance between the fear of standing out as different from the
average and standing vulnerably apart from the herd on the one hand, and the apparently
contradictory fear of losing one’s individual identity on the other. Or put differently: the
essential need for acceptance and social inclusion, and the seemingly contradictory desire to
assert one’s personal uniqueness.2 To get accepted but possibly ignored, or get noticed but
possibly cast out, that is the question. So please accept that I am well aware that human
behavior is driven by many more impulses than the fear of an angry god alone.
All in all, I cannot make a claim to any certainty about any generalization I am
making, nor to having arrived within miles of a claim to having exhausted the subject of this
book. I have done my best within the scope of my abilities. If I fail to convince of any or all
of my conclusions, I wish this book will at least contribute to a more serious consideration
of this phenomenon as a present reality with a significantly negative fallout: that is, the reality
that there are, worldwide, a considerable number of people – among both the powerless and
the powerful, and both the quiet and the outspoken – who support and demand repressive
government policies, simply because otherwise the god they perceive as omnipotent may, in
the best case, retract his life-saving blessings from any or all of us, or, in the worst case, inflict
horrendous punishment, here and now, sparing neither the good nor the bad. I have come
to conclude that this mostly hidden force in contemporary politics presents us with a sizable
obstacle to an effective response to current public challenges, including global catastrophes.
To deny it or to ridicule it may hamper us in our efforts to deal with these challenges and
exacerbate their consequences considerably.

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1. ‘Woe to the wicked man and woe to his neighbor’*

Divine punishment often hurts sinners and non-sinners alike

God’s anger comes in degrees. And each category of his ire calls for a different level of
punishment, reasoned an early Christian theologian named Hippolytus (c.170–c.235 CE).
Plain anger brings “the lesser penalties,” Hippolytus wrote, and “wrath the greater,” while
God’s strongest fury causes the “greatest” punishment, which is “tribulation.” † The greater
the trouble, the greater God’s anger, and presumably the more serious the cause of his anger.
How angry was he in 2019, when he unleashed the severe acute respiratory syndrome
coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2)? Just annoyed? Wrathful? Furious? What had caused his anger?
And who? And, more importantly, what could we have done to calm him down?
Professionally preoccupied with such questions, in May 2020, Pope Francis
organized a “Marathon of Prayer for an end to the Covid-19 pandemic.”3 On each of the 31
days of that month, a prayer session was held in a different prominent cathedral or basilica
somewhere around the world. The pope also urged all faithful to participate by praying the
Rosary, alone or with others, and to recite, as he would do himself every day, a request to
the Virgin Mary to “pray that God will stretch out his all-powerful hand and free us from
this terrible pandemic.”‡ When a year later, the virus was still conquering new ground, and
the number of its victims was growing unabatedly, Pope Francis planned another prayer
marathon for the entire month of May 2021. It was again directed at the Virgin Mary, to
“implore for us from God, Father of Mercy, that this hard trial may end […].”4
The virus may never leave us in whatever new variant it evolves into. However, after
two ‘Marathons of Prayer’, in 2022, the Vatican felt no need for a third one. After mourning
the deaths of 6 million people worldwide, in the Spring of 2022 almost 90 percent of the
global population was armed with antibodies, either through infection or vaccination.5 We
could safely assume that the pandemic was under control, and stop feeling imprisoned by
the virus anymore.
But if it is true, as some of us believe, like Pope Francis, that God had “his all-
powerful hand” in the ending of the crisis and that we have to thank him for it, then this
produces some difficult questions. If God can end the spread of the virus, to what extent
was he also the cause of it? And if God was the cause of the pandemic, then what were his

*
Jewish proverb quoted by Matthew Henry (1662-1714).
†
Hippolytus discussed Psalm 78:49, which he translated as: “He discharged upon them the wrath of His anger;
anger, and wrath, and tribulation, a visitation by evil angels.” (The King James Version reads: “He cast upon
them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, and indignation, and trouble, by sending evil angels among them.”)
(Hippolytus, “The Extant Works and Fragments,” 429.)
‡
Note that this prayer by the Pope is fundamentally different from the kind of prayer Milan’s archbishop Mario
Delpini proposed as a response to the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020: “We pray to him to ask him for the
gift of the Spirit to give us strength, intelligence, solidarity to go through this moment and try to overcome evil
with good” (Cernuzio, “Delpini”; in the original Italian: “Lo preghiamo per chiedergli il dono dello Spirito che
ci dia forza, intelligenza, solidarietà per attraversare questo momento e cercare di vincere il male con il bene”).
Delpini did not accord God responsibility for the pandemic, and neither did he do so for its conclusion.

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intentions? What did he mean to accomplish by it? The question whether any crisis, such as
the Covid-19 pandemic, is the will of God, and what the reason is for him willing it, is one
of many longstanding matters of theological dispute: that serious issue of ‘theodicy’.* This
is, in basic terms, the timeless enigma that the Almighty allows for bad things to happen to
good people,6† which becomes more bewildering still when generalized to the idea that he
deliberately makes bad things happen to an entire group of people, including the relatively
good or innocent, indiscriminately.
This idea that a deity may be the cause of a disaster that does not differentiate
between the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ (or degrees of goodness in between), is not just of
theological interest. It has a very practical side as well. I will show that, throughout history,
it has had important consequences for public policy and public morality. The notion that
disasters are an instrument that God uses from time to time to signal his dissatisfaction with
human behavior in general, and a means to inflict collective punishment, appears to have
been dominant at least in European countries and their Christianized former colonies for
centuries. The idea of collective divine punishment, or ‘CDP’, also seems to continue to
have significant consequences, despite scientific advancements in understanding and
predicting disasters,‡ and despite attempts from within the religious establishment to blunt
some of its sharper edges. It looks like the fear of CDP is forceful enough still to direct
people’s actions and attitudes, and to shape public policy.

Why the fear of divine punishment is worrisome

The fear of God’s wrath has a few varieties with more or less detrimental consequences. The
least harmful one is the belief that the blame for a disaster that was sent from Heaven falls
on the victims alone. This idea is damaging as it may promote apathy both from those guilty
victims themselves and from innocent bystanders. Both sufferers and onlookers may assume
that the right response to victimhood is repentance in meek submission to the divine will,
and then refuse to deal with the natural causes and consequences of a disaster. Such inaction

*
‘Theodicy’ – literally meaning ‘vindication of God’, and a term coined by German scientist Gottfried Leibniz in
1710 – is an attempt to justify the ostensibly contradictory notions that the one God is good and opposes evil,
and is also the creator of all that is, including the phenomenon of evil. Theodicy would neither be required in a
pantheistic, nor in an atheistic universe.
†
Saint Ambrose posed the question thus: “Why do sinners have abundance of wealth and riches, and fare
sumptuously, and have no grief or sorrow; whilst the upright are in want, and are punished by the loss of wives
or children?” His answer was that “rewards and punishments according to deserts await one after death”
(Ambrose, Selected Works and Letters, 52).
‡
Scientific explanations do not necessarily exclude interpretations of disasters as divine punishment, as was shown
by anthropological fieldwork in Samoa following the 2010 tsunami. Samoans were found to be quite capable of
fully understanding the occurrence of tsunamis based on the laws of physics, and at the same time imagine God
having a hand in it and causing it for the purpose of punishment (Holmgaard, “The Role of Religion in Local
Perceptions of Disasters”).

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will likely aggravate the disaster’s fallout,* especially since another aspect of this reasoning is
that piety and strict observation of religious precepts will be sufficient protection against
misfortune, or, even, the only protection. The Italian Renaissance preacher Saint Bernardino
of Siena (1380-1444) counseled his followers that God “will guard you from all persecution,
from wars, from tempests, from hail, from pestilence, and from every evil [...], since these
come upon you only because of your sins,” but he will save you from these disasters “if you
shall fear him.”7 Take note of the word ‘only’, meaning you can be assured you will be spared
wars, tempests, hail, and pestilence, only unless you fail at fearing God sufficiently.
This sentiment is alive and well in the age of Covid. Take Nigerian Pastor Enoch
Adeboye who believed that the coronavirus could not harm good Christians: “there is no
virus that is going to come near you at all,” he tweeted, if you dwell “under the shadow of
the almighty.”8 Or take the Polish priest Father Leonard Wilczyński, who reportedly
preached that masks and gels “will not help in the fight against coronavirus, because only
prayer can protect people.Ӡ9 And consider the Russian-Orthodox Metropolitan Daniel of
Kurgan and Belozersky, who advised believers that they “need to rely not on alcohol and
other disinfectant liquids, but primarily on God.”10 A female Anglican cleric in Uganda
continued to shake hands and refused to keep a physical distance when the fear of the spread
of the virus was at its strongest. Why? She thought Covid was a case of God judging
humanity, but not her personally, because she was certain her own righteousness protected
her from getting infected.‡11
But if the virus is a rightful punishment for your own sins, and yours only, then it is
correct from a moral point of view that you endure that punishment meekly. The most one
can do is undergo some form of ritual cleansing that washes away one’s sins.§ In his country
of Iraq, Cardinal Raphaël Louis Sako, the Catholic Patriarch of ‘Babylon of the Chaldeans’,
who himself denied that Covid was the result of God’s anger,12 noticed, he said, a “large
number of people who, in their simplicity, believe that the Coronavirus is a punishment
from God, and therefore accept everything without taking precautions to avoid the
contagion.”13 If you fall ill, you apparently deserve it, and then you will just need to accept
your punishment, repent, and hope for God’s clemency. Since God is targeting you

*
Holt, Clark, and Roth concluded that the “belief that illness is the result of punishment from a higher power
could play a potentially maladaptive role in health behaviors,” like binge drinking (“Positive and negative religious
beliefs,” 323).
†
The very dangerous belief that one can only rely on a religious solution to treat sickness, as promoted by Adeboye
and Wilczyński, is not to be confused with the belief in religious cures as an extra medicine to be used in addition
to normal medical treatment. For example, Lebanese Christian priests were reported in March 2020 to be
delivering a mixture of holy water and soil from the grave of Saint Charbel Makhlouf to hospitalized Covid-
patients (Gomes, “Ex-Muslim Maronite Priest Flies with Blessed Sacrament over Lebanon”).
‡
It is unlikely that these examples are just incidental snapshots of misinformed people who happen to be religious.
Unsurprisingly, in the United States, highly conservative and religious people have been found to hold the largest
number of incorrect beliefs about Covid-19. A study involving more than 18,000 respondents showed that in
the United States the people most likely to be misinformed about Covid-19 were regular viewers of the
conservative Fox network, Republican voters with a strong party identification, and frequent attendees of church
services (Druckman et al., “The role of race, religion, and partisanship”).
§
As described by T. Selva with regards to his ‘Hindu’ treatment for chicken pox (“Hindu Way of Treating a ‘Divine
Punishment’”).

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personally with a punishing illness, no man-made medicine will cure, nor vaccine preclude.
And if you rely on those methods alone, and not on prayer and penance, you will only
succeed in making God angrier and the chastisement worse. If this is the prevailing view, the
result may be stigmatization of victims, denial of aid where this is due, and a misdirection of
preventative, mitigating, and healing measures.
Bad as these consequences are of the belief in adversity only befalling the supposedly
guilty, it may be worse if the reason for the punishment is imagined to be a whole set of
behaviors that would be harmful for no other reason than the fact they supposedly make God
angry. As I will show below, many types of behavior are reasoned to be wrong only because
they are believed to cause God displeasure. And, strangely, it is almost only those behaviors
that are believed to provoke God to initiate a crisis or a disaster. In other words, God-
angering behavior is rarely violating the rights, or directly hurting the worldly interests of
individuals. Disasters that are supposed to have a divine cause have been ascribed almost
exclusively to transgressions of conventional norms, mostly behavior of a religious or sexual
nature, but also including ostensibly (even more) trivial acts like dancing and dressing up.
Even if those supposed transgressions take place in private and affect nobody else physically
or materially.
Then the belief in God’s anger, apart from causing apathy towards the victims of a
disaster, stigmatizes even those who are not victims yet, but who supposedly should be, since
their behavior clearly makes them deserving of divine punishment. Take healthcare workers
in Tanzania who reportedly told a trans woman in 2016 that her “actions do not please
God,” an HIV-positive gay man in 2017 that his sexual behavior “angered God,” and another
gay man in 2018 “to go to church and pray,” instead of expecting to receive health care at a
hospital.14 Anticipating these people’s divine punishment, there is no point in ‘wasting’
medical services on these supposed sinners, since they would be getting punished regardless.
The stigmatization, abuse, and neglect of the sinful sick – and potentially sinful sick –
precede the divine punishment that is believed to surely come. Recognizing these hurtful
consequences, theology professors Joel S. Baden and Candida Moss warned, in a co-written
article on the Ebola epidemic, that the habit of linking sin to sickness is “dangerous and
destructive.”15
But the notion of God’s wrath may have even worse consequences, when the sinful
are believed to draw in divine punishment that will hurt the relatively sinless as well. I will
show that from very early times on, people have feared that they may be swept up in a form
of divine punishment that would be inflicted in response to the behavior of other members
of society. Then, violent repression could come into play, spontaneous or state-sanctioned,
because now it is in the common interest to force those deviants into submission in order
to soften the effects of a current disaster and prevent a future one. In fairness, that could
also be the case if the supposed God-angering behavior is actually harmful to people who are
not directly engaged in the behavior in question, independent of the disaster it provokes
God to inflict, like corruption, social exploitation, or looting and vandalizing the natural

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environment.* But again, as I will show, this is rarely the case: the disaster-provoking behavior
is almost always harmless by itself. The key question is, would supposed sinful behavior still
be damaging to a third party if the deity did not mind? If not, suppression of that behavior
becomes repression of the people who engage in it, and who disagree that it is sinful to the
point of drawing in collective divine punishment. The spread of the fear that God punishes
all for the behavior of a few almost always goes hand in hand with calls for authoritarian,
illiberal policies. It is this type of godly engagement, which from here on I will refer to as
‘CDP’ – for Collective Divine Punishment – that is the subject of this book. To be clear:
CDP signifies any misfortune in the physical world that is affecting a group of people and
that is imagined to be divine punishment for the behavior of a subsection of that group.
Associated with the notion of CDP is the withholding by God of his blessing, which
he would otherwise bestow. Religious nationalists are people who believe that the observance
of their particular religion is inextricably linked to their nation’s superiority, because it
causes God to favor their country over others. I found that they often tend to frame their
fear of CDP as a concern that God will remove his blessing if a sufficient number of
individuals among them transgress religious dictates to a sufficient degree. For some
believers, the idea that God prefers one nation over another depending on the faith or
behavior of its members, and bestows his blessing accordingly, may be more palatable than
the mirrored notion that God actively castigates a people with specific punishments. The
thought that God may turn his back disappointedly on a wayward nation, which would
remove his shield of protection and, as a result of that, cause all kinds of calamities, is
possibly more in tune with the softer and more preferable image of a loving and caring god
– while still in line with the Old Testament† – than that of one who actively produces crises
and disasters. But whether God punishes actively or passively, the result is the same. In either
case, the fear of angering God has the same outcome regarding viewpoints on individual
behavior, attitude, and political preference.

There is one more type of interpretation of crises and calamities, also based on the idea that
God is judging people and making them pay the price for their sinfulness before they move
over to the afterlife. But according to this belief, instead of intervening directly, God

*
It is possible, but apparently rare, that the belief in collective divine punishment because of other people’s
misbehavior drives pro-social initiatives. One example is a Sherpa fear that the excessive littering of the Himalayan
mountain slopes may have angered Buddhist deities, and that the coronavirus was their response. The Nepalese
Sherpa people believe that the mountains are the abode of gods, with Mount Everest being that of the goddess
Miyolangsangma primarily, and that, once in a while, the main goddess and the other deities may get angry and
cause the deaths of some who try to climb to their top. However, an experienced Sherpa mountaineer said, it is
“too difficult to predict” when Miyolangsangma becomes angry (Broughton, “Why Sherpas Will Still Climb
Everest”). When Covid-19 halted the stream of income that the Nepalese derive from guiding foreign visitors up
and down the mountains, another experienced female Sherpa climber said that “Sometimes we think the gods
are angry because the tourists have left so much litter behind and therefore sent the virus to punish us.” This
prompted her to get involved in the difficult and dangerous cleanup of litter on Mount Everest (Lassche, Schone
Bergen).
†
God would have told Moses, referring to the nation of the Israelites, “if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep
my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people […]” (Exodus 19:5).

15
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

sometimes opens the gates of Hell, to allow forces of evil to appear, according to his eternal
plan, as harbingers of the final remaking of his creation at the ‘end of time’. This
eschatological explanation of unpleasant global events – ‘eschatological’ stems from the
Greek word ‘éschatos’, meaning ‘ultimate’ – sometimes competes with the idea that these
are punishments for specific sins of specific persons. It competes because it seems
contradictory to entertain both perspectives at the same time: reactive and avoidable, versus
preplanned and inevitable; and punishment by God, versus mistreatment by God’s eternal
enemy, the devil. And yet, both explanations of crises and disasters – as punishments, or as
prophesied preludes to the end of days – are often uttered, paradoxically, by the same people.
A possible explanation is that the eschatological position occupies a higher vantage
point, and encloses the idea of CDP. The narrative might then go like this. From time to
time, God lashes out to show people right from wrong, and to put them back on track in
response to specific acts of immorality. However, being omniscient, God also knows this will
benefit only a few, and that sinful humanity will corrupt the world so much that his anger
will at one point boil over, setting in motion a prophesied sequence of punishing calamities,
that is supposedly necessary to remake the entire universe.
Whatever their differences and incompatibility, both ideas have considerable
detrimental consequences. Proponents of either viewpoint have a tendency to regard
dissenters as adversaries, and to be indifferent about the fate of the supposedly guilty victims.
But the eschatological perspective has an entire class of added harmful effects. First,
doomsday beliefs tie in with the inclination to perceive all who think differently as their
mortal enemies. Those opponents are either the devil’s deluded pawns or his willing lackeys.
In any case, they are all recruited to serve a grand scheme with an absolutely evil purpose.
Secondly, their adherents tend to have a lack of concern for the long-term effects of their
behavior on, say, the natural environment, which will be recreated anyway, or human rights,
which are subordinate to God’s will and take second stage to the fulfillment of prophecy.
Thirdly, they may also be filled with paranoia and cynicism towards government agencies
and the ‘mainstream media’, when these powers do take an interest in long-term policies.
Fourthly, due to that general distrust of anything official, they may also be more gullible
regarding whatever information comes from non-official or, better, anti-official sources,
making them more vulnerable to abuse by whoever can be cast as a God-fearing rebel against
the established order. And lastly, they appear to be more willing to accept the use of methods
of deception and violence, because the absolutely evil enemy has no legitimate interests to
spare, nor rights to respect.

Remarkably, present-day religious authorities, who appear to have understood these

problems, and who seem to try to counter the fear of CDP, or thwart the expectation of an
end to the world, turn out to be rather ill-equipped theologically. Faced with pious
scaremongers, who are armed with Holy Scripture and centuries of religious tradition, they
often have little more to offer than denial and evasion. For everybody’s sake, they need to

16
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

do better in making their case convincingly. Because the fear itself that God’s wrath will hurt
all of us, risks in fact hurting all of us.

Collective divine punishment

In summary, the theme of this book is not just any kind of divine punishment. It is not
about punishment in the here and now, sent from Heaven, that is precise and measured,
affecting only the wrongdoing individual to the exact extent that he or she deserves. It is
about a punishing godly response to supposedly bad human behavior that puts everybody in
danger, including people innocent of that behavior; like a heavy fist slamming a table to hit
a fly, causing everything on it – the fly, cups and saucers, glasses, plates, and silverware – to
leap into the air, and then crashing down and breaking in a thousand pieces. At least as far
back as ancient Greece, divine wrath has been believed sometimes to risk everybody alike,
not just the god-angering ‘sinners’ themselves. When God’s anger is enflamed, all of us are
equally at risk of getting divinely trampled on. This makes the occurrence of sinful behavior,
however that is defined, by however small the number of offenders, a matter of public
concern.
The American legal philosopher Morris Cohen (1880-1947) observed that
“doubtless,” in the past, transgressions like “sacrilege or ceremonial defilement, witchcraft
and heresy […] were regarded with terror.” Why? “[B]ecause,” Morris explained,

they were supposed to endanger society by bringing down the wrath of gods*
that are not careful to discriminate between the guilty and innocent when they send
down their lightning or plagues.16

This fear of multiple gods, or the one God, harming the innocent as a byproduct of anger
directed at the guilty, was not confined to the ancient past, as Morris suggested. Far from it.
Although it stretches back to antiquity, I will show that this fear never died out, and in fact
forms part of established religion, especially that of the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam.
The 19th-century Anglican theologian William P. Palmer (1803-1885), a highly
respected English scholar, warned that “according to the rule of God’s moral government,
the virtuous are sometimes involved in the temporal punishments of the wicked.” 17 The
‘virtuous’, according to Palmer, may get hurt quite as much as the ‘wicked’, and, although
we may assume this is not the case in the hereafter, this temporal hurt is fearful enough for
the former to be concerned about the god-angering behavior of the latter. Palmer made it

*
Perhaps Cohen dared not invite the accusation of being critical of Judaism and Christianity, but his reference to
multiple “gods” is misleading because it suggests this belief ended with monotheism. It certainly did not, and so
‘gods’ could just as well be replaced by ‘God.’ Also, this fear persists to this day.

17
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

his personal mission to achieve the unification of the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and
Orthodox Churches,18 and he probably felt his understanding of CDP was in complete
conformity with the theology that underlies all Christian denominations.
The idea of CDP has more recently come to the fore through a number of so-called
Marian apparitions. Perhaps the most famous one occurred in the rural Portuguese town of
Fatima, eighty miles north of Lisbon. There, over the course of five months in 1917, three
shepherd children between 7 and 10 years old, would have had six encounters with a woman
“brighter than the sun.” The mysterious woman allegedly identified herself to the children
as the Virgin Mary. Shortly after, the Spanish flu – a pandemic much deadlier than the
Covid-19 one – spread over Portugal, killing two of the three children. From then on, only
one witness, Lúcia dos Santos (1907-2005), was able to tell what the apparition had
supposedly communicated. Lúcia became a nun, and thus spent her entire life under the
guardianship and control of the hierarchy of the Catholic church.
In her third memoir, written in 1941 – strangely she had not mentioned it in her
first two memoirs – sister Lúcia claimed that the Virgin had told her that at some point in
time “an unknown light” would illuminate the night sky. This light would be God’s sign,
the message would have continued, “that he is about to punish the world for its crimes by
means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father,” meaning
the pope.19 This punishment would somehow involve Russia, which, the Virgin allegedly
prophesied, “will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of
the Church,” and then, she added, “[t]he good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have
much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated.”20 There is good reason to doubt the
veracity of sister Lúcia’s claims.* The main point, however, is that the Vatican, which had
sanctioned the publication of the nun’s memoirs, supported the idea that, for some
undefined crimes, God may punish the world and hurt not just the bad but also the “good,”
including the pope himself. In short, the official Vatican-approved account of the Marian
apparition at Fatima supports the notion of CDP.
In 1973, the Holy Virgin supposedly made another appearance. At a secluded
Catholic convent near the city of Akita in Japan, a roughly hewn wooden sculpture of Mary
purportedly began to bleed and weep. The Japanese Catholic nun Agnes Sasagawa claimed
that she heard this statue of ‘Our Lady of Akita’, as the manifestation of Mary came to be
known, talk and make some chilling prophecies. Sister Agnes alleged that the Virgin told
her that

*
One reason to be suspicious of these ‘prophesies’, is that, quite conveniently, they had already manifested when
Lúcia wrote them down. By then, communist Russia had become a scourge on its neighbors, World War II had
begun, and in 1938 all over Europe people had witnessed the spectacular phenomenon of a ‘low-latitude aurora
borealis’, now re-interpreted as the sign from God foretold by the Holy Virgin. However, this would not stop
Catholic anti-communists during the Cold War from exploiting the Virgin’s, or rather Lúcia’s, prophecy as if it
were still hugely relevant.

18
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible
punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge,
such as one never seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a
great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor
faithful.21

Again, this prophecy expressed the belief that punishment may fall not just on the deserving
‘bad’, but also on the less-deserving ‘good’, and that being one of the faithful, and even a
priest, will not save one from the effects of God’s anger.
Note that the fear of CDP is not just in regard of divine intervention as such. It is
also not merely a consequence of the belief in God’s omnipotence and his involvement in
all that happens, whether from a disinterested viewpoint or not. And it is also not necessarily
about the manifestation of a divine system of reward and punishment for good and bad
behavior. If that were the case, then any personal misfortune would likely be attributed to
one’s own actions and attitudes. The fear described by Morris, Palmer, and the nuns Lúcia
and Agnes instead refers to the risk of divine punishment that one runs as a result of other
people’s behavior. It is the fear that there are people who are bad or do bad things, for which
they deserve divine punishment, and that the effects of this punishment may land on your
head, as well as on the heads of the wrongdoers, if you are standing too closely. Below I will
show that the fear of CDP has endured up to today, although it is not always as clearly
expressed as was done by Morris, Palmer, Lùcia, and Agnes.

19
Disasters and the fear of an angry god

20
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

2. The roots of the fear of collective divine punishment

The fear of CDP is mostly rooted in the Old Testament

What is the origin of this fear of the shared effects of divine punishment by a god refusing to
distinguish between degrees of guilt among the victims? It appears to have started at the
dawn of civilization with the idea that the gods, or some of them, were capable of having the
same emotions as their human subjects, including intense anger: with each other, and, also,
while on earth, with some individual human beings. An example of the former case is the
Greek god Zeus (god #1) killing his grandson Asclepius (god #2) with his thunderbolt for
healing so many sick people that Hades (god #3) complained that he was thereby being
robbed of the souls he was entitled to. In response, Apollo (god #4), who was both Zeus’ son
and Asclepius’ father, murdered the three Cyclopes (gods #5, #6, and #7) for forging that
same thunderbolt.22 The Sumerian god Enki and another god, presumed to be Enlil, had at
some point in time, according to another source, “become angry with each other.”23 But the
gods were more commonly angry with individual people, and made them feel that anger by
causing personal misfortune in whatever form.
The next step towards the fear of CDP was the belief that godly anger could build up
and at some critical point explode as a great act of violence – a form of disaster – thereby
hurting people who had neither a functional relationship with the gods, nor a particular
personal involvement with the reason for their anger. Disasters of all kinds could be
construed as the consequences of such violent fury, especially if they happened to follow
upon an incident that might explain the gods’ anger as an immediate response: a
representative person committing an act of sacrilege, for instance. The tendency to see a
causal relationship in a sequence of unrelated events (apophenia) may well be a common
human affliction, as might be the exclamation made by the ancient Ionians: “What god have
we offended to bring upon ourselves such a punishment as this?”24 Those Ionians were
fearful of collective punishment for their collective behavior, but confused about which of
all possible angry gods they needed to placate.
Finally, merging various divine functions and characters into one godhead led to the
emergence of the belief that God could be personally offended not just by sacrilege or
blasphemy, but also by the social or even the purely private behavior of human individuals.
That idea appears to have its roots in Judaism, but only to become fully accepted with the
ascendancy of Christianity. Ultimately, even such god-angering social or purely private
behavior came to be imagined as contributing to collective guilt, punishable by collective
measures. This would seem to be, in a nutshell, the origins story of the fear of CDP.
However, this development did not happen as a matter of course. The notion of
CDP always competed with more levelheaded alternative explanations. People in ancient
times did not automatically attribute any and all unfortunate events, the cause of which they
did not fully understand, to the petty whims of raging gods. The 1st-century BCE Greek

21
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

historian Diodorus Siculus recorded in his Library of History various different viewpoints
about the causes of disasters. He described for instance the fact that the Egyptians had
mastered the art of astrology to such an extent that they were able to “foretell destructions
of the crops […], pestilences [and] earthquakes and floods […].”25 And so could the
Chaldeans, Diodorus wrote. Because the Chaldeans – inhabitants of Mesopotamia during
the first millennium BCE – had studied the movement of the planets “with greater precision
than any other men,” they knew in advance, according to Diodorus, “mighty storms of
winds, […] excessive rains or heat, […] and earthquakes [...].”26 Whatever is written down in
the heavens cannot be changed by a sudden impulse, and therefore astrology should be a
counterweight to the notion of CDP. The Roman Emperor Tiberius (42 BCE - 37 CE) would
be less inclined to fear CDP, because, according to the historian Suetonius, he was “addicted
to astrology and firmly convinced that everything was in the hands of fate,” which explained
the fact that he was “somewhat neglectful of the gods and of religious matters.”27
We should also not assume that the ancients were incapable of attributing calamities
to purely natural causes. During the 5th century BCE, the people of Athens suffered from a
plague, Diodorus reported. Quite logically, Diodorus thought this was no wonder, “since,”
he noted, “a vast multitude of people of every description had streamed together into the
city.” Therefore, the historian argued, “there was good reason for their falling victim to
diseases as they did, because of the cramped quarters, breathing air which had become
polluted.”28 Diodorus also explained a later plague in Athens by pointing at the surrounding
marshlands that “grew putrid, thick foul vapors [...] rising up in fumes,” which “corrupted
the surrounding air.” Additional causes, he mentioned, were the “watery” quality of the
crops; and the excessive heat caused by the absence of cooling winds. 29 Nevertheless,
Diodorus also noticed that the alternative view that the plague had a divine origin was the
one preferred by the Greeks at that time. He wrote, “The Athenians, however, because the
disease was so severe, ascribed the causes of their misfortune to the deity.”30 When he
described yet another contagious illness afflicting the Carthaginian army on the march,
Diodorus, remarkably, chose to explain their troubles not by pointing at their recent
destruction of Greek temples, but by the facts that the soldiers were camping closely together
on marshy terrain, that it was the summer, and that the warm weather had caused the water
to become “unusually hot.”31
But evidently, astrological and practical knowledge that would need no godly element
to account for a calamity was imperfect or not spread out evenly among people, and every
disaster just as easily lent itself to the alternative explanation of an angry divine intervention.
Which explanation won out in each instance of a disaster was likely influenced by how this
affected the interests of the secular or priestly powers doing the explaining. Based on an
analysis of interpretations of disasters in some of the earliest human civilizations – Sumer,
Egypt, Greece, Palestine, and Rome – I find that the acceptance of the explanation of
disasters as immediate godly responses to human wrongdoing differed wildly, with it being
rare among Sumerians and Egyptians, the norm among Jews, a mere possibility among pagan

22
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Greeks and Romans, and almost the rule among early Christians. Therefore, I conclude that
most of the roots of CDP, but certainly not all, go back to the Old Testament.

Sumer

Perhaps the first hint of an emerging belief in CDP was inscribed on a clay tablet in the
Sumerian city of Ur around 2300 BCE. In this text, the very first identified writer in history,
the high priestess Enheduana, revered the goddess Inana as “the lady of heaven and earth.”
But Enheduana was also quite fearful of the deity, adding: “At your angry glare what is bright
darkens.” And when angry, Inana, according to the high priestess, was capable of causing “a
devastating flood which no one can withstand.”32 Such a disaster, obviously, would not
discriminate between the guilty and the innocent, but whether Enheduana believed Inana
would ever intentionally cause a flood to punish a group of people collectively is another
matter. Enheduana believed that she could, but not necessarily that she would. In any case,
Inana’s fury was legendary: her “anger does not cool,” stated a little more recent clay tablet,
also from Ur. And even Inana’s fellow “great gods,” or ‘Anuna’, were described as unable to
stand before her “furious face.” In fact, the tablet declared, “Not one can confront your
furious forehead.”33
There is, however, a story, dating back to about 1800 BCE, that tells of disasters that
the goddess did cause, hurting a great number of people, for the crime of just one person. In
this highly allegorical account, a mortal man, named Shukaletuda, found Inana sleeping in
his garden, took advantage of the situation, and raped her. When Inana woke up, she
discovered what had happened but not who was responsible, and she furiously went around
looking for him, in the process causing three plagues. The story does not explain why exactly
Inana lashed out at humanity in general, but emphasizes repeatedly that she did so
deliberately: “the woman was considering what should be destroyed […]; Inana was
considering what should be done […].”34 For the first plague, Inana turned the water in the
wells into blood.35 For the second, she took her seat on a cloud, and blew a “south wind”
that caused a “fearsome storm flood.”36 Lastly, she caused a traffic jam: “She took
[something] in her hand [and] blocked the highways of the Land with it.”37 Importantly, the
text nowhere suggests that these plagues had anything to do with Inana being mad at
mankind, or wishing to inflict collective punishment (although the plagues do show her
indifference to the suffering of innocent humans). What the text does intimate, is that the
plagues were means to find the man who had violated her, and pressurize anybody who may
have been hiding him to give him up. It continuously links the plagues to her quest to find
and punish one person. And therefore, evidence of a belief in CDP it is not.
The threat of divine punishment may have manifested in Ur when, according to
another tablet, the god Enlil, sometimes imagined as Inana’s father, “afflicted the city with
an evil famine.” What the people of Ur had done to deserve their ordeal, is unclear. The

23
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Sumerian scribe wrote that when Enlil’s son Suen asked him “why have you turned away
from my city,” the older god answered that “The judgment uttered by the assembly [of gods]
cannot be reversed” and only offered as a weak explanation that Ur “was not given an eternal
reign.”38 So was the treatment of Ur by Enlil a whimsical act, unrelated to the people’s
behavior, sinful or otherwise? And was it intended as a form of punishment? The answers
are unclear.
So from all we know about the religious beliefs of the Sumerians is that they thought
some of the gods at least (i.e. Inana) were able to get angry at humans, and to take actions
that were purposely harmful to them. But I have not come across an instance of Sumerians
ascribing an actual disaster to divine punishment. As of yet, there seems to be no evidence
of the fear of CDP existing among the people of ancient Sumer. Even the Sumerian account
of the Flood, unlike the Jewish version, does not refer to godly anger or punishment of
humanity for their wrongdoing, and looks more like a description of an effort to wipe the
slate of creation clean to make room for an upgrade.* Nonetheless, it makes sense to assume
that the Sumerians thought it was at least possible for the gods to take revenge in case of
some blatant provocation by means of a disaster.

Egypt

The fear of CDP further evolved in ancient Egypt, where again the gods were capable of
getting rightfully, and frightfully, wrathful. However, they seem to have been imagined as
being angry mostly with each other, or in the afterlife with human individuals for their
specific personal transgressions. The god Seth was one who could get notoriously angry in
the minds of the Egyptians. Because of his identification as the “furious or angry one,”39
Seth became associated with the aggressive hippopotamus.40 Storms at sea were believed to
be caused by Seth’s fury. And Seth is best known for murdering his brother Osiris and
cutting him into fourteen pieces. However, his anger was apparently not related to human
wrongdoings, and not specifically directed at human beings.41 His nephew Horus, on the
other hand, was believed to be capable of getting angry with actual people: “Horus the Lord
ascended to the sky angry with men,” states one text dating back to 2000 BCE.42 According
to Egyptian mythology, Horus’ horrific wrath showed off when he decapitated his own

*
A Sumerian tablet from about 2000 BCE reports that “the assembly [of the gods] had made the Flood sweep over
to destroy the seed of mankind,” but it omits the reason for that decision (“The Death of Gilgameš,” ETCSL
t.1.8.1.3; Segment F; lines 23-37 and lines 116-130). Another, more elaborate Sumerian tablet (no. XI), from
between 2750 and 2500 BCE, records the fury of the god Enlil at seeing a boat with human survivors of the
Flood – Utanapishtim and his wife – who were not supposed to have escaped annihilation, but there is no
mention of him and the other gods causing the Flood out of anger with humanity (see two translations of “The
Epic of Gilgamesh” by Campbell Thompson and Kovacs). Then there is the myth of Atrahasis, written down on
clay tablets dating back to 1700 BCE, in which the god Enki complains he cannot sleep because the “noise of
mankind has become too much” (Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 18). This is the reason for his unleashing a
series of disasters, culminating in the Flood. But is that punishment or simply a form of biological engineering?
It seems only in the Biblical story of the Deluge does the motive of Yahweh to open the floodgates become truly
the desire to punish mankind for its sins.

24
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

mother and Osiris’ consort Isis, and so he may have been quite frightening to everyday
Egyptians. But instances of gods getting angry with mortals and subsequently wanting to
punish them in the material world, were apparently rare. Egyptologist Amgad Joseph studied
the phenomenon of wrathful Egyptian gods. According to Joseph, the gods of ancient Egypt
were “generally benevolent and approachable.” Most did not vent their anger on people, but
on other deities, except when human transgressions provoked them to it.43
One instance of divine anger at a human offence can be found in an Egyptian story
titled ‘The Myth of the Heavenly Cow’. It tells of the Egyptian people at one time having
become rebellious and inflaming the wrath of the sun god Ra (or Re). In response, Ra
ordered his daughter Hathor to go out and kill at will, which she did in great numbers, in
the guise of Sekhmet, a female deity with the head of a lioness. But Hathor’s, or Sekhmet’s,
anger outlasted that of her father. So at night, the story goes, Ra, having taken pity on the
people, ordered beer to be mixed with red ochre so it resembled blood, and spread this red
mixture throughout Egypt. The next day, Hathor/Sekhmet got drunk, literally, on what she
presumed to be blood but was actually beer, and her anger left her as a result.44 But this
would be a one-time occurrence: according to Dr Joseph, Ra was frequently angry, but his
wrath was solely aimed at other gods, especially at his archenemy Apep, who is the god of
chaos,45 and in Egyptian mythology Evil incarnate.
But Sekhmet continued to be associated with human tragedy. Her anger supposedly
caused plague epidemics,46 as well as individual diseases. Because they feared her wrath and
subsequent plagues, Egyptians held an annual ‘Festival of Drunkenness’, getting drunk on
beer, to commemorate Sekhmet’s drunkenness with what she believed was human blood.
Failing to honor this and other religious festivals risked one or the other god to become
angry with humans. As one of the so-called ‘Maxims of Ani’ states, “god is angry (when) he
is neglected.”47
Sekhmet and the cat-headed goddess Bastet, who seem to be related, were the two
deities most often associated with illness, according to Egyptologist Rita Lucarelli. 48 They
were believed to send hordes of demons* to earth to bring disease from which people were
able to protect themselves through rites and rituals. While Lucarelli constructs such actions
by Sekhmet or Bastet as “divine punishment,” this appears to have happened mostly on a
person-by-person basis for, as the Italian Egyptologist put it, “[i]mpurity and failure to fulfil
the ritual duties necessary to appease [such] potentially angry deities.”49 Like in Sumer,
collective divine punishment, without distinction between degrees of guilt, was apparently an
infrequent affair in ancient Egypt.
However, there are two stories that took place during the later dynasties, perhaps
influenced by Greek, Assyrian and Persian culture, which point at an emerging belief in

*
In the ancient Egyptian context, demons were not necessarily evil but simply minor astral beings without a
popular cult. Lucarelli explains that “demons are a creation of the gods and act as their messengers” (“Illness as
Divine Punishment,” 54). They seem to be similar to the “evil angels” mentioned in Psalm 78:49, whom
Hippolytus interpreted not as actually evil in nature, “but because they have this office, and are appointed to
produce pains and sufferings […]” (“The Extant Works and Fragments,” 429).

25
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

CDP among the Egyptians. The first refers to an incident that is alleged to have taken place
sometime after the seventh century BCE in the Egyptian port city of Thonis-Heracleion on
the Mediterranean Seacoast. The city, like others throughout Egypt, was a religious center
for the veneration of the god Osiris. Every year a series of rituals would take place, including,
on the night of the 25th of the month of Khoiak,* the transportation by boat of a mummy
symbolizing the dead god. The symbolic voyage started at the Temple of Amun and ended
at the shrine of Osiris in another port city named Canopus, a few miles to the West. This
so-called ‘Navigation of Osiris’ may have signified the god’s physical journey to his tomb,
and spiritually to the afterlife, preceding the return of his divine powers as a solar deity. One
time, during the execution of the ritual procession, something went terribly wrong.
According to one account – described on a papyrus scroll titled ‘the Contest for Inaros’
Armor’ – the ‘Navigation of Osiris’ was disrupted and carried out incorrectly. According to
another report – written on a papyrus document named ‘the Contest for the Benefice of
Amun’ – a young priest and his companions highjacked the boat and took the sacrificial
goods that it carried for themselves.50 Whatever the case, Osiris would have become enraged
at the defilement of his festival. By way of punishment, so the story goes, Osiris sent two
pairs of demons to take possession of the leaders of the two main clans in Egypt – Pemu and
Wertamiunne – to induce them to fight each other over the ownership of a legendary
breastplate, once worn by the dead hero Inaros (Pemu’s father).†51 The civil war that erupted
as a result was Osiris’ rather crude punishment of the entire Egyptian people, and so a clear
instance of CDP.
The other story demonstrating the ability of Egyptian gods at inflicting CDP during
the latest dynasties is recounted in a number of papyrus fragments, including the ‘Demotic
Chronicle’, which declares that Pharaoh Nectanebo‡ was cursed by the gods for his failure
at finalizing the building of a temple, and causing foreigners to invade Egypt.52 According to
another text, titled the ‘Prophecy of Petesis’, it was in a dream that perhaps another
Nectanebo – identified as Nectanebo II by Danish Egyptologist Kim Ryholt53 – learned about
the gods’ anger. Alarmed, the king immediately hired Petesis, the best sculptor of hieroglyphs
in all of Egypt, to finish the work of dedicating the temple in his city Sebennytos to the god
Onuris (or Ares). But before he could do so, Petesis met a girl whose beauty made him forget
about his job, and so the wrath of the gods could not be averted.54 Summarizing, Ryholt
explains that “the construction of monuments for the gods and the maintenance of the cults
were two of the main obligations of Egyptian kingship.”55 One reason, arguably the most

*
An indication of this date’s importance might be its correspondence to the Babylonian new year, as noticed by
the Belgian Egyptologist Leo Depuydt (“Regnal Years and Civil Calendar in Achaemenid Egypt,” 164n).
†
Prince Inaros I, ruler of Athribis, a city in Upper (northern) Egypt, who lived in the seventh century BCE, was
revered as a hero for standing up against the Assyrians who had been occupying Egypt while the Egyptian pharaoh
Necho I was made a vassal of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon. Inaros would have been buried in the Temple of
Osiris in Busiris (Quack, “Inaros, Held von Athribis,” 502). For some reason a number of his possessions became
desirable objects of legendary fame, including his diadem, sword, lance (which he used to kill a griffin), and
armor (Ryholt, Narrative Literature from the Tebtunis Temple Library, 83).
‡
The Swiss Egyptologist Philippe Matthey thinks it is probable that he is Pharaoh Nectanebo I (“The Once and
Future King of Egypt,” 51).

26
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

important reason for these two obligations, was that the consequence of failure to construct
temples and organize rituals was the terrible danger of CDP.

Greece

So far, however, the presumed reason for CDP had not developed beyond a direct affront
of a deity, in the form of disloyalty, neglect, or sacrilege. None of the unearthed Sumerian
and Egyptian stories about divine punishment – Enheduana’s ‘Hymn to Inana’, the ‘Lament
for Sumer and Ur’, the ‘Myth of the Heavenly Cow’, the ‘Contest for Inaros’ Armor’, and
the ‘Prophecy of Petesis’ – involve misbehavior purely between humans, that does not
involve a deity directly, as the reason for godly anger. Wrongdoings other than religious
transgressions seem not to have been imagined by the Sumerians and Egyptians as reasons
for divine anger leading up to divine punishment in the world of the living.
That other type of CDP seems to have made its first appearance in ancient Greece.
Like elsewhere, the Greeks feared divine punishment for people behaving inappropriately
in god-human affairs. That would normally not result in an imprecise lashing out to
humanity in general. The Greek historian Diodorus relates that the godly Muses became
angry with the human Thamyras, because he had the audacity to declare his voice was more
beautiful than theirs. Muses were supposed to inspire people; not the other way around. So,
they punished him by taking his talent away from him, and by mutilation.56
In another story, Diodorus described, as a matter of historical fact, how the goddess
Artemis caused a Greek man named Actaeon to take the form of one of the animals he
would normally hunt. When he transformed into a stag, he was torn to pieces by his own
hunting dogs. Artemis had been angry with Actaeon either for supposing himself to be a
better hunter than she herself, or because the man had had the impious desire to have sex
with her.57
These are all stories about one-on-one altercations between gods and humans.
Demonstrating the belief in collective punishment, Diodorus warned that states should
expect “punishment for slighting the divinity,” when they would fall short at showing
reverence for the deity.58 One example occurred in 464 BCE, when, according to Diodorus,
“a great and incredible catastrophe befell the Lacedaemonians,” also known as ‘Spartans’: a
number of “great earthquakes occurred,” causing the deaths of “more than twenty thousand
Lacedaemonians.” Diodorus, apparently ignorant of further clarifying details, commented
rather weakly that “they suffered this disaster because some god, as it were, was wreaking his
anger upon them [...].”59
But Greek mythology also occasionally refers to instances of CDP inflicted by gods
who apparently were interested in policing interhuman behavior. The American Reverend
Andrew P. Peabody (1811-1893), a professor of Christian ethics at Harvard University,
commented that in pagan Greece “disasters [...] were regarded as the normal penalty of

27
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

sacrilege.”60 This would not be different compared to the forms of CDP in Sumer and Egypt.
However, Peabody also stated that it was “not unnatural” that epidemics were “regarded as
retributive judgments where a gross crime had been committed,” and this would be a novel
idea if such a ‘gross crime’ were human behavior hurting other humans, and not the angry
gods themselves.61 If so, the victims of such divine judgments would include those innocent
of both sacrilege or human-to-human misbehavior. Perhaps the Greeks were the ones
responsible for introducing the idea of collective punishment by gods for interhuman
deviance.
More specifically describing the indiscriminate nature of godly wrath in response to
human behavior is the Greek 8th-century BCE poem Works and Days by Hesiod. In it, Hesiod
described how the Greek god Zeus was in the habit of enacting collective punishment
because of the crimes of a single person. Hesiod wrote:

Often even a whole city suffers for a bad man who sins and devises
presumptuous deeds, and the son of Cronos [i.e. Zeus] lays great trouble upon
the people, famine and plague together, so that the men perish away, and
their women do not bear children, and their houses become few, through the
contriving of Olympian Zeus. And again, at another time, the son of Cronos
either destroys their wide army, or their walls, or else makes an end of their
ships on the sea.62

It is noticeable that Hesiod used rather general terms to describe CDP: a “bad man” and not
a king or priest; and “sins” instead of sacrilege or blasphemy. Hesiod seems to be the very
first source for the belief that CDP is possible for behavior that does not directly translate
into disrespect for a deity. In Hesiod’s account, that behavior is just one man sinning,
whatever ‘sinning’ means.

Palestine

All the different qualities of Sumerian, Egyptian, and Greek divine wrath converged within
the character of the Jewish Yahweh. Although the fear is almost universal and maybe
instinctual, Christians and Muslims tend to point at the Jewish Bible – more widely known
as the Old Testament – as the source of their belief in CDP. And, while it is certain that it
does not originate from Abrahamic sacred writings, as demonstrated above, much of the
present fear of CDP does seem to be fed by it.* The Old Testament, or Part One of the
Christian Bible, which is considered for the most part, in some form, sacred by all
Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – is full of stories that support the

*
The Christian Old Testament in its many varieties almost completely overlaps with the Jewish Tanakh, also
known as the Hebrew Bible.

28
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

notion of CDP in the form that is the subject of this book: namely divine punishment of a
group of people who are not necessarily all guilty of the wrongdoing that the punishment
was in response to, and with that wrongdoing not necessarily involving the godhead directly.
British scholars of earthquakes and volcanoes, David K. Chester and Angus Duncan observe
that the “dominant theodicy” of the authors of the Old Testament is that “disasters represent
punishment of human sinfulness by an often wrathful God.”63
Recently, Thomas L. Constable, a retired professor at Dallas Theological Seminary,
linked CDP to a lesson he drew from the Old Testament’s first book of Genesis. Constable
warned: “God does not always choose to remove the righteous from the wicked before He
judges the wicked, as He did in Lot’s case.”64 Constable suggested that, when God punishes,
not all the righteous will be as lucky as the biblical figure of Lot once was. According to the
Old Testament, the allegedly righteous Lot – a nephew of the patriarch Abraham – lived in
the doomed city of Sodom. With the help of two angels, he managed to escape with his wife
and two daughters, just before God leveled the city and killed all its remaining inhabitants.
But Lot’s rescue would have been a case of divine mercy that was exceptional. The story of
Lot, Constable alluded to, has become the prototypical and proverbial “ensample unto those
that after should live ungodly,” as the New Testament states (2 Peter 2:6), to mend their ways
and to start living godly lives.
Constable could have used many other Old Testament stories to illustrate CDP by
the biblical Yahweh, and even better ones too. The best one I think is the following. When,
in a later biblical episode, the offspring of Lot’s uncle Abraham had multiplied enough to
form the people of the Israelites, one of them, a man named Achan, disobeyed the divine
order not to take any plunder from the city of Jericho, which they had just destroyed,
together with all its inhabitants. Because of Achan’s underhanded theft, the Bible testifies
that “the anger of the Lord was kindled against the children of Israel” (Joshua 7:1*). Note:
not against Achan alone, who was the sole disobedient plunderer, but against the Israelite
people in its entirety.† This led to defeat in battle and the deaths of 36 individuals, all of
whom were seemingly innocent, and even ignorant, of Achan’s sin.
The name ‘Achan’ has since become a symbolic term for an individual who may
provoke God to such anger that this could set off great national misfortune.‡ The fear of
CDP often translates into a fear of ‘Achans’: usually members of religious and sexual
minorities. This is the most nefarious of all variations of the fear of CDP: the fear of having
an ‘Achan’ in our midst, who attracts godly punishment that may hurt us, apart from him
or even instead of him. Throughout history, several types of ‘misfits’ have been labelled
‘Achans’ and consequently had to fear for their lives.

*
Unless otherwise indicated, all Bible quotes are taken from the King James Version.
†
Note also that God’s anger against the Israelites was not kindled for just having committed genocide.
‡
A Royalist priest, named John Paradise, delivered a sermon on January 30, 1660, eleven years to the day after the
execution of King Charles I of England. In that sermon, Paradise called the event a “murder,” and characterized
it as “an Achan in England, to bring down the curse of God upon it; unlesse we acquit our selves by serious
humiliation from the guilt thereof” (Paradise, Hadadrimmon). (See also Worden, God’s Instruments.)

29
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Throughout the Old Testament, God reportedly rewarded the Israelites jointly and
punished them jointly, as he did with their enemies.* The Bible tells of many instances when
the Israelites, or at a later date the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, were collectively accused
of doing ‘evil’ and getting collectively punished for it, with presumably all – the relatively
guilty and the relatively innocent – suffering in equal measure. So if you take the Old
Testament seriously and literally – as the more devout among religious Jews, Christians, and
Muslims generally do – you should consider that with just a few people behaving in
contravention of holy norms, and this being tolerated, ignored, or insufficiently persecuted,
everybody in the neighborhood runs an equal risk of getting divinely hammered.
Notice a parallel between the god Zeus in Hesiod’s account and the god of the Old
Testament as portrayed in the story about Achan. Is there any difference in this regard
between Zeus and Yahweh, or between the one ‘bad man’ provoking Zeus, and the one
transgressing Israelite provoking Yahweh? The only possible difference might be between the
type of sin referred to by Hesiod, which might or might not be religious in nature, and
Achan’s plunder which was both a fraud on the other Israelites, and a religious crime: the
goods Achan had stolen were supposed to be “consecrated” to Yahweh, and become part of
his “treasury” (Joshua 6:19). It is at this point unclear whether the philosophy of CDP that
underlies the comparable stories of Hesiod’s sinner and the biblical Achan emerged in
ancient Greece and ancient Palestine independently, whether it spread from ancient Greek
culture to ancient Israelite culture or vice versa, or whether it originates from someplace else.
But it does appear that the idea of CDP found its way from the territories of both Greece
and Palestine to the amalgamated peoples inside the Roman Empire.

Rome

Romans were strongly influenced by Greek culture, and for that reason alone the notion of
CDP would not have been alien to them. One instance of CDP would have occurred around
the year 472 BCE, when, according to the Greek historian Dionysius (born c.60 BCE),
“many prodigies, and omens [...] filled the city with a kind of superstition and fear of the
gods.” Next, a strange disease began to affect the women of Rome, killing mostly the ones
who were pregnant. “[A]ll the augurs and the interpreters of holy things declared that these

*
This system of collective divine reward and punishment is described, for instance, in the Bible book Leviticus
(“If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments,” God promised, you will have “rain in due season,”
good harvests, and “none shall make you afraid,” as God will “rid evil beasts out of the land,” and your enemies
"shall fall before you by the sword” (Leviticus 26:3-7). But if you don’t, God will bring cause you to “be slain
before your enemies,” and bring you “terror,” “plagues,” “wild beasts,” “the pestilence,” and such famine that
you will resort to eating “the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters” (Leviticus 26:14-29). A similar
system is set up in Deuteronomy 28. These promises and warnings were given to the Israelites as a people, not as
individuals, and may therefore be construed as ground for the belief in collective punishment for collective sin, at
least for the ancient Israelites and/or their descendants. Pastor Gerald Flurry of the Philadelphia Church of God,
an adherent of ‘British Israelism’, asserts that the “modern descendants of Israel reside primarily in America,
Britain and [modern-day] Israel” (Why ‘Natural’ Disasters, 26).

30
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

were the signs of divine anger,” Dionysius wrote. The reason for their anger, according to
these seers, was the fact that some of the rites had not been performed “with sanctity, and
purity.”65 After some investigations, Dionysius explained, the Romans found that one of the
Vestal virgins – priestesses dedicated to the goddess Vesta – had committed sacrilege by
losing her sacred virginity, and by continuing to perform public sacrifices while “impure.”
With the cruel execution of this priestess, who was named Urbinia, and that of one of her
two lovers – the other killed himself – the strange epidemic stopped instantly.66 This story is
reminiscent of the Egyptian tales of religious transgressions that caused gods to become angry
and leash out at humans indiscriminately.
The Roman chronicler Tacitus (56-120) described as historical fact that, sometime
in the third century BCE, “the gods were plainly angry” with the king of Sinope,
Scydrothermis, evidence of which was that “he was beset by every kind of disease and
disaster.”67 The plagued king had been guilty of refusing to comply with divine commands.
Exactly what these diseases and disasters entailed, and who were hurt by them, Tacitus does
not reveal. These mishaps may have targeted the king only and may have harmed him alone,
and thus should not necessarily be considered a type of CDP. But if they did hurt other
people besides the guilty king, then it would be, albeit again for a purely religious misstep.
Professor of religious studies, Bart Ehrman, noticed that in the “ancient religion” – the
religion that Christianity supplanted – “divine anger was aroused almost always because of
neglect.”68
While among Romans practicing religion through rituals was very important in their
daily lives for obtaining guidance from the gods and their beneficence, the concept of CDP
seems to have been far less prevalent than among the Jews. Pliny the Younger’s (61-c.113
CE) accounts of the eruption in 79 CE of Mount Vesuvius and its destruction of the city of
Pompeii, for instance, neither mention human behavior, nor an angry divine response as
the ultimate cause.69 Neither did the report on the same disaster by Roman historian and
senator Cassius Dio (c.155-c.235 CE).* When a huge fire damaged many temples in Rome
the next year, including those of Isis, Neptune, and Jupiter on the Capitol, Dio came to the
conclusion that “the disaster seemed to be not of human but of divine origin,” but he could
not think of any particular reason for the displeasure of any particular deity.70 Dio described
in horrifying detail a devastating earthquake centered in the Syrian city of Antioch that lasted
several days in 115 CE. A “great bellowing roar” announced a “tremendous quaking,” and
then the “whole earth was upheaved, and buildings leaped into the air.” Most frightful, Dio
wrote, was the “crash of grinding and breaking timbers together with tiles and stones,” and
the countless victims stuck half-dead among the wreckage.71 But while Dio held “Heaven”
responsible for the disaster,72 he made no effort to justify it by pointing at some form of
human wrongdoing.

*
However, Dio did chronicle that a number of mysterious giants – “huge men” - had been spotted in the
neighborhood some time before the eruption, “now on the mountain, now in the surrounding country, and
again in the cities, wandering over the earth day and night and also flitting through the air” (Roman History, 306).

31
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

But then Christianity entered the scene.

The novel cult of Christianity combined a number of elements from different sources
into an apparently appealing mix: from Egyptian religion the Osirian death-and-resurrection
myth, and from contemporary Judaism exclusivist monotheism, along with Messianic,
violent, revolutionary phantasies of a final revenge by the same god on behalf of the faithful
commoners on their oppressors. Perhaps most conducive to the furtherance of the fear of
CDP was the Christian notion of an almost continuous state of godly anger. One of the
central tenets of Christianity, from its earliest days, is that Jesus Christ, by willingly dying,
paid off a debt of guilt for humanity which it incurred when their earliest common ancestors
committed the sin of disobedience in the Garden of Eden. According to the apostle St Paul,
God, who was angry with mankind, had himself become “justified” by offering up the blood
of his own son (to himself), which subsequently caused humans to “be saved from wrath
through him.”73 God, Paul wrote, “delivered us from the wrath to come.”74 However, there
is one condition: you have to believe this is so. The Gospel of John warns that “the wrath of
God abideth” on anybody who does not.75 So the Crucifixion did not put a stop to God’s
anger, but made forgiveness and exception from punishment possible through faith.
Note that this Christian dogma makes sense only when God is believed to be
incessantly angry, and looking for some form of payback. And with that belief, Christianity
laid a solid foundation for the fear of CDP: a god at peace would not feel the need to punish
anybody.* Notably, according to Christianity’s founders, the Crucifixion that was intended
to pacify God made him extra angry with the Jews who had called for Jesus to be crucified,
prompting him to subject them to another instance of CDP. The Christian thinker and
public official Lactantius (c.250-c.325) declared that when, between 66 and 70 CE:

Emperor Vespasian subdued the Jews, and laid waste their lands with the
sword and fire, besieged and reduced them by famine, [and] overthrew
Jerusalem, […] these things were done by God on account of that crucifixion
of Christ.76

*
Lactantius (c.250-c.325), a Christian advisor to Emperor Constantine the Great, argued that anger is a necessary
attribute of God; “just anger” to be precise, which he defined as “an emotion of the mind arousing itself for the
restraining of faults,” as distinct from the “desire of taking vengeance” (“The Divine Institutes,” 627). That anger
is necessary to instill fear, Lactantius held, and fear in turn is necessary for people to live good lives. It is “the fear
of God alone,” he wrote, “which guards the mutual society of men.” Without this fear, Lactantius declared, we
will “descend to the senselessness of the herds, or to the savageness of the beasts.” But when we would assume
God is without anger, then that fear would also cease to exist (ibid., 615). Supposing “no one submits to the
service of another except by compulsion,” Lactantius reasoned that, “it follows that all government exists by fear,
and fear by anger. For if anyone is not aroused against one who is unwilling to obey, it will not be possible for
him to be compelled to obedience” (ibid., 639). Authority requires the willingness to compel others to obedience.
This willingness is anger. And so, “no one can be subdued to the command of another without anger and
chastisement.” In summary, “where there shall be no anger, there will be no authority. But God has authority;
therefore also He must have anger, in which authority consists” (ibid., 640).

32
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Christianity’s claim of exclusiveness put it at odds with the fairly inclusive, all-encompassing
culture of the Roman Empire, perhaps mostly because it increased the fear of CDP among
Romans – pagan and Christian alike – and pitted one method of appeasement of the
heavens against another: celebrating the official gods versus manifestly doing no such thing
to the point of sacrilege. The Romans had one overriding religious rule, which the most
zealous among Christians were almost eager to break: do not offend our gods! Bart Ehrman,
an expert on the early history of Christianity, stressed that the fear of angering the gods was
a major reason that the obstinate refusal by the growing number of Christians to participate
in traditional religious observance became a “social and political issue,” because “when not
revered, the gods could bring communal disaster.” Persecution of Christians, Ehrman
explained, was not grounded in an imperial rejection of the religion of Christianity but in
the threat it posed to the well-being of Roman society.77
Christians were unmoved. Distinct from the pagan Romans, Christians denied any
legitimacy whatsoever to the veneration of other gods than the one they approved, in the
very narrow manner they exactly prescribed. Quoting Psalm 96:5, the sainted Christian
Justin Martyr (c.100-c.165 CE) declared insultingly that those pagan gods “are idols of
demons, and not gods.” In a sense, the Roman pagan-Christian conflict may have been
somewhat like the present-day clash between those who accept expert medical advice and the
anti-vaxxers, with the former gratefully accepting Covid vaccination as a life-saving act of
social responsibility and the latter considering it a ploy to rob them of their individual
freedoms, and, like the early Christians, continually complaining of persecution by the
authorities.
Early Christian theological writings demonstrate that pagan and Christian Romans
blamed each other for all public calamities. In a letter, dated to 177 CE, Christians living in
what is now southern France, claimed they were persecuted because the Romans “imagined
in this way they would avenge their gods,”78 and thereby presumably prevent the gods from
lashing out in anger at Roman society. The same accusations were levelled by Christian
Romans right back at their pagan rulers. The Christian writer Tertullian (c.155-c.220 CE)
made his pagan fellow-Romans squarely and solely responsible for any collective misfortune
befalling the people:

You, therefore, are the sources of trouble in human affairs; on you lies the
blame of public adversities, since you are ever attracting them – you by whom
God is despised and images are worshipped.79

Tertullian mocked Romans for thinking Christians were “the cause of every public disaster,
of every affliction with which the people are visited.” And whenever a disaster happened,
according to Tertullian, Christians would be persecuted.

33
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters
up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if
there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, ‘Away with the Christians
to the lion!’80

In 252 CE, according to an account written down decades later by Bishop Eusebius of
Caesarea (c.260/265-339 CE), a “pestilential sickness seized many provinces of the whole
world, and especially at Alexandria and in Egypt.” That year, in the words of Bishop Cyprian
of Carthage (c.210-258 CE), Demetrianus, the Roman proconsul of Africa, would have said
that “very many are complaining that to us it is ascribed that wars arise more frequently, that
plague, that famines rage, and that long droughts are suspending the showers and rains.”
Demetrianus would have alleged, according to Cyprian, that all these “misfortunes
wherewith the world is now shaken and distressed,” occur “because your gods are not
worshipped by us.”81 To the contrary, Cyprian countered, the proconsul had it completely
backwards: the empire was not punished by the pagan gods for the behavior of Christians,
but by the one God of Christianity for the behavior of the pagans. Cyprian wrote:

[I]f the rain comes down with unusual scarcity; and the earth falls into neglect
with dusty corruption; if the barren glebe hardly brings forth a few jejune and
pallid blades of grass; if the destroying hail weakens the vines; if the
overwhelming whirlwind roots out the olive; if drought stanches the
fountain; a pestilent breeze corrupts the air; the weakness of disease wastes
away man [...].

If all that happens, then know, Cyprian asserted, that “the Lord is angry and wrathful,” and
that “all these things come as the consequence of the sins that provoke them [...].”*82
Again, around the year 300, a Christian Roman writer named Arnobius (-c.330) felt
he needed to respond to another pagan accusation that the gods were “incensed” by the
transgressions of the Christians, and for that reason had brought upon the Romans
“pestilence, […] droughts, wars, famines, locusts, mice, and hailstorms, and other harmful
things.”83 In other words, Christians were responsible for provoking the gods to inflict CDP.
This is all nonsense, argued Arnobius. Calamities have always taken place, independent of
the presence of Christians. Also, why have there also been periods of peace and abundance?
Among the adversaries Arnobius was addressing may have been the pagan
philosopher Porphyry (c.234-c.305), who pointed out that Rome was suffering from an
*
Cyprian actually listed three causes of the calamities attributed to the Christians. First, Cyprian reasoned, wars,
droughts, famines, and plagues are all natural phenomena: “everything is decaying as the world grows old.”
Secondly, the bishop declared – undermining his first point – wars, famine, diseases, and pestilence simply show
that “the day of judgment is now drawing nigh.” Thirdly, according to Cyprian, they are evidence of “the anger
of an offended God,” and “are called down by your sins and deservings, [...] because your vain superstitions are
not forsaken” (“Treatise V: An Address to Demetrianus,” 1050). Given the amount of words he dedicated to it,
Cyprian appears to have considered the latter cause to be the most important or likely.

34
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

epidemic at a time when the gods of old were no longer welcome in the city. “The Christians
now wonder that the city has been for so many years attacked by disease, the [manifestation]
of Esculapius” – the god of medicine – “and the other gods no longer existing.” Implying
that the Christians had themselves to blame, Porphyry lamented that “no one any longer
derives any public benefit from the gods.”84 As an aside, Porphyry did not believe disasters
were caused because the gods were angry: disasters showed that the sacred web connecting
all had been damaged. “The gods do not harm us because they are angered,” Porphyry wrote,
“but because they are unrecognized.”85
These accusatory back-and-forth exchanges between Christians and non-Christians
in the Roman Empire do not necessarily prove that both sections of society considered every,
or any, calamity to be truly CDP for sinful or religiously negligent behavior. But they are not
likely to have been pure rhetoric either. The blame they heaped on each other would not
have been overtly absurd in their minds or that of their intended audience, showing that the
notion of CDP had taken root in the Roman Empire and was likely to continue to flourish
in Christianized Europe.

The spread of Christianity, and along with that the biblical imagining of CDP as the reason
for the downfall of paganism, was moved ahead by the aggressive Christian takeover of the
Roman Empire after the conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great (272-337), sometime
during his thirty-year reign. As Christian pontiffs strove to monopolize religion, religious
repression from the top down steeply increased and religious diversity declined to zero, with
the exception of Judaism.*
One incident exemplifying the decline of religious tolerance in the newly Christian
empire was the removal by Emperor Gratian in 382 of the ‘Altar of Victory’ from the Roman
Senate House, more precisely the altar to the goddess Victory, the Roman equivalent of the
Greek goddess Nike. The removal was a highly symbolic act since the annual oath by
Senators to the wellbeing of Rome was invested with a solemn sacredness by the presence of
the imposing altar. Its removal had been approved by Ambrose (c.339-c.397), the bishop of
Milan at the time, who was a strong believer in divine intervention, at least when it suited
him. He urged Gratian to wage war on the “barbarians,” as the emperor, he claimed, was
“sheltered, indeed, under the shield of faith.” Gratian’s uncle and co-emperor Valens had
been defeated and killed by the invading Goths in 378, showing that he had, indeed, not
been saved by the ‘shield of faith’, obviously, according to Ambrose, because he had adhered
to ‘Arianism’. This was the doctrine, defended by the priest Arius a few decades before, now
declared heretical, that at some time God the Father had existed without Christ the Son.
Ambrose celebrated the terrible death of Arius – “his bowels gushed out” – judging it to

*
Judaism was allowed to survive for several reasons. One may have been the prophecy in the Book of Revelation
(7:4-8 and 14:1-4), which was only included in the Christian Bible in the late fourth century (at the Synod of
Hippo in 393), and which states that before the ‘Second Coming’ 144,000 Jews will basically convert to
Christianity. In other word, to make Jesus’ return to Earth possible, at least 144,000 Jews would need to remain
alive and be allowed to practice their religion.

35
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

have been punishment from God, and declaring that it was “no chance manner of death,
seeing that like wickedness was visited with like punishment” with the objective of warning
other Arianists that they “might likewise undergo the same torment.”86 Ambrose’s
intolerance also showed up, together with his willingness to exploit the fear of CDP, when
he appealed to Valens’ successor Theodosius I not to punish a bishop for burning down a
Jewish synagogue, and not to fear divine wrath if he were to leave the sacred building in
ruins, arguing:

Who is to avenge the Synagogue? Christ, Whom they slew, Whom they
denied? Will God the Father avenge those who do not receive the Father,
since they have not received the Son?87

But if he were to have the Synagogue rebuilt, Ambrose suggested, God would intervene and
have the builders “consumed by fire.”88
When he was the Prefect of the city of Rome, the high functionary charged with
maintaining law and order, the pagan statesman Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402)
tried to convince Emperor Valentinian II, who had just succeeded his half-brother Gratian,
to return the Altar of Victory. Writing in 384, Symmachus first made a strong plea for
religious tolerance, stressing the essential equality of all faiths and showing himself to be in
a higher league of wisdom than his opponent Ambrose who unfortunately had the young,
13-year old emperor’s ear.

It is just that all worship should be considered as one. We look on the same
stars, the sky is common, the same world surrounds us. What difference does
it make by what pains each seeks the truth? We cannot attain to so great a
secret by one road.89

But then Symmachus ventured into the terrain more familiar and advantageous to Ambrose:
that of divine intervention. According to Symmachus, the “ancestral ceremonies” had
brought Rome good fortune in the past, which it was now at risk of losing. Voicing Rome
as if she were a person, he stated: “This worship subdued the world to my laws, these sacred
rites repelled Hannibal from the walls, and the Senones from the capitol.” But if these rituals
were discontinued, Symmachus reasoned, disaster might follow, as had happened when at
some time in the past, the financial resources of the Vestal Virgins had been
misappropriated. He recalled this case of CDP: “A general famine followed upon this, and
a poor harvest disappointed the hopes of all the provinces.” The reason for the famine,
Symmachus explained, was “the sacrilege, for it was necessary that what was refused to
religion should be denied to all.”
Ambrose replied to Symmachus that the ancient rites had not been powerful enough
apparently to prevent Hannibal from laying siege to Rome, and that Hannibal worshipped

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the same gods as the Romans, so on whose side had the gods been? Rome or Carthage?
When the Gallic tribe of the Senones, who, as the Roman historian Livy described, laid siege
to Rome in 390 BCE, tried to climb up the citadel of the city on Capitoline Hill, the geese
that were kept at the nearby Temple of Juno, and sacred to that goddess, sounded the alarm,
thus preventing the Gauls from gaining a decisive advantage. Symmachus suggested that the
pagan religion had saved Rome. But Ambrose countered, mockingly, “See what sort of
protectors the Roman temples have. Where was Jupiter at that time? Was he speaking in the
goose?”90
Jupiter speaking through a goose is hardly as ridiculous as Yahweh speaking through
a donkey – “And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass” (Numbers 22:28) – but the point
is that pagans and Christians during the early years of Christianity were telling competing
stories of CDP to defend their faith.
The 5th-century CE Roman Christian nobleman Salvian, who apparently knew the
Bible well, took the story of Achan as evidence that “very often among the people of God
the crime even of one man has been the ruin of many.”91 About that time, Augustine (354-
430), the Bishop of Hippo Regius in northern Africa, once more intent on showing the
superior might of the biblical God in comparison to the gods of the pagans, reminded
Roman Christians that “before the advent of our Redeemer” – meaning Jesus Christ – “the
human race was crushed with numberless and sometimes incredible calamities,”92 arguing
that the worship of those pagan gods had made no difference whatsoever. The fact that the
prayers of the pagans had no effect proves they were addressing the wrong gods. The real
god, the Christian God, had been the one causing all those calamities. As late as 1885, Pope
Leo XIII joined the debate over which god was punishing whom with disasters in the Roman
Empire, complaining that Christianity at the time was “commonly charged with being the
cause of the calamities that so frequently befell the State, whereas, in very truth, just
punishment was being awarded to guilty nations by an avenging God.”93

In summary, notwithstanding the many biblical references you will find in this book, it
would be a mistake to consider the idea of CDP as confined to cultures dominated by
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The roots of it are both older and more widespread; to be
found in the preceding cultures of ancient Sumer and Egypt, and the culture of ancient
Greece developing alongside Judaism. And although at present the fear appears to
predominate among Abrahamic believers, among the many cases described below of
disasters attributed to divine anger, some of it happens to be alive among adherents of other
religions. The fear of an imprecisely punishing god may well be a universal human reflex.
Once people assign responsibility for national mishaps to a heavenly source that is believed
to have a rational mind, they will also believe that it has a reason for its destructive behavior,
even if that reason is not particularly rational, as when the innocent pay for the behavior of

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the guilty.* However, it will be found that this reason tends to be imagined as either
punishment or ‘correction’ among Abrahamic believers, and as a naturally occurring
expression of cosmic disequilibrium among others.
So, independently from any biblical influence, calamities have been ascribed around
the world and throughout history to a conscious decision in heaven in response to bad
behavior on earth. And more importantly, it has not at all been deemed ungodly when such
divine punishment also landed on the heads of the relatively innocent. But with the spread
of Christianity around the world, first throughout the Roman Empire, and later everywhere
European Christians set foot, this compelling idea may well have been reinforced by the
Bible’s many tales of godly wrath, and by the concentration of that wrath in one heavenly
agent. Unlike the panicking polytheist Ionians who had to ask “What god have we
offended,”94 Christians, like the Jews before them, knew exactly to whom they needed to
address their placations.
In short, the idea of CDP has ancient roots that precede the Abrahamic religions of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But it was Christianity especially that distributed this idea
all around the globe, and together with Islam kept it alive up until the present day, aided in
large part by the tales of godly wrath in the Old Testament. For good reason, the English
author of a rather thick commentary on the Bible, Matthew Henry (1662-1714), found this
Jewish proverb appropriate: “Woe to the wicked man and woe to his neighbour.”95
Apparently intent on enhancing the Christian God’s reputation, Henry maintained too
optimistically, that God “will take care to separate between the precious and the vile, and to
hide the meek of the earth in the day of his anger.” But it would be much safer to separate
oneself in anticipation of that day of catastrophe. “It is dangerous,” Henry warned, “being
found in the company of God’s enemies, and it is our duty and interest to come out from
among them, lest we share in their sins and plagues.”96

*
Tertullian (c.155-c.220 CE), a Roman Christian writer from Carthage, astutely observed that faith in the divinity
of the elements is “compatible” with both their beneficent and maleficent influences: “thunder, and hail, and
drought, and pestilential winds, floods also, and openings of the ground, and earthquakes: these are all fairly
enough accounted gods, whether their nature becomes the object of reverence as being favorable, or of fear
because terrible” (“Ad Nationes,” Book II, 277).

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 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

3. The many different ‘rods of the wrath of God’*

Calamities of all kinds have consistently been ascribed to divine
punishment

Disasters that have been imagined as expressly punitive instead of accidental and simply
unfortunate, include earthquakes, hurricanes, attacks from abroad, floods, fires, economic
crises, and epidemics. By pestilence, war, and famine, according to Saint Bernardino, God
“will cause the earth to be ploughed and hoed with death.”97 All these unpleasant events
have been and often still are considered to be instruments used by God for correction and
punishment.
Below I will run through several types of mishap to illustrate with various examples
how each have been interpreted as forms of CDP. I will concentrate however on the religious
interpretation of the Covid pandemic. Some of the clerics and theologians who initially
considered Covid to be a form of punishment have later joined the ranks of secular
extremists in regarding the crisis as a grand conspiracy. I will treat both these perspectives –
the religious and the secular – separately. But both ways of thinking are related, and it is this
connection between CDP and conspiratorial thinking that is – as I will explain – very
relevant.
It should be noted that the examples given below paint an anecdotal picture only: it
is far from complete. Many more could have been added. However, that would not have
made the overall picture they paint increasingly more informative. It should also be kept in
mind that these examples are not representative for the entire spectrum of interpretations
of disasters seen through a religious lens. That is because what they do not show is evidence
of the existence of an opposite viewpoint: that ‘natural evils’ do not involve ‘moral evils’;
that they have a natural explanation that does not involve sin. That alternative perspective
has gained ground steadily since the Age of Enlightenment, but with theologians generally
lagging somewhat behind, and many, obviously, still not on board.
Despite these limitations, these examples do make one thing crystal clear. They
demonstrate that all throughout history there have been religious leaders who have staked
their often quite considerable reputation on the claim that a particular disaster was an
expression of divine resentment. They also show that this tendency is truly pan-Abrahamic
and beyond: representatives of all three Abrahamic religions and to an apparently far lesser
extent Hinduism and Buddhism have professed their belief in CDP. In addition, what can
be derived from these cases is the kind of sin that is generally believed to have contributed
to God’s ire and his subsequent decision to punish, and that this belief about the sins that
really matter appears to have hardly evolved. Such sins almost exclusively involve behavior
that does not do any material damage to bystanders except for the consequences of divine

*
Isidore of Seville.

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 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

anger expressed as a disaster affecting the wider community. What appears not to have
evolved at all is the reasoning behind the belief in CDP: that God need not wait for
retribution until death or the Day of Judgment, provided that mortal humans make him
sufficiently angry.

Earthquakes

Earthquakes have long been difficult to understand, and more difficult even to predict.
When “the very foundations of everything have slipped from under you,”98 as the 19th-
century English pastor Charles Spurgeon imagined, and you cannot rely on the earth itself,
what else is left to trust but the heavens? Perhaps for these reasons, earthquakes have
traditionally been ascribed to a conscious decision by God or the gods. Job, in the Old
Testament, hails God as the one who “removeth the mountains [and] overturneth them in
his anger,” and who “shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble”
(Job 9:5-6). When Jesus Christ died on the cross, the Evangelist Matthew claims “the earth
did quake, and the rocks rent” (27:51). The 6th-century Christian chronicler Malalas
consistently referred to earthquakes as ‘theomenia’, meaning ‘wrath of God’. * For instance,
he reported that in the year 69 CE “Nikomedeia a great city, the metropolis of Bithynia,
suffered the anger of god,” meaning it was destroyed by an earthquake. And around 305 CE,
according to Malalas, “the city Salamias of Cyprus suffered from divine anger, a large part of
it being submerged in the sea by an earthquake.”99 That godly anger must have had a reason.
Looking back on the deaths of 250,000 people in Antioch in 526 CE by a miraculous
combination of calamitous earthquakes, showers of fire, and thunderbolts – also described
by Malalas – the 17th-century Anglican vicar John Trapp (1601-1669) pointed to God as the
cause of these events, and blamed the victims for their “horrible heresies and
blasphemies.”100
In 1348, between 5,000 and 10,000 people died in northern Italy and Carinthia as
a result of the so-called ‘Friuli earthquake’. It was apparently God’s will, wrote judge
Guglielmo Cortusi (-1361) from Padua. After first “having struck the Tartars, the Turks and
all of the tribes of the infidels,” Cortusi noticed that now God had decided to judge the
Christians.101 In other words, the earthquake was a means of CDP. For which crime God
would have wanted to punish the Italians and Carinthians is unclear. Interestingly, the
Franciscan monk Johannes of Winterthur (c.1300->1348) described the same earthquake,
and the simultaneous emergence of the plague as both “evil precursors of the maelstroms
and storms of the last days,” meaning the destructive portents of the End Times.102 So, unlike
Cortusi who saw the earthquake as a form of punishment, Johannes interpreted it as a
harbinger of worse to come.

*
The word ‘θεομηνία’ consists of the words ‘θεο’ meaning ‘god’ and ‘μήνις’ meaning ‘wrath’.

40
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Earthquakes could cause a lot of nervousness. When the English coast of Dover
experienced a small earthquake in 1580, leading to the deaths of two individuals, Queen
Elizabeth’s (1533-1603) ‘privy council’ ordered “all parish churches and housholdes
throughout the realme” to pray and so “avert and turne Gods wrath from us, threatened by
the late terrible earthquake.”103 It had not been that terrible, yet fearful enough to make
urgent calls for repentance.
In 1692 the Jamaican city of Port-Royal, then ruled by the British, was completely
destroyed by an earthquake, killing over 2,000 of its inhabitants, and sinking it below the
tumultuous sea. It is now a sensational scuba diving destination. Assuming God to be the
cause of this calamity, a contemporary Englishman observed that “the Lord spoke terrible
things in righteousness,”104 calling on his countrymen to “hear the Voice of his Rod, and
fear and forsake our Transgressions.”105 The Port-Royal earthquake made quite an
impression: in 1750, an English poet wrote in reference to what had occurred an ocean away,
and half a century before:

Jamaica shou’d be shook! a Land

Like Sodom, all impure!
Heav’n cannot let that Island stand
One Moment quite secure!106

What made the Jamaican port town deserving of God’s wrath? The answer should have been
obvious: Port-Royal harbored pirates in British service who attacked ships sailing under
French and Spanish flags. Also, Jamaica kept thousands of slaves from West-Africa. So for a
religious leader desiring to find a justification for God using an earthquake to kill and
destroy, stealing people’s freedom and possessions should have been an easy pick. But an
English reverend on the island, convinced that it was “[w]ickedness, which brought this upon
us,” could only name “Whoring and Drinking,” and “Cursing and Swearing” to bolster his
claim.107 Instead of reproaching the victims for how they had obtained their wealth, they
were blamed for how they spent it, apart from being vulgar.
The biggest natural catastrophe in recorded European history occurred in 1755.108 A
most disastrous earthquake struck the Portuguese port of Lisbon, followed by a tsunami and
an even worse fire, causing the deaths of at least 15,000 people, but perhaps three times that
many,109 destroying, according to one historical economist, 33 churches, 54 convents, 6
hospitals, 28 palaces, and 15,504 dwellings, all in all ruining 85 percent of the city’s
buildings, and evaporating almost half of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.110
“Know then, O Lisbon,” the Portuguese Jesuit inquisitor Gabriel Malagrida (1689-
1761) proclaimed, that the cause of the destruction was “only our intolerable sins.”111
Malagrida went on to invoke the prophet Isaiah who foretold that Egypt would one day “be
afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts, which he shaketh
over it” (Isaiah 19:16).112 Like this prophesied future Egypt, Portugal shook with fear for the

41
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Lord’s shaking hand. Even the gentiles, Malagrida remarked, “teach that earthquakes have
no other cause than divine indignation.”113 What sin made God angry with the Portuguese,
according to Malagrida? Not being slave traders extraordinaire, but “[t]he theaters, the music,
the most immodest dances, the most obscene comedies, the entertainment,”114 and
“atheism.”115
More recently, the American Baptist minister and media mogul Pat Robertson (1930-
2023) explained the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which killed over 300,000 people, by
claiming that the black slaves brought to that island once “swore a pact to the devil” in order
to be freed and have their new land become independent. And “ever since,” Robertson
observed, “they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”116 In other words, God would
punish hundreds of thousands of Haitians because of what their ancestors had supposedly
done two centuries before. While Robertson’s words met with outrage, and he quickly
backtracked,* his reasoning is an Abrahamic practice. Indeed, in the nation of Haiti, which
is strongly Christian despite Robertson’s devilish association, LGBT individuals are
themselves blamed by their fellow-Haitians of inviting natural disasters such as
earthquakes.117 The Catholic pastor of the small town of Windischgarsten in central Austria,
Gerhard Maria Wagner, said he did not know if the Haitian earthquake was a punishment
from God, but he did find it “interesting, that in Haiti 90 percent is a follower of the cult of
voodoo,” a claim that is highly exaggerated.118 Five years before, Canadian Catholic political
activist John-Henry Westen commented that New Orleans “is also renowned for occult
practices, particularly voodoo,” suggesting God had taken offense of this and had therefore
decided to cause Hurricane Katrina.119 How much more reason would God have had to
punish the notorious voodooist Haitians for the same offense? Shortly after Robertson and
Wagner made the connection between the Haitian earthquake and the supposedly
unchristian behavior of its victims and their ancestors, the Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam
Kazem Seddiqi alleged that earthquakes in general are caused by adultery.120 The same point
was made by the Indonesian Islamic preacher Khalid Basalamah, who related that Aishah,
the third of the Prophet Muhammad’s eleven wives, said, “If extramarital sex is so common,
if many people get drunk, and if they are drawn to music instead of remembering God, Allah
will be jealous and tell the Earth to shake.”121 When you fall victim to a disaster, another
Indonesian Islamic preacher, named Habib Bahar bin Smith, said, “ask not why Allah sends
us earthquakes or tsunamis or floods. Ask ourselves what sins we have done.”122
But the attribution of earthquakes to divine anger is not limited to cultures affected
by the Abrahamic religions. The example of two earthquakes in Japan shows that adherents

*
Robertson had his spokesman declare that he “never stated that the earthquake was God’s wrath” (Roslan,
“Statement”). Indeed, not with those words. But he did express quite clearly his opinion that the Haitians were
accursed because of what their ancestors had done in the past, and that the earthquake was a consequence of
that curse. Robertson said: “They got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you
will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Okay. It’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French
out. The Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the
other” (Pat Robertson, January 13, 2010, on ‘The 700 Club’, Christian Broadcasting Network; Falwell Speaks
about WTC Disaster).

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to the Japanese Shinto and Buddhist religions are also receptive to CDP as an explanation
of unfortunate events on a national scale. On September 1, 1923, an earthquake and
consequent firestorm killed more than 120,000 people in the Japanese cities of Tokyo and
Yokohama. This disaster became known as the ‘Great Kantō Earthquake’. Most surprising
to current historian Charles Schencking is the fact that

[S]o many [Japanese] individuals from diverse classes, profession, and

ideological backgrounds all found common ground in suggesting that the
earthquake was a heavenly wake-up call or an act of divine punishment.123

Not only were they largely in agreement about the cause of the calamity, there was also
consensus about the reason for the underlying divine anger. Schencking found that “virtually
every commentator used the earthquake to admonish Japanese, especially urbanites, for
leading lax, hedonistic, luxury-minded, sexually unrestrained, and material-driven consumer
lifestyles.”124 To illustrate the general feeling that nature itself had taken offense at the
“increased frivolity, decadence, and hedonism in Tokyo,” Schencking described a magazine
cover that year titled “Catfish Rectifies the Evil Trends in Society.” In Japan, since the 17th
century, giant catfish, with their typically long barbels, have been associated with earthquakes
and floods.125 In the print, the giant animal throws a black cloak emblazoned with the phrase
“fortitude and earnestness” over a supposedly frivolous woman wearing a dress covered with
the words “vanity and ostentation.”126
Referring to the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami that ravaged parts of Japan
and killed more than 20,000 people, known as the ‘Great East Japan Earthquake’, South
Korean Pentecostal minister David Yonggi Cho (1936-2021) said that “the Japanese people
shun God” and follow idol worship, atheism, and materialism,” and for that reason, he said,
“it makes me wonder if this was not God’s warning to them.”127 At the same time, the then-
governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara (1932-2022), who was reportedly a follower of
Buddhism and Shintoism,128 invoked the concept of ‘tenbatsu’, meaning ‘heavenly
punishment’,129 when he said that the disaster was a divine response to the Japanese “selfish
greed.”130 Following Ishihara’s remarks, a Japanese professor of Buddhism, Fumihiko Sueki,
recalled that the Medieval Buddhist reformer Nichiren (1222–1282) had made a prophecy
that “should not be seen as folly.” Nichiren had warned that, in Sueki’s words, “if the country
errs it will be abandoned by the kami and buddhas, thereby inciting great calamities.” (Kami
are various deities worshiped in Shintoism.) And for this reason, Sueki explained, “it cannot
necessarily be said that it is inappropriate” to interpret the 2011 disaster as ‘tenbatsu’ as
Ishihara had done.131 Ishihara and Sueki thus proved that the idea of divine retribution is
not exclusively Abrahamic.* Cho, Ishihara, and Sueki all met with severe criticism and were

*
Another example proving that the fear of CDP extends beyond the Abrahamic faiths is the already quoted text
Work and Days by Hesiod. Yet one more example, from Hinduism, is circulating on the Internet, but with an
unclear reference to the original source. It is a quote attributed to an evil demon named Kali. He once would

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pressed to issue apologies to the victims.132 But since Ishihara continued to be a popular
politician, this may, according to one expert on Japanese religion, “suggest that many in
Japan tacitly share his belief that Japanese society, on some level, deserves to be punished for
its sins.”133 So far, I have not come across studies that link the popular interpretation of the
Great Kantō Earthquake to that of the Great East Japan Earthquake.
From the other side of the world, Roberto de Mattei, a current-day Italian historian
who is rather committed to traditional Catholicism, also suggested that the earthquake in
Japan was God inflicting punishment. Making a distinction between “personal and collective
faults,” he argued that God will judge the former in the hereafter, and the latter in this
world: “while God rewards and punishes in eternity, it is on earth that he rewards or
punishes the nations.”134 De Mattei believed he was proven right in 2016, when much closer
to home an earthquake in central Italy killed 293 individuals. A Dominican friar and
professor of theology, named Giovanni Cavalcoli, commented that “the earthquake could
be a call, a punishment.” Cavalcoli pointed at the recent legalization of civil unions for same-
sex couples. “Are gay unions a sin? Of course,” he said, explaining, “A homosexual is a person
who sins against nature. What are two men together? Sinners.”135
While the Vatican condemned the priest for being insensitive to the suffering of the
victims, Cavalcoli merely continued a church tradition of decoding disasters as signs of
God’s displeasure. In defense of Cavalcoli, De Mattei was quick to point at the story of
Sodom and Gomorrah, and argued that it could be no coincidence that at that time Italy
was also feeling a “moral earthquake”: the signing into law of homosexual unions.*136

Volcanoes

Historically, there are about 500 volcanoes globally that have erupted in front of human
witnesses. The fertile soil that volcanic material in time turns into has attracted people to

have told King Parikshit, a character in the epic Mahabharata, who would have lived around 1,000 BCE, that he,
Kali, is “embellished with sublime merits.” According to the story, the age he would dominate, the so-called Kali
Yuga, he contrasted favorably with three other eras or yugas coming before his: “During the Satya Yuga if any
one inadvertently committed a wrong deed the entire kingdom had to bear the punishment. During Treta, if any
one committed a wrong deed, the people of that town had to bear the punishment. During Dwapar Yuga, if
anyone happened to commit a wrong deed, the entire family had to bear the punishment, but in Kali Yuga, he
shall only bear the punishment who has committed the wrong deed. I am not concerned about anyone else”
(“Four Yugas in Hinduism”). So, fascinatingly, the inclination to inflict CDP is presented as an undesirable trait
for a god to have. Somehow the least favorable god is also the one who dismisses CDP as proper godly behavior.
A similar notion is expressed in “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” One god – transcribed as ‘La’ by Kovacs and believed
to be ‘Ea’ by Thompson – rebuked the god Enlil for causing the Flood. In Kovacs’ translation, this god states:
“Charge the violation to the violator, charge the offense to the offender”; in Thompson’s translation: “Visit his
sin on the sinner. Visit his guilt on the guilty”; in Wallis Budge’s translation: “He who is sinful, on him lay his
sin. He who transgresseth, on him lay his transgression.”
*
The main biblical proof of God’s disapproval of homosexual behavior is the destruction of Sodom, the city that
gave its name to the word ‘sodomy’, where the common crimes leading to its destruction, according to the New
Testament, were “fornication, and going after strange flesh” (Jude 1:7). One of the reasons God approved of King
Asa of Judah, and did not punish the Judeans collectively, which he otherwise would have done, was because the
king “took away the sodomites out of the land” (1 Kings 15:12).

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live on their slopes despite the obvious dangers of explosive eruptions and the hazards
following suit, like lava streams, rains of glassy material (tephra falls), water flows
(jökulhlaups), and mud flows (lahars). It is a bit of a cliché that volcanoes, being both
sustainers and takers of life,* have been accorded divine attributes. They are often considered
to be dwelling places of the gods, or are themselves godly manifestations, and they therefore
naturally invite regular worship from those living in their shadow. For instance, the name of
the Dieng plateau on central Java, situated between a number of volcanoes, naturally means
‘abode of the gods’: gods, mostly of Hindu and Buddhist mythology, who are honored by
hundreds of little temples scattered around.137 Evidenced by the ruinous state of most of
these temples, Islam has replaced the older religion – or rather covered Hinduism and
Buddhism with a new layer of religious meanings – and in the shadow of Dieng’s volcanoes,
Islamic religious leaders have been observed who claim that eruptions are divine warnings
about the sins of drinking alcohol and prostitution.138
Alcohol has also been claimed to be at least one of the sins that caused God to punish
an American bootlegger, who “cussed incessantly,”139 named Harry R. Truman (not the U.S.
president) with a pyroclastic flow following the eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980. 140
That volcano had lain dormant for more than a century, but inside the mountain pressure
had built up to such an extent that when it finally fractured from top to bottom like a zipper,
it erupted in a rare lateral direction, exploding the entire northwestern side with the force
of 500 Hiroshima bombs.
Fifty years before, Truman, a World War I veteran had taken to the wilderness
surrounding the volcano to escape from his gangster bootlegging competitors and had never
left it, being obstinate to the point of defying authorities and refusing to obey the order to
evacuate his lodge on the shore of Spirit Lake when, a month before, the mountain had
shown signs that an eruption was to be expected. He explained, “That mountain and that
lake is a part of Truman and I’m a part of it.” He also said, “You couldn’t pull me out with
a mule team.” Although he did not know his actual birth date, he is assumed to have died
at the age of 83.141
Thirty years later and halfway around the world, in 2010, Mount Merapi on the main
Indonesian island of Java erupted, killing an unusually large number of 350 people. Among
the victims was another 83-year old, who died in much the same way as Truman. This
Javanese man, affectionately known as Mbah Maridjan, also refused to flee, but unlike
Truman for the sake of his professional duty. His burnt body was found in the traditional
Islamic prayer position, testifying to the fact that he had tried to fulfill his role as ‘Juru Kunci’
– or ‘keymaker’ – of Mount Merapi to the very end, guarding the gate between the forces of
the volcano – or perhaps rather the spirits that inhabit it – and the palace of his employer,
the Sultan of Yogyakarta, 30 kilometers down below.

*
For a discussion of the dual understanding of volcanic eruptions as both positive and negative, see Morin and
Lavigne, “Institutional and Social Responses.”

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The Juru Kunci of Merapi – each volcano on Java has one apparently – is tasked to
perform the annual ‘Labuhan’ sacrificial ceremony at the volcano to bring offerings to it,
much of it provided by the Sultan, and thereby prevent lava from streaming down. It is,
according to researchers from the University of Yogyakarta, “a form of local wisdom as an
effort to mitigate and reduce the disaster risk.”142 More specifically, they confirm that the
objective of the ceremony is to minimize the risk of volcanic eruptions by bringing offerings:
“Labuhan is […] intended to ask God for salvation and apologize for the sins committed in
previous years […].”143 But which god? Traditionally, a mountain spirit called Sapu Jagad is
supposed to take possession of the offerings.144
This makes it a rather risky tradition on an island where almost everybody is
nominally Muslim. In a conversation with Anna Gade, a United States professor of
environmental studies, Mbah Maridjan’s son and successor, Surakso Hargo Asihono (or Mas
Asih for short), seemed to go out of his way to stress that the Labuhan tradition does not
conflict with Islam. Gade noticed that he clarified “emphatically that the purpose of the
ritual is not to worship or petition the mountain, or its spirit, since these are the creations
of Allah the Creator, who Alone is worthy of praise.” It is performed, he maintained not as
“religion” but as “culture.”145 The new Juru Kunci had good reason to avoid ruffling
fundamentalist feathers, as an incident showed on the slopes of another volcano, nearby
Mount Semeru, in December 2021, when a Muslim fanatic disturbed the offerings made to
that mountain’s guardian spirit (see chapter 4).
What is perhaps most interesting here is the fact that the ritual performed by the
Juru Kunci is seen as a way to maintain harmony with nature by interacting with it through
prayers, meditation, and so on, as a reflection of the idea that a disaster is caused by a
disturbance of that harmony. The Yogyakarta researchers stated in trying to explain the
Labuhan ritual: “The existence of Javanese people is fused with nature, so that the two are
inseparable.”146 This denotes a strong difference between the Abrahamic concept of CDP
and that of certain traditional, non-Abrahamic beliefs: both humanity and the divine are so
much a part of nature that the distinction between an ‘act of God’ and an ‘act of nature’ is
completely meaningless, and ‘sinfulness’ comes to be seen as an ‘act against nature’.
Traditional Javanese do believe that when Mount Merapi erupts, its spirit, or the god that
this spirit is an exponent of, has become angry with humans, but the kind of behavior that
triggers this anger is what disturbs nature. A local said, “Maybe the [2010 eruption] was
punishment for our mistakes,” explaining, “We used to go to the volcano to hunt birds and
cut down trees.”147
This concern for the maintenance of a natural equilibrium is far removed from the
moralizing explanations offered by some Muslim leaders in Indonesia for the occurrence of
natural disasters. In 2009, an Islamist politician, Tifatul Sembiring, ascribed a multitude of
sins to the recent massive earthquake in Padang on the island of Sumatra. In the words of
an Indonesian researcher, Sembiring alleged that God had caused the hugely destructive
earthquake and the deaths of more than 1,000 people to “adultery, the production and

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distribution of home-made porn videos, intra-family killings, corruption, and the wide
circulation of TV programmes that did not comply with Islamic teachings on covering parts
of female bodies.”148

Storms and hurricanes

Storms and hurricanes form another category of large-scale natural events that conservative
theologians tend to interpret as manifestations of God’s dissatisfaction. “All hurricanes are
acts of God, because God controls the heavens,” the American televangelist John Hagee said
in 2006.149 Acts of godly anger to be more precise, for a wide variety of sinful reasons.
One cause consistently attributed to the occurrence of storms and hurricanes in the
United States is foreign policy that diverges from the perceived interests of the state of Israel.
“It seems normal for a natural disaster to strike the U.S. when America’s leaders publicly
express support for the division of Israel,” wrote Daymond Duck, a retired Methodist pastor
from Tennessee.150 An American born-again ‘Jewish Christian’, named Geri Ungurean, who
believes she has “heard from the Lord that I have been called to write in these last days,” 151
has linked a long list of calamities to any U.S. policy that she construed as critical of Israel’s
government. Disasters, according to Ungurean, “historically follow talk of dividing God’s
land,” meaning granting a portion of that land to Palestinians. She pointed out that the so-
called ‘Perfect Storm’, which pounded the northeastern coast of North America at the end
of October 1991, coincided with negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian
governments at the Madrid Peace Conference. It was because U.S. President George H.W.
Bush opened the conference with the supposedly Israel-unfriendly message that “territorial
compromise is essential for peace,” Ungurean alleged, that the ‘Perfect Storm’ also hit Bush’s
‘Summer White House’ in Kennebunkport, Maine, causing major damage to the property.
Thirteen people were killed immediately by the storm on land and sea, but what they had
done to anger God, Ungurean leaves us to wonder.152
For Ungurean, more proof that God frowned on the peace efforts was delivered in
August 1992, when Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Florida almost immediately after
the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators reconvened in Washington D.C. Hurricanes and
tornadoes hit the United States in 1998, 1999, and 2003, all, according to Ungurean, related
to U.S. policy in the Middle East. Lastly, when the last of the Jewish settlers were forcefully
evacuated from Gaza on August 23, 2005, much to the chagrin of conservative Israelis and
Americans, Hurricane Katrina started to form over the Bahamas. Again, to Ungurean, this
was evidence that God disapproved and held the United States collectively responsible.153
With regard to Hurricane Katrina, others observed disaster-provoking behavior
closer to its actual victims. Right after it had devastated the southern coast of the United
States, a State Senator in neighboring Alabama, Hank Erwin, claimed he was not surprised
that most of its 1,833 dead victims154 were killed in New Orleans, since, he explained, that

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city and “the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and
wickedness,” and that is “the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of
God.”155 “Sadly,” Erwin acknowledged, “innocents suffered along with the guilty.” But that
is to be expected, he added. Conveying his belief in the phenomenon of CDP, he said, “Sin
always brings suffering to good people as well as the bad.”156 In a later interview, Erwin
expressed the same conviction: “the sins of a few can affect the innocence of many.”157
In November 2005, the small-town Catholic pastor Wagner reported to his Austrian
congregation that Katrina was clearly a heavenly response to the “indescribable” immorality
of the city of New Orleans. He noted that only two days later a gay pride parade was to be
held, with an expected 125,000 participants, in order “to celebrate sin.”158 What Wagner
referred to was the six-day annual ‘Southern Decadence’ event, organized by local members
of the LGBT community, and described by an ultra-conservative critic as a “celebration of
debauchery.”159 More evidence for the hand of God in Hurricane Katrina was Wagner’s
claim that it destroyed “not only all nightclubs and brothels, but also all five (!) abortion
clinics.”160 The news of the thwarted gay event in New Orleans apparently made the rounds
in international Christian conservative circles around that time, because a protestant
politician in Northern Ireland, Maurice Mills, simultaneously made the same observation as
Wagner had done that Katrina “occurred just two days prior to the annual […] Southern
Decadence Festival [...].” Mills commented: “Surely, this is a warning to nations where such
wickedness is increasingly promoted and practiced.”161
In the United States, Hagee was also convinced that the primary sinners attracting
the hurricane were the city’s gay community. Echoing Wagner and Mills, Hagee declared in
a radio interview:

I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and
they were recipients of the judgment of God for that. [T]here was to be a
homosexual parade there on the Monday that [Hurricane] Katrina came. And
the promise of that parade was that it would was [sic] going to reach a level of
sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other gay pride parades. So
I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing.162

It seems most CDP-advocates in the United States favor supposed sexual sins over other
reasons to explain hurricanes. When Hurricane Isaac threatened to disrupt the convention
of the Republican Party in Tampa, Florida, in 2012, and to delay the nomination of Mitt
Romney as the party’s presidential candidate, Pat Robertson said it was “God’s wrath”
directed at secretly gay conservative politicians. Robertson condemned the “Republicans
who are getting nookie on the down low, marrying just to keep up a façade, or ordering up
gay prostitutes more often than they call Dominoes.”163
Some Jewish religious leaders would agree with their conservative Christian
colleagues that hurricanes are all the gays’ fault. The 2012 Hurricane Sandy, which came on

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the heels of Isaac and killed 233 individuals, was described by American Rabbi Noson Leiter
as “divine justice” for the state of New York legalizing gay marriage the year before. Even the
flood at the time of Noah, according to Leiter, was “triggered by the recognition of same-
gender marriages.” It would make sense then that the hurricane victims included a
disproportionate number of gay or gay-friendly people, but there is no reason to suppose
that it did. Showing his CDP convictions, the hurricane, according to Leiter, “is certainly a
message” that we are all recipients of “divine justice”: “not just the bad people but the good
people have to learn that the Lord does watch what we do.”164 What the ‘good people’ need
to learn, Leiter seemed to argue, is that when God strikes, they sometimes suffer together
with the bad. Leiter’s colleague Rabbi Yehuda Levin remarked that “G-d multitasks,” because
he did not only send Hurricane Sandy, but also at the same time an “earthquake in
California,” and a near-tsunami in Alaska and Hawaii.165
The number and diversity of disasters that year led ‘chaplain’ John McTernan, the
Evangelical-Christian founder of Pennsylvania-based ‘Defend and Proclaim the Faith
ministries’, to comment that “the Holy God of Israel is systematically destroying America
right before our eyes.”166 Apart from the legalization of same-sex marriage – a nation that
“legalizes sin […] falls under the direct judgment of the Holy God of Israel” – McTernan
blamed abortion, and “pressuring Israel to divide God’s covenant land” for bringing “severe
judgment” on the United States.167 Showing the Abrahamic width of the belief in CDP, the
Egyptian Islamic cleric Wagdi Ghoneim weighed in, declaring on Twitter that Hurricane
Sandy was “revenge by the Lord,” specifically for a short film that had been made by a Coptic
American, born in Egypt, with the express purpose of upsetting Muslims by denigrating the
prophet Muhammad.168
On November 17, 2013, the United States experienced one of the worst tornado
outbreaks in history, with at least ten people dead and damage worth 1.6 billion dollars. The
state of Illinois was hit especially hard with some 25 tornadoes on that one day, two of which
falling within the gravest tornado category. Just a few days before, the Illinois House of
Representatives had passed legislation to open up state-sanctioned marriage to same-sex
couples. Of course, the timing of the tornadoes was no coincidence, observed some of the
ultra-conservatives who had been at the forefront of defending the exclusivist notion of
marriage. Far-right U.S. activist Robert E. Ritchie noticed that Illinois was hit by tornadoes
“after the passing of the same sex ‘marriage’ bill.”169
Since 1996, Ritchie leads the ‘America Needs Fatima’ campaign, under the auspices
of the very conservative Catholic ‘American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family,
and Property’. Also known as TFP, this international organization, of which the ‘American
Society’ is a national chapter, was founded in Brazil in 1960 to bolster traditional society
against socialist incursions on private property and divisions between social classes, and
possibly to restore the Brazilian monarchy.170 The original TFP organization has been
described by a Brazilian journalist as having “historical connections with big farmers and a
record of anti-environmentalist activism that has become connected politically with the far-

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right in Brazil.”171 TFP is also unapologetically and deliberately elitist, and for that reason
has become popular with some of Europe’s highest nobility.* To emphasize their adherence
to traditional values, the mostly male members of TFP occasionally engage in a preposterous
public spectacle, deliberately projecting an archaic image, wearing suits and ties, with red
sashes attached to their shoulders, blowing trumpets, beating drums, playing bagpipes, and
waving bright red banners emblazoned with a golden lion seemingly copied from a medieval
coat of arms. It is all supposed to be full of symbolism. “The lion faces the left (liberalism
and communism)”† and “the upright and ornamental tail defies the vulgar and egalitarian
traits of the Revolution” (the French?), TFP’s website explains.172 The claim that a lot of
thinking went into its design makes one aspect of the lion particularly odd. Demonstrating
TFP’s extreme prudishness, the obviously male lion is missing its genitals, as if a character
in a Disney cartoon.
TFP and its many offshoots are firmly in the CDP-camp of Catholicism. The
‘America Needs Fatima’ campaign spreads CDP ideas, which it claims to derive from the
Fatima apparition, such as “[w]ars are nothing but punishments for the sins of the world,”173
and “the coronavirus is a punishment for our sins.”174 In 1997, De Mattei, the same as the
one who ascribed earthquakes in 2011 and 2016 to the wrath of God, wrote a biography of
TFP’s Brazilian founder Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908-1995). De Mattei considers himself
to have been both Oliveira’s friend and disciple.175
Echoing De Mattei’s explanation of CDP that distinguishes between the sins of
individuals and those of larger groups, like nations, Ritchie’s fellow TFP-member Luiz Sérgio
Solimeo affirmed that the November 2013 tornadoes in Illinois had everything to do with
the institution of same-sex marriage. While an individual ‘sinner’ should expect to be
punished in the afterlife, in addition of whatever punishment may befall that person during
his or her life, “nations, states or regions, since they do not pass into eternity, [...] are always
punished on this earth.” It would be impossible, according to Solimeo, for a catastrophe to
occur without God’s “knowledge and permission,” and so it stands to reason that the 2013
tornadoes were God’s means of punishing Illinois.176
Regarding divine punishments, Solimeo stressed the “need to know how to discern
them in catastrophes, [and] to relate them with present sins.”177 Occasionally, religious
commenters who observe CDP in catastrophes concede that identifying the punishable sin
in the punishment is difficult and that any conclusions they draw are rather doubtful. Like
McTernan, possibly referring to his government’s policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, televangelist Jim Bakker alleged that the 2016 Hurricane Matthew, which killed 29
individuals, had “something to do with what Obama did.”178 For what sin God sent

*
Like Paul-Wladimir Duke of Oldenburg, who, among many other functions across the TFP spectrum, is the
chairman of the affiliated Dutch foundation Civitas Christiana, which is just another local offshoot that actively
spreads hatred of LGBT. His cousin, Beatrix von Storch, is a member of the German parliament for the far-right
Alternative für Deutschland.
†
This shows the anonymous writer’s heraldic ignorance. In heraldry, what is left to the spectator is actually the
right-hand side of the shield.

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Hurricane Harvey, killing more than 100 people in 2017, Bakker did not profess to know,
but that it was “from God” and “a judgment on America somehow,” he was certain.179

Hail, fire, flooding, and drought

Other natural disasters in God’s toolkit include hail storms, fires, floods, and droughts.
When John Chrysostom, the archbishop of Constantinople, died in 407, according to his
13th-century colleague, the archbishop of Genoa, Jacobus de Varagine (c.1230-1298), “a
strong hail” fell on the city, “which did much harm.” Jacobus wrote that “then all the people
said it was done by wrath of God for the wrongful exiling and condemning of the holy man,”
meaning Chrysostom. This was furthermore demonstrated, Jacobus added, “by the death of
the empress, his [Chrysostom’s] greatest enemy, who died the fourth day after the hail.”180
So, because the queen had treated the archbishop of Constantinople wrongly, God decided
to do “much harm” to the imperial city and its mostly innocent inhabitants.
Fires in 1115 and 1117 destroyed much of the city of Florence, and “not without
cause and judgment of God,” wrote the chronicler Giovanni Villani (c.1276-1348). What
had angered God? According to Villani, “the city was evilly corrupted by heresy, among
others by the sect of the epicureans, through the vice of licentiousness and gluttony […].”181
Other “wicked sins,” which Villani blamed for the fires, included the facts that “the
Florentines had become very proud by reason of the victories they had gotten over their
neighbours; and some among them were very ungrateful towards God […].”182
In 1541, three days of torrential rain spooked Guatemala’s newly constructed capital
of Santiago de los Caballeros. It also caused the crater of a volcano overlooking the city to
fill up. At last, dramatically, part of the crater wall collapsed, and a stream of mud, rocks and
trees descended on the town, killing some 700 Spaniards and 600 Mayans. Among the dead
was Beatriz de la Cueva (1498/1500-1541) who, only a few days before, had assumed the
position of governor of Guatemala after the death of her husband, Pedro de Alvarado. This
made her the first female ruler in colonial America to the dismay of several of her more
traditional contemporaries. Some of the latter considered the flood to be a sign that God
disapproved of her “blasphemous” presumption at assuming the high position of governor,
and that he had caused the disaster as a form of punishment.183 How unfortunate that the
other 1,300 victims happened to be in the way.
In 1677, a gigantic fire took just 24 hours to destroy a third of the North-German
city of Rostock. Local pastor Remberto Sandhagen wrote that the fire had such power, that
one may well call it “a fire from the Lord, which the Lord God had sent in his anger to
destroy Rostock.” Sandhagen did not explain what the city’s inhabitants had done to
provoke God to such destruction.184
On September 29, 2009, right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, some 45,000 feet
below the surface, the seabed began to shake with enormous violence. The heavy 8.1

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magnitude earthquake could be felt 120 miles to the West on the island of Upolu in the
independent state of Samoa. A quarter of an hour after the shaking had stopped, a tsunami
that had been generated by the earthquake hit the southern coastline of the island with a
series of waves up to three meters high. The waves and subsequent flood destroyed houses
and killed 146 Samoans, who were caught by surprise, making the tsunami the deadliest in
history for the region.185
Samoa has a population of over 200,000 people who are for 98 percent Christian,186
with the majority belonging to a protestant denomination. In the 19th century, missionaries
from Britain, Germany and the United States had successfully replaced the local supreme
god Tagaloa with the Judeo-Christian Yahweh. Teaching the fear of CDP seems to have
required little convincing because it was already an aspect of Samoans’ religious imagination.
It was apparently strong enough before the arrival of the missionaries for some of the original
interpretation of CDP to be maintained. A Samoan Methodist minister wrote in his recent
dissertation that a “fear of the ancestors and the gods intervening with curse and punishment
are still felt by the people today.”187
So naturally, a sizable number of Samoans considered the tsunami a form of divine
punishment, even to the point that it seems to have been the dominant popular view.188 A
Norwegian anthropologist, Sanne Bech Holmgaard, found that those Samoans who did so
tended to give just one explanation for God’s anger: the fact that some of their compatriots
had made a habit of relaxing on the beach on Sundays. This would have been a violation of
the third of the Ten Commandments that God had given to Moses, the one to “remember
the Sabbath” (Exodus 20:8). A young man from one of the most heavily hit villages explained
that the tsunami was a lesson for the tourist industry: “On Sunday they must keep to God
[...].” An elderly woman from the same town attributed the deaths to divine punishment
because some islanders had made a practice of having fun on a Sunday. Referring to families
who would come from the Samoan capital Apia, at a time when they should have been in
church, she said,

they come over here on Sunday and have an entertainment, a barbecue, a

band making lots of noises without singing a hymn from God. [...] They know
God, they know Sunday, this is the one day for them to go to church, but
they take Sundays to entertain themselves over here. That’s why I say, it’s a
punishment for those people.189

Not quite as deadly, but still upsetting to many, were a number of heavy floods plaguing the
South of England in the winter of 2013-2014. For weeks, strong winds and heavy rainfall
had caused several rivers to swell and overrun their banks. A local politician, councilor David
Silvester of Henley-on-Thames, the site of the annual royal regatta, blamed then British
Prime Minister David Cameron for the bad weather: “It is his fault that large swaths of the
nation have been afflicted by storms and floods.” How could the prime minister have been

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responsible? Silvester reportedly said that he had warned Cameron personally of

“repercussions” if gay marriage were introduced in the country.190 In a local paper, Silvester
wrote: “Since the passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, the nation has been beset
by serious storms and floods.” And this would clearly be God’s doing, because, Silvester
explained, “everything a nation does is weighed on the scale of divine approval or
disapproval.”191 For his remarks, Silvester was immediately ridiculed and disciplined, and his
party (UKIP) quickly suspended his membership. A pious Englishman came to his defense,
writing that “our nation is suffering under the judgement of God because of the ungodly
and sinful laws that are being enacted in Parliament […].” Unless these laws are not replaced
by the law of God, he continued, “we can expect even more disasters; for God will not be
mocked.”192
The extreme opposite of flooding was experienced by Australians in their summer of
2019-2020. As Australia’s government research organization CSIRO explained, “record low
rainfall and record high temperatures” contributed to bushfires that burned more than 10
million hectares193 and 3,500 houses, and killed 34 people and more than a billion
mammals, birds, and reptiles.194 It was a consequence of climate change, and, most
unfortunately, also a further contributor to it.195 Australian professional rugby player and
occasional preacher Israel Folau was quick to explain in church that the fact that the
bushfires coincided with legislation in Australia of same-sex marriage and abortion was not
a coincidence; “it’s okay now to murder and kill infants, unborn children,” he said. “God is
speaking to you guys, Australia,” Folau warned. “You need to repent.”196

Violence

Threats of violence by barbarian foreigners are yet another category of calamity linked to
divine justice. In the 5th century CE, the Christian Salvian raged against the unconverted
Romans in Africa. “[A]lmost the whole population is evil,” he claimed.197 And so, God had
no choice but to send barbarians, including Goths and Vandals from across the
Mediterranean, to express his anger. Salvian explained:

Thus God has been compelled by our crimes […] to send nations aroused
almost from the very ends of the earth even across the sea, to punish the
crimes of our people in Africa.198

What were these crimes? Salvian mentioned “all sorts of shameful and indecent lust,”199 and
“fornication,” summarizing thus: “all the people of Africa are unchaste unless they happen
to have been converted to God.”200 Unchasteness was enough for God to send in the
Vandals.

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The Huns would have served the same purpose as the Vandals and soon thereafter
stepped into their shoes. Their invasion, led by Attila (c.406-453), would have terrorized the
population of the Christianized Roman Empire immensely. They served, according to the
7th-century archbishop of Seville, Isidore (c.560-636), as “the rod of the wrath of God.” The
“faithful,” wrote Isidore, had raised God’s “indignation,” and therefore “he punished them
with the Huns, so that, chastened by their suffering, the faithful would force themselves away
from the greed of their world and from sin [...].”201 The Spanish archbishop did not spell out
what sin specifically had made God so angry. After the Huns came the Ostrogoths, who
conquered almost all of Italy, and whose king Totila (d.552), the Florentine chronicler
Villani described as “the scourge of God.”202
The menace of the approaching Turks invading parts of Europe since the 14th century
was considered a sign that God was angry with Christians who were sinning. The Islamic
Turks “belong to the devil,” declared Martin Luther, and “even the best and most upright
of them [...] are naturally in their hearts enemies to Christ, [who] devote their intellectual
powers to exterminating God’s people.”203 A 16th-century homily issued under Queen
Elisabeth I of England observed that God had allowed “the Great Turk” to overrun and
leave waste “many churches, countries, and kingdoms of Christian people,” “with grievous
and intolerable tyranny and cruelty,” and to poison them “with a devilish religion.” While
those Turks were “the enemy of our Lord Christ,” the homily also contended that they were,
at the same time, the “bitter and sharp scourge of God’s vengeance.”204 What the Christians
had done to deserve being on the Turkish warpath, the homily did not explain.
Commenting right when the United States’ involvement in Vietnam started to
escalate in 1962, Baptist minister Wallie Criswell stated that “war is the judgment of
Almighty God upon the sins of these nations of this earth.” 205 Was the United States then
his instrument of punishment on the communist Vietnamese, or vice versa? Criswell would
become president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the United States’ largest
Evangelical Christian denomination.
From a Western Christian perspective, Islamist terrorists can be imagined as the
barbarian successors of the menacing Vandals, Huns, Goths, and Turks. Christian
fundamentalists Robertson and Jerry L. Falwell (1933-2007) blamed the attacks of
September 11th, 2001 on feminists, gays, and abortionists because they would have caused
God to be angry with the United States.206 The Californian pastor Richard Cathers thought
the attacks were a sign

that we as a nation have strayed from the Lord and as a result God withdrew
His protection from us. God used a horrible, godless person like bin Laden to
bring judgment on the nation.207

Others interpreted ‘9/11’ as an eschatological stage towards the end of time, like Gerald
Flurry, pastor of the ‘Philadelphia Church of God’, who would still exclaim a year after the

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attacks: “The world has entered its last hour! It is plain for all to see!”208 Another may have
been Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, at the time the U.S. Undersecretary of Defense, who
framed the ensuing ‘war on terror’ as one between the United States, which he qualified as
a “Christian nation,” and “a guy named Satan,” who would be dominating Islamic
countries.209 Boykin became an ordained minister after his retirement, and showed himself
to be a believer in the literal return of Christ as prophesied in the Book of Revelation. He
stated his conviction in 2013 that Jesus would one day come back, riding on “a white horse
with a blood-stained white robe,” and carrying an AR-15 assault rifle. Incidentally, when
Jesus said, “[h]e that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one” (Luke 22:36),*
according to Boykin, this should be taken literally. This Bible passage, according to Boykin,
“was the beginning of the Second Amendment [...]. And the sword today is an AR-15, so if
you don’t have one, go get one. You’re supposed to have one. It’s biblical.”210
Muslims serve both as demonic adversaries in Christian end-time phantasies and as
deliverers of God’s punishment. Reverend Brown of the ‘Free Presbyterian Church of
Ulster’ in Northern Ireland warned in 2015 that God was punishing Europe with Islamic
extremists: “the dark spectre of ISIS.” But for what sin exactly, Brown did not clarify.211
The idea that God can use the adherents of a competing religion as tools for
punishment and correction of his own people is not exclusive to Christianity. Israeli
Sephardic Rabbi Meir Mazuz attributed gay pride parades and other forms of “sinful
behavior” to the shooting of husband and wife Eitam and Na’ama Henkin by a number of
Palestinians in 2015. At a memorial event for the Henkins, Mazuz said that their murder
had been a form of divine retribution, although he presumably did not intend to blame the
couple for their own deaths – which would have been awkward – but gays and other sinfully
behaving people.212 While this double murder was of a different order and scale than
earthquakes and hurricanes, the reasoning by Mazuz was the same as used by other
theologians when they explain disasters: in both cases innocent people suffer because God
punishes a group at large because it includes other people who are not innocent, and who
nevertheless remain unscathed.
Shortly after Russia began a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February
2022, ISIS characterized this war as a confrontation of “crusader” countries with a “divine
punishment against the West.” The reason for this punishment would be both countries’
involvement in military operations in Syria against ISIS.213 So, God would be punishing two
countries by having one invade the other and the latter putting up a fight in self-defense.

*
This Bible passage may have contributed to the finding of a 2016 study that theological conservatism is positively
associated with owning a gun in the United States (Yamane, “Awash in a Sea of Faith and Firearms”). Some 78
million American adults – 30% of the 258 million in total, according to a 2017 study (Parker et al., “America’s
Complex Relationship with Guns”) – own at least one, and often many more, of roughly 270 million guns in
total in the United States (Yamane, ibid.).

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Epidemics

Outbreaks of infectious diseases have consistently been construed by religious leaders as

manifestations of divine wrath for a diversity of supposedly bad behavior. When the bubonic
plague struck Palestine in 542 and 543 CE, the contemporaneous Egyptian monk
Barsanuphius of Gaza was certain this was God’s manner of meting out collective
punishment. While he observed that “[t]here are so many who are imploring the mercy of
God,” he also concluded these supplications were pointless because, Barsanuphius wrote,
“He does not wish to show mercy, for the mass of sins committed in the world stand in His
way.” Had there been fewer sins blocking his way, perhaps God could have found a way
around them, and been able to show mercy by ending the plague, or not allowing it to erupt
in the first place.214
There is a number of sayings attributed to the prophet Muhammad that make the
claim that Allah at some point in time sent a particular plague or plagues in general – the
traditional texts are unclear on this matter – as a form of CDP. “It is a means of punishment
with which some nations were punished,” reads one of these so-called ‘hadiths’, which adds,
as if it presciently refers to viruses, that “some of it” – that is the plague – “has remained,
and it appears now and then.”215 The hadiths do not reveal for what sin Allah wanted to
punish the sufferers of the plague.
The same disease that repeatedly devastated Christian lands throughout the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance, and which peaked as the ‘Black Death’ in the 14th century, was
popularly believed to be a divine response to human behavior,* and typically accompanied
by an upsurge of religious fervor (flagellation), anxiety about sinfulness, and intolerance of
minorities. These trends continued up until the 18th century.216 European Jews, who, by
maintaining better hygiene, sometimes suffered less directly from the plague than their
Christian neighbors, suffered all the more indirectly when religious tolerance itself was
blamed for the divine punishment. In the year 1348, Europe was struck by both a devastating
earthquake and an outbreak of the plague. The Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-
1375) observed the effects of the “death-dealing pestilence” on the people of his native city
of Florence. According to Boccaccio in his literary masterpiece The Decameron, the bubonic
plague was “sent down upon mankind for our correction by the just wrath of God.” To
escape the sickness, many people fled to the countryside; a foolish move, Boccaccio
commented, “as if the wrath of God, being moved to punish the iniquity of mankind, would
not proceed to do so wheresoever they might be.”217

*
A dramatic miniature in a 1424 German manuscript shows how Jesus Christ, surrounded by angels and looking
out from Heaven behind the starry sky, is throwing arrows one at a time on the earth below him. The arrows –
are they poisoned? – pierce a multitude of men, women, and children, who are all down on the ground dead or
dying from the plague. The victims are surrounded by six haloed individuals including two monks and a nun
who are praying, and an unidentified saintly woman catching a number of the arrows in an upheld part of her
dress, as if to show that their intercession shields the people from some of the punishment (“The Plague as Divine
Punishment”).

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 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

That would have been reasonable, if God would aim with precision all the time. But
as a church council explained in 1439, almost a century later and in the same city of
Florence, it is wise to keep a distance between yourself and your sinning neighbors if they
are about to be divinely punished. This council, with Pope Eugene IV present, recollected
in 1439 that Moses (to whom “the vicar of Christ is superior in authority and status”) once
urged the Israelites to “depart from the tents” of the three seditious men Korah, Dathan,
and Abiram (Numbers 16:26), because he knew they would otherwise suffer the same
punishment as the actual culprits: getting swallowed up by the earth and falling “alive into
hell.” Just a few moments before in the biblical tale, God had told Moses and Aaron to
separate themselves from all Israelites because he intended to “consume them in a moment”
(Numbers 16:21). A similar situation had now arisen when schismatic priests in Basel had
elected an antipope (Felix V). Like Moses before him, Eugene IV felt compelled to encourage
all Christians to “depart from the tents of these wicked men,” lest they would be consumed
as well by the impending wrath of God.218 So in this instance, the fear of CDP was employed
by the sitting pope to mobilize people to separate themselves from, and take sides against, a
rival to his throne.
The plague spread throughout central Europe, accompanied by a hateful search of
the unknown individuals who would have caused God’s ‘just wrath’ and bring so much
trouble. The same year 1348, the clerk Michael de Leone, from the southern German city
of Würzburg, reported that in “the Gallic and Teutonic [French and German] regions
treacherous Jews have in many ways poisoned or infected the waters” in order to bring harm
to Christians. Next, both nobles and commoners organized themselves in troops to persecute
the Jews, De Leone wrote, “because many Jews suffered murder, exile, and losses of various
kinds.”219 Interestingly, according to the chronicler, 55 years before, the German Jews had
also been “commonly slaughtered or slain”220 and therefore the persecution of 1348 was seen
as a repeat of “the divine judgment” of the Jews’ “malice” according to the “cycle of the
seasons and the stars.”221 In other words, murdering Jews was justified as the realization of
God’s justice.
While Jews were as vulnerable to the plague as Christians, and as a despised minority
doubly at risk, they were also susceptible to assuming a divine reason for their tribulations.
A 16th-century legend tells of a massive outbreak of the plague in the Jewish quarter in
Prague. Strangely, the sickness only killed children. In one account of the story, the
renowned scholar Judah Loew ben Bezalel (-1609), or ‘Maharal’, at that time Chief Rabbi of
the city, proclaimed that “God, our Lord, has sent misery and misfortune to us because we
have sinned heavily.” Through an eerie encounter with the ghost of one of the dead children,
the rabbi discovered the cause: two married couples had swapped partners. Only when the
two couples had been severely punished, did the plague end.222 How they were punished,
the story does not say, but given that they had indirectly caused the deaths of hundreds of
children, it seems likely that they were imagined to have been executed. Who would argue

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that meddling with people’s private lives is illegitimate when the very lives of children are at
stake?*
As with all other types of calamity, this practice of attributing deadly diseases to God’s
wrath continues up to this day. According to Evangelical Christian author Todd Strandberg,
writing a decade before the outbreak of Covid-19, when HIV was the most feared virus in
the world, “the reason we have not seen a major pandemic is because of the protective hand
of God.” And if we do suffer a plague, he wrote, it is because God intends to inflict
punishment.223 In this, Strandberg was in agreement with the viewpoint of Islamist
fundamentalists that HIV/AIDS is a form of divine retribution for the decadent West’s
permissive sexual habits.224 The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 36.3
million people have died of AIDS since it emerged in the early 1980s. A little more are
currently living with HIV, according to the WHO,225 and they are all at risk of getting
mortally ill, and of spreading the virus further, most likely, according to Strandberg, “by
some form of sin.”226
In between 2014 and 2016, the worst outbreak to date took place of the Ebolavirus,
killing almost 11,300 people, mostly in the West-African states of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra
Leone, and to a lesser extent Nigeria, Mali, and Senegal, with a few isolated cases elsewhere
around the world.227 In Liberia, in 2014, to discuss the country’s dire situation and deliberate
on a common response, more than one hundred religious leaders converged in a church in
the capital Monrovia. When they left the church, the group issued a joint declaration. It
read that the churchmen had decided, unanimously:

That God is angry with Liberia, and that Ebola is a plague. Liberians have to
pray and seek God’s forgiveness over the corruption and immoral acts (such
as homosexualism [sic], etc.) that continue to penetrate our society. As
Christians, we must repent and seek God’s forgiveness.228

Just one of the Ebola-causing sins was mentioned specifically in the declaration, but one of
its signatories, the Catholic Archbishop Lewis Zeigler of Monrovia, made clear that it was
the principal one, stating that “one of the major transgressions against God for which He
may be punishing Liberia is the act of homosexuality.” Amnesty International reported an
upsurge in violence against the country’s gay and lesbian citizens at the beginning of the
epidemic.229
Meanwhile, in the United States, pastor Hagee had a different take on Ebola. In
2014, he argued that it was one of a number of “grounds to say that judgment has already
begun,” meaning God’s judgment of the United States. One specific reason for that
judgment, according to Hagee, was a presumed proposal by the then-president of the United

*
This legend is very similar to the story of Achan in Joshua 7. In both events, a large body of people, who are both
innocent and ignorant of God’s anger, or of the reason for that anger, are nevertheless punished for the behavior
of a few individuals: just one in Joshua 7, and only four in the legend.

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States, Barack Obama, to divide the city of Jerusalem into an Israeli and a Palestinian part,
which would be an affront to God.230
That supposed affront by the president would be even worse in the eyes of Rick
Wiles, a Florida minister with a radio program, and, until it was banned in 2020, a YouTube
channel.231 Wiles speculated that the spread of the ebolavirus might be deliberate, and part
of a diabolical plan by president Obama to “claim executive powers to mandate that every
human being in the United States be vaccinated,” and around the world. “[A]nd nobody
knows what is in the vaccine,” he added ominously.232 But just one day later, after having
vaguely accused the president of planning the poisoning of the American public, Wiles’
theory of an evil conspiracy had suddenly evolved into a hopeful vision of the future, albeit
in a rather cynical way. If the Ebola epidemic would spread globally, it would become a
biblical “plague,” Wiles supposed, and it could then, to his satisfaction, “solve America’s
problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography and abortion.”233
Wiles moved from imagining the emergence of a virus as a conspiracy to presenting it as a
form of CDP. Next, I will show that the reverse happened with regard to the Covid-19
pandemic.

Covid-19

At the end of 2019, the unstoppable march began of “God’s soldiers, invisible to the naked
eye,” as terrorist organization Al-Qaeda dubbed the coronavirus.234 By the beginning of
Spring 2022, the virus had caused the deaths of 6.1 million people worldwide.235 Not since
a meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs – biblical literalists would say: not since the deluge –
had the world been so united in experiencing a common ordeal. We were all constantly
risking each other’s health, simply by exhaling, and this shared responsibility for everybody
else could have been, as Pope Francis observed, one more factor contributing to the
acceleration of the development of humanity into “a global community.”236 While other
pandemics, like the Black Death of 1346-51 and the Spanish flu of 1918-19, have been far
more deadly and devastating,* there is no good reason for trivializing a crisis that forced all

*
Between November 17, 2019, when the first individual was suspected of having contracted the disease in China
(Ma, “Coronavirus: China’s first confirmed Covid-19 case”), and March 28, 2022, Covid-19 had killed over 6.1
million people (see https://covid19.who.int). This official number based on confirmed cases is a low estimate,
because many more deaths may not have been counted. When looking at excess mortality figures, a much
grimmer picture emerges, with a possible quadrupling of the death toll to as many as 20 million individuals
(Adam, “The Pandemic’s True Death Toll”). At any rate, the Covid mortality rate would be much lower than
that of the worst pandemics in history. The Black Death at its peak during the years 1347-1351 would have
caused 50 million deaths in Europe alone (Benedictow, The Black Death, 382), not counting many additional
fatalities in Asia, as a contemporary Syrian man from Aleppo, named Ibn al-Wardi, recorded (Sussman, “Was
the Black Death in India and China?,” 320-321). The Spanish flu of 1918-19 was recently estimated to have cost
the lives of more than 50 million individuals worldwide in less than a year (Johnson & Mueller, “Updating the
Accounts”). So these other two pandemics may have been far worse than Covid-19 in terms of mortality, especially
when accounting for the smaller world population at the time.

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people on the planet to avoid each other’s presence for a prolonged period of time out of a
genuine concern for each other’s wellbeing.
The physical health effects, in the long run, of those who survived illness with Covid-
19 remain to be fully understood. The brains of patients infected with the initial ‘Alpha’-
variant appear to have shrunk by as much as 2 percent, hampering their executive
functions.237 Also serious could be the long-term effects of enforced social isolation. Some
researchers have stressed that isolation tends to exacerbate sociological problems, like socio-
economic inequality,238 and to contribute to psychological difficulties, such as depression,
anxiety, schizophrenia, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, and learning disabilities.239
These negative effects could be balanced out by some positive ones as well. Improved
air, water, and soil quality, and positive social effects, such as reduced rates of crime and
traffic accidents, had several scholars consider the pandemic to have been a “blessing in
disguise.”240 There could have been a positive moral aspect as well, Pope Francis wishfully
remarked at the end of 2020. If we could leave the pandemic behind us with anything good,
he wrote, it would be that “we will think no longer in terms of ‘them’ and ‘those’, but only
‘us’,” in the realization that “no one is saved alone; we can only be saved together.”241 It was
a sentiment that the pope’s detractors would angrily reject as signs of his demonic penchant
for relativism and globalism.

Divine punishment
While the emotional dimension of Francis’ message was one of compassion without borders,
it was actually in a logical sense in accordance with the notion of collective divine retribution:
only if we all join in pleasing God, and if we all stop angering him, can we be saved together.
This was not what the pope meant, but from the viewpoint of CDP it would make sense to
call for unity in penitence.
One of the first to make that point, because, arguably, the coronavirus was yet
another indication of God’s displeasure, was the Floridian pastor Wiles. Just a few days after
the first case of Covid was confirmed in the Western hemisphere, on January 27, 2020,
Wiles claimed that the virus was a divine “death angel” by which “God is about to purge a
lot of sin off of this planet.” And one of God’s targets, according to Wiles, would be the
United States, because of a long list of grievances, including “the hatred of God, the hatred
of the Bible, the hatred of righteousness,” the “transgendering [of] little children,” “the
rapes,” “the sexual immorality,” “and the filth on our TVs and our movies.” With regard to
China, where up to that time most of the world’s sufferers of Covid had caught the virus,
Wiles claimed that God was inflicting punishment, allegedly for having a “godless
communist government that persecutes Christians,” and for forcing women to have
abortions.242
Wiles was the visible part of a racist, antisemitic, and homophobic crowd, lurking in
the dark digital playgrounds of the hateful: virtually unmoderated Internet platforms, like
4Chan. Among them were elements who at a very early stage of the pandemic stated their

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belief that this was a sign that God was angry and seeking to punish. Right at the time Wiles
blamed the emergence of the virus on a hodgepodge of sins, somebody on 4Chan claimed
that the “Coronavirus is God’s divine punishment,” and that this would be the price for
“turning our backs on God,” “White genocide,” “LGBT propaganda,” drag queens, and
abortions.243
Several weeks later, perhaps reflecting the racist mood on 4Chan, Wiles narrowed
down the type of sinners responsible for God’s anger. One contributor to the platform, in
the middle of March, charged that the virus was “God’s punishment for allowing so many
faggots, niggers, and Jews to live free and run rampant on the world he gifted to us,” with ‘us’
probably meaning white straight people.244 Another 4Chan account holder that month
alleged that it was “god’s divine punishment for accepting judaism [sic] and democratic faux
morality and values.”245
Maybe Wiles had paid attention. Wiles has a flexible mind, as he showed with his
quickly changing views about the divine meaning of Ebola. At the end of March 2020, the
pastor began to argue that it was Jews everywhere, and no longer just Americans, who were
the target of the coronavirus. Addressing an imaginary Jewish audience, he proclaimed:

God is spreading it in your synagogues! You are under judgment because you
oppose his son, Jesus Christ. That is why you have a plague in your synagogues.
Repent and believe on the name of Jesus Christ, and the plague will stop.246

Wiles was an early bird among his colleagues in attributing the outbreak of Covid-19 in the
United States to CDP. At the beginning of 2020, finding it apparently difficult to accept
that God would remove his protective hand with a supposedly godly president at the helm,
American conservatives were hesitant to follow Wiles’ example. The fact that the
government was actively downplaying the danger may have played a part. For instance, at
the very beginning of the pandemic, Texas-based evangelist Jonathan Shuttlesworth said, “I
predict America will be minimally affected by coronavirus,” because, he explained, the
president at the time “honored Israel.” Shuttlesworth observed that while “Obama honored
the enemies of Israel, Trump honors Israel, and it’s a massive difference.”247 However,
muddling up abortion and gay rights, he added,

I exclude from my prediction the Pacific Northwest, California, and New

York, because in a God honoring nation, those are four [sic] places that have
chosen to give God the middle finger in the shape of an Empire State Building
lit up in pink to celebrate the passage of the [legislation] that you can kill a
baby [sic].248

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Needless to say, exactly the opposite of what Shuttlesworth predicted would happen: the
pandemic hurt Americans in the religious heartland more than in the more liberal coastal
states.249
Hank Kunneman, of the Lord of Hosts church in Omaha, Nebraska, was another
pastor stating his belief that the United States would be spared the effects of the virus because
of the presumed godliness of its president. He declared, “Do not fear. This virus is the spirit
of God.” Kunneman claimed he was speaking for “the living God,” who supposedly had told
him he had “extended and opened a window of mercy to this nation at this time.” Why
would the United States be spared? Channeling God, the pastor answered:

[B]ecause of the administration that stands in this land, who honor me, who
honor the covenants of your forefathers and of the Constitution. And
because they have aligned themselves with Israel and because they have sided
on the right side of life — life in the womb, life given outside of the womb —
there I give life to this nation and I give mercy.250

Despite their initial hesitation, conservative Christian religious and political leaders in the
United States would quickly join Wiles and their like-minded colleagues across the
Abrahamic spectrum* and around the world in ascribing the infectious disease to divine
anger about the perceived enormity of egregious sins on a national scale, including those of
their own country.
One of the first to follow Wiles’ example was Reverend Steven Andrew of ‘USA
Christian Church’, based in California. With still only seven Americans having died from
Covid, and Shuttlesworth and Kunneman still in denial, Andrew pointed at homosexuality
as the primary reason for the pandemic. As a precaution, Andrew declared March 2020 to
be “Repent of LGBT Sin Month.” His logic was simple: “it is urgent to repent, because [...]
God destroys LGBT societies,” and, vice-versa, “[o]beying God protects the USA from
diseases, such as the Coronavirus.”251 Presumably, the United States would remain such an
‘LGBT society’ if it did not repent, and become both a straight and safe society if it did.
Two weeks later (March 19), Andrew’s televangelist colleague Perry Stone told his
congregation that he held same-sex marriages and abortions – “to take an infant’s life” –
responsible for the pandemic. Because of these sins, he said, there is “a reckoning.”252 By the
end of March, the Pentecostal Minister Irvin Baxter forcefully urged his online listeners “to
seriously and soberly think, is this God’s judgment upon us?” Baxter said he was not sure
either way, but emphasized “there is reason to believe that it very well could be,” and then

*
Attributing Covid-19 to divine anger is distinct from fearing divine displeasure when sacred rituals are skipped
due to measures to prevent the spread of the virus, as was reported in the predominantly Hindu and Buddhist
country of Nepal. For that reason, Hindu and Buddhist festivities in Nepal, including processions, were restricted
in number and scale in 2020. Not being allowed to carry out a chariot procession in Kathmandu to honor the
god of farming, the priest Kapil Bajracharya warned: “If the gods are angry, we will land into more severe problems
than coronavirus” (Dahal, “Covid: God May Punish Nepal”).

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pointed at the Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the fact that in the
United States “fornication” – sex before marriage – was rampant. By the time they get
married, Baxter noticed with dismay, “of new brides in America […] 95 percent have already
committed fornication!”253 Tragically, Reverend Baxter would catch the virus seven months
later and die from it.254 Unusually late in the day, Pat Robertson also came around to blame
sin for the pandemic. “We’ve allowed this terrible plague to spread throughout our society,”
he ruled on April 20. How did we manage to do that? By allowing such sins as abortion and
same-sex marriage, we would “have broken the covenant that God made with mankind.”255
Without pointing at any sin in particular, Pennsylvania Republican State
Representative Stephanie Borowicz, wife of a pastor, introduced a bill calling for a “State
Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer,” which would be March 30, in order to ward off
the punishment of God that she then felt was clearly present in the pandemic. The title of
the event called to mind the many similar ones proclaimed throughout the history of the
United States, mostly in response to national crises. * In her bill, Borowicz had included a
declaration by the State House of Representatives that it was “proven by all history: that
those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord,” and a statement that it is “His divine
law” that “nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this
world.” At one point in the bill, the State House was to ask rhetorically:

May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of the pandemic […] may be
but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful
end of our national reformation as a whole people?256

Elsewhere in the world, a similar mixture of sins was held responsible for the pandemic as
in the United States. But again, the one sin that stood out among all others was gay and
lesbian sex. If Covid united the world in facing a common ordeal, it also united religious
conservatives in their opposition to supposed sexual immorality. Victor Madrigal-Borloz, the
United Nations’ Independent Expert on LGBT-directed violence and discrimination, noted
in his July 2020 report to the Secretary-General: “Around the world, LGBT and gender-
diverse people, as well as advances in LGBT rights, have been blamed for natural disasters,
and COVID-19 is no exception […].”257
Apart from the further stigmatization of LGBT, and an upsurge in LGBT-targeted
violence, another detrimental consequence may include belated reactions in particularly
homophobic countries to take preventative measures against the spread of the coronavirus,
for instance in sub-Saharan Africa. In March 2020, when Italy, the first European nation to
suffer deaths from Covid-19, and by then the worst hit country in the world, was deeply in
shock over the loss of hundreds of people every day, pastor Joseph Serwadda of the Victory
Church in Ndeeba, Uganda, pointed out that in Italy “in 2019 there was the biggest gay

*
The tradition may have started in 1668, when the Virginia House of Burgesses in Jamestown ordered August
27 to be “a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer, to implore God’s mercy” (“History of Prayer in America”).

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parade.” While the pandemic would be “a harvest for our sinfulness,” as Serwadda put it, at
that early stage of the pandemic he could still assume the virus would only hurt nations that
were especially sinful, and not Uganda. On television, Serwadda assured his fellow-Ugandan
Christians that “people should not fear because God will spare them for they are not part of
the sinful.”258
Also in Uganda, a female member of the Anglican clergy said at the beginning of the
pandemic in the Spring of 2020 that she thought it was an expression of “God’s wrath,” but
luckily mostly with people in western countries. That was because, she said, “most whites
don’t worship God, but their own things.” Also, she added, “[m]ost evils such as
homosexuality find deep root in Europe. No wonder, more whites are dying of the
disease.”259 A sizable group of Ethiopians, too, were at least initially found to imagine Covid-
19 to be a “white man’s disease,”260 as were a significant group of Nigerians.261
In the small Central-African country of Burundi, pastor Joseph Ndayizeye from
Rugombo Pentecostal Church in the capital Bujumbura, showed more self-reflection when
he asserted that “God punished us with the coronavirus pandemic because of our sins.”
Those sins included, according to Ndayizeye, the Burundi government “kill[ing] innocent
people” and “same-sex marriage.”* The pious Burundian politician Pascal Nyabenda alleged
the pandemic was God’s punishment, calling Pentecostal churchgoers to “ask for forgiveness
from God.”262
In neighboring Tanzania, the President at the time, the devoutly Christian and
virulently homophobic John Magufuli (1959-2021), did not feel constrained by the fact that
he was not a priest, from requesting his compatriots, who are about two-thirds Christian and
one-third Muslim, to pray to God: “Maybe we have wronged God somewhere,” he wondered,
adding, “Let us all repent.”263 How Tanzanians might have wronged God, Magufuli did not
clarify, but homosexuality would likely not have been far from his mind.†
Religious leaders in countries dominated by other religions than Christianity appear
to have been less outspoken about the pandemic being God’s response to human sin. But
under the surface, that notion may still be widespread. In early March, Rabbi Mazuz blamed
the pandemic on “parades against nature,” meaning gay pride parades, including those held
in his home country Israel, explaining: “when someone goes against nature, the one who
created nature takes revenge on him.” While Mazuz had earlier blamed another tragedy, the
double murder of a Jewish couple, on the same sin, he showed, interestingly, that his
flexibility works the other way around as well, and that any possible sin can be attached to
any possible negative outcome.‡ The contradictory fact that the population of the rather

*
This is the first and only instance I could find of anybody in the modern age ascribing God’s anger to a human
rights abuse, even if it was combined with the issue of gay marriage in one and the same sentence. (“You cannot
kill innocent people and promote evil like same-sex marriage and go unpunished.”)
†
Human Rights Watch determined that Magufuli had made Tanzania, even when compared to other African
countries that make same-sex relations a crime, “an outlier in its efforts to render LGBT-friendly health services
inaccessible”; in fact going so far as to allow them to die (Human Rights Watch, 1-2).
‡
And so can politicians. Oppah Muchinguri, the defense minister of Zimbabwe, said the corona virus is God’s
way of imposing sanctions “against the countries that have imposed sanctions on us,” namely the United States

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LGTBQ-unfriendly country of Iran had been hit especially hard by the virus, Mazuz
explained by declaring that Iranians “have bad character traits and are horrible Israel
haters.”264 This shows that some clerics feel free to blame any particular heavenly punishment
on any sin they like, and vice versa pin any sin on any punishment. As much as I tried, I
have been unable to find any pattern in the attribution of particular sins on particular
disasters.
In April, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Filaret declared
that the pandemic was “God’s punishment for the sins of men, the sinfulness of humanity,”
and with that he meant “[f]irst of all [...] same-sex marriage.”265 He said that before he got
sick with the virus himself.266 Around the same time, the Russian-Orthodox Metropolitan
(Bishop) Daniel of the remote diocese of Kurgan and Belozersky in the southern Ural
Mountains declared that “the coronavirus is a consequence of our sins, God’s punishment
of our people.”267
Again, Islamic religious leaders showed they share much of the philosophy of CDP
with their Jewish and Christian counterparts. The Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr tweeted
at the end of March 2020: “One of the most serious things that caused this epidemic to
spread is legalization [of same-sex marriage].”268 In the mostly Islamic country of Malaysia, it
was reported in April 2020 that a social media post claiming that Covid-19 was God’s
punishment for the immorality of LGBT people was shared more than 30,000 times.269 The
same month, in Turkey, the top Muslim cleric Ali Erbaş told a television audience that
adultery, “living out of wedlock,” and homosexuality are Islam’s “biggest sins” because they
bring “illnesses,” including HIV, and “decay to lineage” (perhaps meaning lack of
offspring).270 While not mentioning Covid, the timing of his sermon implied that same-sex
relations were also responsible for the pandemic.271 At the end of May, a spokesman for the
Islamic terrorist organization IS, Abu Hamzah al-Quraishi, explained the virus outbreak by
arguing that “God, by his will, sent a punishment to tyrants […] and their followers,”
presumably excluding his own tyrannical organization.272 An Islamic member of the Indian
parliament, Dr Syed Tufail Hasan – by training a medical doctor and not a theologian –
declared as late as June 2021 that Covid, as well as cyclones, were a “devastation that has
descended from the skies” in response to the “injustice” of Muslims not being granted Indian
citizenship.273
The most unusual approach among religious leaders, it seems, was taken by Dutch
theologian and Reformed pastor Henk de Jong, who argued in December 2020 that Covid
is God’s way of showing he is still around and that he is a real “person,” and a “jealous”
person, moreover. God, De Jong explained, is angry not just at the current levels of
godlessness in the world, but, worse, at being ignored by the world. Even, ironically, to the

and the European Union in response to the African country’s human rights abuses. She added that “God is
punishing them now [...]” (Mutsaka, “Zimbabwe Official”).

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point of being ignored as the true cause of the pandemic!*274 Refreshingly, for once, same-
sex relationships were not presented as a reason for God’s anger.

On the Roman Catholic side, a more coordinated position about the divine origins of the
coronavirus could have been expected than among the scattered pastors and priests of the
many protestant churches, Jewish synagogues, and Islamic mosques. But that was not to be.
The Catholic Church is currently deeply divided between clerics centered on Pope Francis
on the one hand, who tend to be relatively open-minded, somewhat more progressive, less
absolutist, and more inclined to enter into relations with other religions and Christian
denominations, and on the other hand an exceptionally combative group of ultra-
conservatives, who tend to refer to the pope by his last name ‘Bergoglio’ – to signal that they
do not accept him as the legitimate occupier of the Holy See – and who have aligned
themselves with an emerging international movement of crypto-fascists.† Interestingly, the
question of whether Covid-19 should be considered a sign of God’s judgment marks out
that divide quite neatly, as are the alternative beliefs among the ultra-conservative Catholics
that the pandemic was largely made up – a hoax – and part of a vast Satanic conspiracy, or
a sign of God that the end of the world is nigh. We will meet with some of the anti-Francis
faction’s most prominent members in this and the next section.
The majority of the Catholic clergy, led by the Vatican, denied that anybody was
being punished by God through the disease, and generally tried to downplay God’s role in
the cause of the pandemic. Shortly after Europe was beginning to feel the threat of Covid in
March 2020, one high-up member of the clergy after the other rejected the notion that it
was a form of divine punishment. Cardinal Mario Delpini,275 the archbishop of Milan, and
his predecessor in that post, Cardinal Angelo Scola,276 Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the
archbishop of Munich and Freising,277 Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the archbishop of
Vienna,278 Cardinal Juan José Omella, the archbishop of Barcelona, Cardinal Raphaël Louis
Sako, the Catholic Patriarch of ‘Babylon of the Chaldeans’,279 Gerard de Korte, the bishop
of Den Bosch,280 Heiner Wilmer, the bishop of Hildesheim,281 Antonio dos Santos Marto,

*
This hails back to a similar idea by Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, who believed, in reference to Jeremiah 2:30,
that
God is more deeply indignant when such and so great evils avail nothing! For that these things occur
either for the discipline of the obstinate or for the punishment of the evil, the same God declares in the
Holy Scriptures, saying, ‘In vain have I smitten your children; they have not received correction’ (Cyprian,
“Treatise V: An Address to Demetrianus,” 1051).
†
How ultra-conservative opponents of Pope Francis within the church hierarchy have become allies of the extreme
fringes of the American Republican Party and of right-wing anti-Islamic groups in Europe has been described in
a piece by Kathryn Joyce in Vanity Fair (“Deep State, Deep Church”).

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the bishop of Leiria-Fátima,282 Spanish Jesuit priest and theology professor Gabino Uríbarri
Bilbao*283 – to name a few – were quick to declare God would never do such a thing.†
On the other side of the progressive-conservative divide, a smaller number of
cardinals and bishops, generally public opponents of Pope Francis, lined up to present their
case that the virus outbreak was God’s punishment for sin. Perhaps the first to do so openly,‡
on March 10, 2020, was Swiss Auxiliary Bishop Marian Eleganti of Chur, who called to
mind the Old Testament story of King David who wanted to count his people. This was
wrong of him to do, apparently, and for that misstep God punished him by sending a plague
that killed 70,000 Israelites (2 Samuel 24:15). Eleganti observed a “connection” between
“sin” and the general “attitude” of nations towards God, “and the plagues […] that hit the
nations [like] wars and sicknesses.”284
The high-ranking clerics who followed suit shortly thereafter were more specific
about the kinds of sin that they believed were at the heart of the problem: mostly abortion,
assisted dying, LGBT rights, and heresy. The Bishop of Cuernavaca in Mexico, Ramón
Castro Castro, said the pandemic was God “beating us to reflect [on our sins],” and that the
sins in question included abortion, euthanasia, and transgender emancipation.285 The right-
wing American Cardinal Raymond Burke was certain about the reason for epidemics in
general. “There is no question,” he declared, “that great evils like pestilence are an effect of
original sin and of our actual sins,”§ including changing “our identity as man or woman,” in
other words the recognition of transgender rights.286 Somewhat later, Burke appeared to
have changed his mind and began to downplay the danger of the disease and the need for
*
Uríbarri made a novel argument I have not encountered anywhere else. He stated that if you maintain that a
misfortune is the result of sin – a sin for which that misfortune is punishment – then you should also believe
that “Jesus was crucified because of his [Jesus’s] sins [and] the cross of Jesus would have been the effect of a divine
punishment” (Uríbarri, “Pandemia y Fe Christiana”; in the original Spanish: “De ser cierta, tendríamos que
pensar que Jesús fue crucificado por causa de sus pecados. La cruz de Jesús habría sido efecto de un castigo
divino”). Any Christian theologian worth his salt would quickly point out that the entire idea of the crucifixion is
based on the threat of CDP for original sin that hangs over everybody’s head, and that the possibility of avoiding
that punishment was only secured when God’s sinless son offered himself in self-sacrifice. Before the crucifixion,
Saint Jerome explained, even people “who had not sinned were for the sins of another held liable to the
punishment of offending Adam” (Letter LX to Heliodorus, 269). Uríbarri’s well-intended reasoning shows how
much theologians are clutching at straws to counter the fear of CDP expressed as crises and disasters.
†
Some Catholic clergymen may have been unaware of the Vatican’s policy to present God’s role in the pandemic
as benign. On the German-language Catholic television station K-TV, as late as January 2021 when most of the
fear of the virus had already faded out, Bavarian pastor Franz Maier commented that “God’s anger is now visible
around the world,” and “only when many people are converted through Corona may God let go of the horrors
of his holy anger” (Janoschka, “Ainringer Ist Überzeugt”; in the original German: “der Zorn Gottes jetzt auf der
ganzen Welt sichtbar ist”; “nur wenn sich durch Corona viele Menschen bekehren, kann Gott von den Schrecken
seines heiligen Zornes ablassen”). Maier appears to be the odd one out among clergy who are loyal to the Vatican,
for stating his belief in Covid as a form of CDP.
‡
Up to that time, sermons may have contained the same sentiment but were not recorded. For instance, at the
very early date of March 1, 2020, one churchgoer claimed to have heard the Polish priest Wilczyński preach that
“the epidemic is a divine punishment for us living in sin: for homosexuality, for couples who live together without
marriage and for those who ‘murder unborn children’” (Gowans, “Wrocław Priest Blames Coronavirus on
Homosexuality and Abortion”).
§
Christian dogma prescribes the belief that the ‘original sin’ – Adam and Eve’s act of eating from the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil – brought pain and death into human experience by way of punishment. However,
the latter is also extra punishment for extra sins. Echoing Burke, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò stated that
“pain and death [are] a just punishment for original sin and actual sins” (Viganò, “Abp. Viganò’s Lenten
Message”).

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 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

preventative measures, such as vaccination. But this was before he himself contracted Covid-
19.287 After his recovery he became remarkably quiet on this issue.

Satanic conspiracy
Meanwhile, some conservative protestant pastors in the United States made a remarkable
shift in perspective. Instead of portraying the pandemic as a punishment from God, some
began to frame the crisis as part of a scheme by demonic forces opposing God in their service
to the antichrist. This probably started outside the world of religion with the emergence of
several secular conspiracy theories that would combine and evolve into a grand narrative
that runs like this: a mysterious powerful, moneyed, occult, Masonic, anti-Trump, anti-Putin
liberal elite caused the pandemic on purpose in order for them to have the pretext to get
ordinary people vaccinated, by means of which they could get a microchip inserted into their
bodies, which would then allow that evil ‘cabal’ to control the masses, or rather enslave
them, through the use of the G5 mobile network, and thereby establish a socialist, multi-
cultural, gay-friendly, vegetarian, and most of all anti-Christian global dictatorship.*
This rather complicated web of fantasy was woven with several threads from different
directions. One thread was the claim that the virus was artificial, and that it had been
released on purpose. On January 21, 2020, a certain Brad Jorgenson – possibly a fake name
– tweeted that the coronavirus was patented and thus manmade. His message was retweeted
at least 320 times, before Twitter suspended Jorgenson’s account.288 Two days later, Kelen
McBreen, a regular Internet contributor of pieces that are favorable to the Kremlin, wrote
that the English Pirbright Institute was the owner of that virus patent, and that Microsoft
founder Bill Gates was one of that organization’s donors.† McBreen connected this
information to the fact that Gates had co-hosted a simulation of an outbreak of a coronavirus
for policymakers in New York City on October 18, 2019 (titled ‘Event 201’).‡289 McBreen
thus repeated the idea that the new lethal coronavirus was manmade, and suggested both
that Gates was responsible for its creation, and that he had been planning its release. The
story was picked up by a former Republican candidate for the United States Senate, Shiva
Ayyadurai, who claimed in a Facebook post on January 24, 2020, that the Pirbright Institute
owned a patent for the new coronavirus.290
Meanwhile, another storyline emerged, which may have started on January 22, 2020,
when Russia’s state-owned news outlet Sputnik quoted an “expert,”§ who declared that he
did “not believe in the accidental origin of the coronavirus.”291 In the same piece claims were
made that there are American and NATO biological laboratories in China, and that the
virus was doctored, supposedly at those laboratories, to infect people with Chinese-specific
*
These elements and many more have been brought together in sometimes quite attractive visualizations (e.g.
“Covid-5G”), made by Dylan Louis Monroe and his “Deep State Mapping Project” (DSMP) (Hannah, “A
Conspiracy of Data”).
†
The Pirbright Institute is an English company with a long history that studies viruses to prevent epidemics among
livestock (https://www.pirbright.ac.uk/about-us/our-history).
‡
See https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201.
§
A certain Dmitry Belyakov, who would be a member of the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.

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genes only. According to the website ‘EU vs Disinfo’,292 which is tasked by the European
Union (EU) to keep track of false information spread on the Internet, this report by Sputnik
would have been the first false claim about the coronavirus that was openly broadcast by a
Kremlin-affiliated news site. So, apart from being artificial, the virus was now also imagined
to be a means of racial biological warfare.
The very next day, a certain David Zublick posted a video on the Internet claiming
the coronavirus was a “bioweapon for population control.”*293 Immediately after the
broadcasting of Zublick’s video, Krishna Kalki, a London-based Indian self-described
‘satellite engineer’, posted a long text on an Internet platform that is run by people who
imagine themselves communicating with extraterrestrials.† In his article, Kalki referred to
Zublick’s report, whose claim he repeated that the “coronavirus is a manufactured
bioweapon for the purpose of population control.” Kalki added that the spread of the virus
is a “biological attack being perpetrated on the United States and other countries.”294 So,
Zublick and Kalki transformed the story that the West was waging a secret biological war on
China into the conspiracy theory that some mysterious power was waging biological war on
the West.
While there may be more than one original source for the many small conspiracies
within the grand conspiracy, it is certain that the Russian government has been their major
amplifier, if not itself one of those original sources. At the end of January 2020, ‘EU vs
Disinfo’ observed: “For the pro-Kremlin media, the coronavirus is beginning to look like a
disinformation gold-mine.”295 In the remaining days of January, news sites owned by or
affiliated with the Russian government featured stories that the virus was created in NATO-
run laboratories, was predicted by Nostradamus, was meant to bring profits to ‘Big Pharma’,
was used to attack China and Russia, and was designed to kill Asians. In February, the
Kremlin amplified claims that both Bill Gates and philanthropist George Soros – another
favorite bogeyman in right-wing circles – were involved, that the virus targeted Asian DNA
only, and, now in contradiction to earlier reports, that it would benefit China, as well as
Ukraine and the Belorussian opposition. Also, NATO would be responsible for spreading
the virus throughout Europe.
In March, the same Kremlin-supported sites began to float another idea,
contradictory to the earlier storylines. While continuing the claim that the virus was a
biological weapon, and that the EU was failing to tackle the pandemic, elsewhere they started
to allege that the dangers of the virus were overblown. The pandemic would be a lie, and

*
Zublick is an American ‘advertising account executive’ according to his LinkedIn page and a ‘voice over actor’
according to his Facebook page. He also runs ‘the Dark Outpost’, a platform for the most inventively ridiculous
fake news stories that all happen to be disparaging of liberals, the Democratic Party, the Black Lives Matter
movement, and other imagined enemies of the ultra-right.
†
The foremost extraterrestrial featured on this website is a being named Ashtar. An alien with the name Ashtar
has been channeled since the 1950s. Interestingly, Ashtar was reported in a 1982 book to be planning an escape
by spaceship for a select group of humans from earth to prevent them from falling victim to natural disasters,
just like Noah and his family had been saved from the Flood by escaping in the Ark (Tuella, Project World
Evacuation). This scenario matches on key points the Evangelical idea of a ‘rapture’ at the end of times (see chapter
3).

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Covid-19 nothing more than the common flu. Covid could be protected against by smoking,
and cured with saline, hydroxychloroquine, ginger, and vitamin C, while washing hands
would be useless. Also, this entire hoax was meant to be a pretext to reduce the world
population (in general, and not one group of people in particular), and was supported by
the Rothschild banking family.
In the United States, national politics were quickly woven into the new Covid-as-a-
hoax narrative. On March 10, a conservative online talk show host, named Josh Bernstein,
posited that the crisis was “a Democratic Party and a media establishment made-up
pandemic,” to hurt President Trump. Because they – the Democrats and media – “are so
hell-bent on destroying this country [and] this president [and] to gain back power,” Bernstein
continued theorizing,

they probably worked with the Chinese government, and they devised this
plan [to] release this virus into the American public, to scare the living
daylights out of everybody to shut down the economy, to shut down the
markets, and to stop the Trump rallies.296

These notions needed only a little processing to be able to apply them to a Christian scenario
with an eschatological plot. A week before he declared that the virus was a sign of a
“reckoning” by God for the sins of same-sex marriages and abortions, on March 12,
televangelist Perry Stone made the seemingly contradictory claim: that the pandemic was the
work of “the enemy” – meaning the devil – who “wants to get rid of our older people.” Why
would the devil single out the elderly? Because they would know the Bible well enough,
unlike the young, Stone reasoned, “not to take the Mark of the Beast.”297 In chapter 4, I will
explain the significance of that ‘Mark’, but let it suffice for now to know that the acceptance
of it is one necessary stage in the sequence of events that are prophesied to lead to the end
of times. The ‘Mark of the Beast’ might well be a microchip that had already caused terror a
few years before among Christians expecting the End Times in connection with the Obama
administration’s attempt at introducing a more inclusive health care system.298
Apparently, Stone was not sure enough of this theory – or its popularity – because a
week later he returned to claiming Covid was God’s punishment. It seems clear, however,
that Stone had gotten wind of the initially secular idea of the grand conspiracy that was
quickly gaining track in radical religious circles too. In Brazil, on March 15, the Evangelical
‘bishop’ and media magnate Edir Macedo, head of the ‘Universal Church of the Kingdom
of God’, declared in a video message that people do not need to worry about the coronavirus,
because, he said, “this is [...] a tactic of the devil,” namely to scare people. Macedo also quoted
a doctor saying the virus need not concern anyone. Macedo said all this before he himself
got infected with the virus.299
In the United States, Wiles, who until then had always presented Covid-19 as a
punishment from God, also became infected, and then, once again, changed his mind. He

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got well in June 2020, and promptly exclaimed: “I survived the [Chinese Communist Party’s]
Covid genocide on the American people.” No longer did he portray Covid as God’s
punishment of Jews, but as China’s attempt to commit genocide of the Americans, not
through infection with the coronavirus, but through injection with vaccines. The drive to
get people vaccinated – not the spread of the virus itself – he declared to be a “mass death
campaign,” allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese government.300

A similar change occurred among conservative Catholics. The justification for the rather
long detour I am about to make is that it demonstrates how the fear of an angry God and
the threat of CDP got mixed up with anticipation of the Apocalypse – as appears to be
common – and how this in turn gave religious meaning – and fuel – to right-wing political
conspiracy theories. Such initially secular conspiracy beliefs are essentially eschatological in
nature because of their absolutist claims of otherworldly evil threatening the very survival of
humanity.
Already before the summer of 2020, in concert with their conservative counterparts
on the protestant side, contrarian Catholic clergymen began to correct course. A case in
point is the Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana in Kazakhstan – incidentally
a promoter of the Apocalyptic message from ‘Our Lady of Akita’301 and a guest of the French
TFP chapter – who at the end of March 2020 professed a belief that Covid-19 was both a
sign of God’s wrath and a stage in preparation for the Final Judgment. “The current
situation,” Schneider said, “provides sufficient reasonable grounds to think that we are at
the beginning of an apocalyptic time, which includes divine chastisements.” Chastisements
for what? Schneider mentioned two grievances that would have been sufficiently infuriating
to God to punish the world with the pandemic.
The first reason for God’s anger Schneider mentioned was “taking Holy
Communion directly with one’s own hands and fingers.” This practice was allowed by the
Vatican since 1969, but, according to Schneider, this would amount to ‘the Body of Christ’
being “trampled by the feet of clergy and laity in Catholic churches around the world.”
Referring to the cessation of church services to prevent the spread of the virus, Schneider
added that “[n]ow the Lord has intervened and deprived almost all the faithful of assisting
at Holy Mass and sacramentally receiving Holy Communion.”302 In other words, because he
was angry with the execution of a sacred ritual, God decided to prevent the ritual from taking
place entirely.
The second injury to God that might have spurred the Covid pandemic, according
to Schneider, had been inflicted more recently. Less than a year before, in the summer of
2019, a “Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon” had been organized in Rome by the Vatican
as part of an effort to reach out to the indigenous peoples of the Amazonian region in South
America to improve the Church’s servicing of their spiritual needs. When the Synod’s
secretariat issued a working paper – Instrumentum Laboris – for discussion and approval by
the ‘Special Assembly for the Pan-Amazon’, it caused a shudder to run through the bodies

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of many conservative Catholics. In response, Bishop Schneider and Cardinal Burke penned
a furious joint condemnation that called for both the clergy and laity to participate in a
“forty-day crusade of prayer and fasting” to implore God to protect the Catholic Church
from falling into the serious “theological errors and heresies” that would be contained in the
Instrumentum Laboris.303
What was so horribly heretical in the working paper to the minds of Schneider and
Burke? One offense was its proposal, in the words of the bishop and the cardinal, to grant
“official ministries to women and ordaining married leaders of the community as second-
class priests.” It was not the ‘second-class’ nature of their semi-priesthood that infuriated
Schneider and Burke, but the enjoyment of any priestlike status by women and non-celibate
men. The paper’s alleged heresy was to propose an end to the monopoly of men within the
clergy and “the Apostolic rule of priestly celibacy.”* But the major sacrilege, according to
Schneider and Burke, was the suggestion that “the pagan superstitions of the Amazon tribes
are an expression of divine Revelation” and “alternative pathways of salvation.” This
“erroneous theory,” the bishop and the cardinal wrote, would negate the need for the
Catholic Church “of introducing doctrine and practice of universal truth and goodness.” In
other words, the document conceded that followers of other religious doctrines than the
one advocated by the Catholic Church might also lead away from eternal damnation.
Schneider and Burke positioned themselves squarely opposite ‘liberalism in religion’,
meaning, according to Cardinal John H. Newman (1801-1890), whom they quoted, the idea
“that one creed is as good as another.”304
Schneider and Burke were soon joined in their aggravated opposition to the synod’s
feared religious liberalism by some 200 fringe far-right Catholics, who formed a “spiritual
army,” demonstrating outside the Vatican premises where the synod took place, imagining
that what went on inside was a battle of, literally, angels against demons.† Part of the active
anti-synod movement was TFP and its sister organizations, with its protests being
coordinated from its place of origin, Brazil.305
But what really set off the reactionary, absolutist, pro-celibacy, male-clergy-only
faction, was the physical manifestation of what was in essence the sentiment of the
Instrumentum Laboris: the respectful acknowledgment of the native beliefs of the Amazon
region. To symbolize that sentiment a number of wooden sculptures were set up in the
Vatican Gardens: statuettes of a pregnant woman, purportedly representing the universal
mother goddess – ‘Pachamama’ – who is worshiped throughout South America. These
statuettes were part of an exhibition of objects depicting the innate spirituality of Amazon
cultures. At the beginning of October 2019, during the synod, they had supposedly received
the blessing of Pope Francis, and at one time they would have been carried inside Saint

*
The final document of the Synod included a watered-down, unspectacular proposal to Pope Francis to conduct
a study into the possibility for women to become deacons, and to allow married men to become priests (The
Amazon: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology).
†
“It’s a battle of the good angels and [bad] demons,” said one of them, the American founder of the group ‘Church
Militant’, Michael Voris (Gallagher, “Catholic Leaders Are Meeting to Debate Big Changes”).

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Peter’s Basilica. Any of these occasions would have been a terrible abomination to the minds
of Schneider, Burke, and their ultra-conservative friends. This Amazonian “idolatry” became
an immediate rallying cry for the Catholic ultra-right, much more appealing and energizing
as a symbol, than the long-winding text of the Instrumentum Laboris.
Then, another high-ranking cleric joined the fray. Before his retirement in 2016,
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò was a diplomat for the Vatican, whose stellar career was
capped by his last position, that of apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C.. But he left the
United States with bitterness towards the Vatican,* and a deep love for the American far-
right. In 2018, Viganò’s intense dislike of Pope Francis came out in the open when he,
publicly and in writing, accused the supreme pontiff of having the alleged sexual abuse by
another cardinal covered up – “a pervert,” Viganò called his colleague – and of propping up
“evil pastors [...] in their active destruction of the Church,” thereby encouraging, as he put
it, “the wolves to continue to tear apart the sheep of Christ’s flock.” In the same letter,
Viganò urged Pope Francis to resign, and with this deliberate step, he put himself squarely
outside of the Church hierarchy.306 This move was crowned by becoming an ‘anti-pope’ in
all but name, when, on October 14, 2019, at the height of the Pachamama controversy, a
break-away part of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, proclaimed Viganò “the rightful
pope.” This schismatic, aggressively homophobic group of pro-Russian Ukrainian priests and
nuns,† declared that “Francis Bergoglio is an open heretic and apostate, i.e. an invalid
Pope.”307 The same group had been supporting hostile efforts by neighboring Russia to
undermine the sovereignty of their motherland. Not quite incidentally, Viganò himself
turned out to be an admirer of Vladimir Putin, judging Russia’s despotic president to be
“certainly a Christian.”‡308
So when, three weeks later, Viganò wrote a petition denouncing the presence of the
little wooden statues at the Vatican as being a “grave” sin “against God and the true religion,”
it should have been clear what kind of a man co-signatories would be siding with.
Nonetheless, 190 prominent “Catholic clergy and lay scholars” put their names next to
Viganò in an open letter describing the statuettes insultingly as images of “a false goddess,”
worshiped by a “false religion”; a religion moreover that would lead to “eternal damnation.”

*
Pope Francis retired Viganò as nuncio in 2016 against the archbishop’s wishes. According to an anecdotal but
credible story, the pope made sure to replace Viganò because he was angry with the archbishop for something
that happened during his official visit to the United States in 2015. Viganò would have sneakily invited to a
meeting with the pope the controversial female Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, without the pontiff’s
knowledge. At that time, the homophobic Davis was infamous for refusing to sign same-sex marriage certificates,
citing religious reasons. Viganò’s invitation of Davis to the meeting with Francis was apparently a setup, so anti-
gay marriage advocates could claim that the pope supported her actions (Burke, “Pope Replaces Ambassador to
U.S.”).
†
It calls itself the ‘Ukrainian Orthodox Greek-Catholic Church’ and sometimes the ‘Byzantine Catholic
Patriarchate’.
‡
Viganò also never condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but instead criticized the Ukrainian president
and his Western allies for being anti-Russian, and accused shadowy figures of the “American deep state” to be
“the real perpetrators of the conflict” and of setting up a trap that provoked Putin to invade Ukraine (Viganò,
“Declaration on the Russia-Ukraine Crisis”). In this respect, Viganó departs from some of his natural allies in
moral matters, who do not share his love of Putin or his positive view on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. To its
credit, TFP has condemned the invasion outright.

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The list of signatories included some 80 priests, including, apart from the archbishop Viganò
himself, the Auxiliary Bishop of Den Bosch (Robert Mutsaerts), and a few non-clerical
conservative Catholic celebrities, like the former German Secretary of State for Defense
Willy Wimmer, Italian professor De Mattei, and the above-mentioned Canadian Catholic
Westen, who had earlier attributed hurricane Katrina to people in New Orleans practicing
voodoo.309 Schneider and Burke did not sign the document, but were referred to in its text
as basically having made the same point, and they presumably had not objected to being
mentioned.
At the time the coronavirus emerged out of the blue in the beginning of 2020, all
this uproar was still fresh in the scandalized minds of the Catholic ultra-conservatives. So
when Covid-19 got them searching for a viable sin to blame, the Pachamama ‘abomination’
was an obvious contender. In March 2020, Schneider said he believed it was “not far-
fetched” to consider the Covid pandemic to be divine punishment for Pope Francis’
approval of, as he put it, the “cultic veneration of the pagan idol of Pachamama inside the
Vatican,” apart from the eucharistic transgression that may have been the other wrong
prompting God to spread the deadly virus.310 Shortly after, Schneider was joined in this
theory by a prolific Catholic blogger from Canada named Dan Millette, and by De Mattei.
“We surely deserve this trial,” wrote a concerned Millette. “Divine wrath is a possible, if not
certain, cause of our pandemic,” Millette theorized. “We can only wonder to what depth.
What wrath did Pachamama procure?,” Millette wondered.311 De Mattei also condemned
the supposed ‘veneration’ of “the Pachamama idol […] even within the holy precincts of the
Vatican.” He asked rhetorically, “Should all of this not be judged by God by now?”312
However, less than half a year later, in August 2020, Schneider’s view had evolved.
He still saw the pandemic in apocalyptic terms. But instead of also considering Covid as a
real threat and a form of divine punishment, in his mind it had now become a manufactured
danger, a hoax mostly, and part of a vast plot to prepare for the ascent of the antichrist. Now,
Schneider posited that “this COVID situation” had been created in part “to implement a
new dictatorship and control of the population,” it being “the last step of Satanism,” namely
the establishment of “the masonic world government.” In addition, the pandemic was a plan
“to legalize abortion globally” through the use of “parts of aborted babies” in the
manufacture of vaccines.* This would take mankind “into the time of the Apocalypse,”
Schneider concluded, “of which we already now have some signs.”313 In short, Schneider
had gone completely off the deep end of craziness, head first.
What had happened in between? What had moved Schneider’s view of the pandemic
as a serious public health threat – certainly to the health of his mostly like-minded colleague
Cardinal Burke, who had become severely ill due to the coronavirus – to Covid-19 as a made-

*
Later, on December 15, 2021, Schneider, Eleganti, and Viganò would put their signatures on the ‘Bethlehem
Declaration’ that denounced the use of “abortion-tainted” vaccines (“tested or developed through the abuse of
stolen fetal cells from the bodies of murdered pre-born children”), minimized the risk of the Coronavirus,
maximized the risks of vaccines, and promoted the use of improper alternative cures, favored by ill-informed
‘anti-vaxxers’, like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine (Bethlehem Declaration).

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up Satanical and Masonic pretext for tyranny? What had happened was that Viganò had
yanked the entire conservative Catholic perspective in a very different direction: that of the
grand conspiracy promoted by the Kremlin, which was then gaining track among the far-
right extremists in the United States and Western Europe. On May 8, 2020, Schneider’s
name appeared together with 130 others beneath a pompous, rambling, fact-free ‘Appeal’,
penned by Viganò, that accused global invisible players of staging the pandemic for their
own evil purposes. Viganò had brought several strands of conspiracy theory together in one
encompassing Catholic Gesamtbild.
The Appeal was brimmed with extraordinary but completely baseless allegations
against unnamed evildoers. For starters, ordinary people would be “penalized,” Viganò
claimed, for seeking effective and inexpensive remedies against Covid, instead of using
“vaccines that are not as good, but which guarantee pharmaceutical companies far greater
profits, and exacerbate public health expenditures.”314 This part of his conspiracy theory may
have been derived from a quasi-documentary by a Californian filmmaker opposed to
vaccines, wittily titled Plandemic, which had been released on the Internet a few days before
the publication of the Appeal.315 Viganò implied that pharmaceutical companies would also
be profiting from abortions, as he declared that “for Catholics it is morally unacceptable to
develop or use vaccines derived from material from aborted fetuses.” Viganò further
appealed to xenophobia, as he suggested that measures to prevent the spread of the virus
were taken deliberately to bring down “entire sectors of the economy,” which, he claimed,
“encourages interference by foreign powers.”316
But these schemes would not even be the most nefarious of the “hidden intentions”
behind the supposed Covid deception. “[T]here are powers,” Viganò alleged – enigmatic
“nameless and faceless people,” organized in “supranational bodies,” in alliance with “shady
business interests” – who wish to create a “panic” that would serve three short-term goals.
First, the pandemic would justify the punishment of “dissent.” Already, “censorship […] is
happening widely on social media, in the press and on television,” Viganò claimed, and this
would aid in the imposition of “subtle forms of dictatorship, presumably worse than those our
society has seen rise and fall in the recent past.” Secondly, the same enigmatic powers would
want to isolate people “in order to better manipulate and control them.” And lastly,
according to Viganò, the scheme by the ‘nameless and faceless’ would have the purpose “of
controlling people and of tracking their movements.” All of this would be a “prelude to the
realization of a world government beyond all control,” supposedly meaning it will be totalitarian,
intending for “centuries of Christian civilization to be erased under the pretext of a virus,”
and to establish “an odious technological tyranny.”317
And then, in complete ignorance of the obvious contradiction with its plea for
respecting “the inalienable rights of citizens” and the principle of “democratic and honest
debate,” Viganò made this stunning undemocratic declaration: “The State has no right to
interfere, for any reason whatsoever, in the sovereignty of the Church.”318

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It is hard to determine what is more staggering: the lunacy of the Appeal itself, or
the fact that educated, privileged adults attached their name to it. Theology professor
Massimo Faggioli judged the text a mix of “vaudeville” and “paranoia.”319 The vicar general
of Essen, Father Klaus Pfeffer wrote he was “simply speechless” regarding the Appeal’s “crude
conspiracy theories without facts or proof.”*320
Notwithstanding all of this, the Appeal initially got 130 signatures from an even more
prominent group of Catholics than Viganò’s Pachamama petition. In the days immediately
following its publication, at least 40,000 more people joined the list of signatories. The initial
group of supporters included, apart from Viganò himself,† three cardinals‡ – most
importantly Gerhard Mueller who had been Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith until the pope replaced him – five mere former and present bishops,§ and three
auxiliary bishops** – including Schneider – ten other lower-ranking members of the clergy,
some lawyers, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (no stranger to conspiracies since both his

*
One aspect that stands out in the document is the bravado used by Viganò to hide the shallowness of his
reasoning. He declared arrogantly that the “facts have shown,” but then mentioned no verifiable facts at all.
There would be “growing doubts,” “from several quarters,” Viganò alleged, expressed by “[m]any authoritative
voices in the world of science and medicine,” but declined to quote any of them. These voices would “confirm,”
wrote Viganò, that “the media’s alarmism about Covid-19 appears to be absolutely unjustified.” (How does one
confirm an appearance? Is it ever possible to not consider alarmism unjustified?) “We are fighting,” Viganò
proclaimed, “against an invisible enemy that seeks to divide citizens,” supposing that he and his allies would not
want to do so. But then he also, contradictorily, urged people to take a stand “either with Christ or against Christ”
(“An appeal for the Church and the World”; Emphasis in the original). But the letter was not just vague, silly,
and contradictory, it was itself alarmist by design.
†
It is hard to draw a line between malignity and madness in Viganò’s public statements. After the ‘Appeal’, he
went on spouting the most insane accusations. In October 2020, he alleged that President Obama had “gone so
far as to cancel Christmas,” and that the Black Lives Matter movement was a “global version” of “communism”
(Boezi). In an interview in January 2021, Viganò charged that “Bergoglio” was the “spiritual leader” of a “globalist
ideology” that pursues a “perverse, anti-human, antichristic, infernal agenda,” and that President-elect Biden was
“only a puppet in the hands of the elite,” and was “heavily suspected of being complicit with the Chinese
dictatorship” (Bannon, “Interview”). In April 2021, he penned a “Declaration” in which he called the former
President Clinton’s daughter Chelsea Clinton “a follower of the Church of Satan,” the presence of the
“Pachamama idol” at Saint Peter’s Basilica a sign that Rome will become “the seat of the Antichrist,” and Covid-
19 merely “a seasonal flu” (Moynihan, “Letter”).
In hyper-conservative Catholic media outlets (Life Site News, Church Militant, The Remnant), Viganò
continued to argue that there really was no real physical health pandemic but rather a “psycho-pandemic”
(Viganò, “A Consideration on My Letter”) meant to push a vaccine, which he called a “gene serum,” that makes
people “chronically ill” (Viganò, “Abp. Viganò Endorses Canadian Truck Drivers”). According to Viganò, the
Covid-19 pandemic was “only one aspect” of a vast conspiracy, involving a “complex network of complicity
between the globalist oligarchy, the financial power of the pharmaceutical companies, international institutions,
and national governments all over the world.” That, and the vaccination campaign, which was “criminal,” Viganò
wrote, were part of a “global plan” – also described as “the ‘Great Reset’ of the World Economic Forum” – to
achieve two things: first, to reduce the number of people in the world, and, second, to establish a totalitarian
regime. In Viganò’s words, the aim was “to bring about a ruthless reduction of the world population – especially
the elderly – and impose forms of control and restriction of the natural rights of citizens” (Viganò, “A
Consideration on My Letter”).
Perhaps Viganò found justification for his mendacity in the fact that he saw himself on the side of
“those who oppose the kingdom of Satan on earth” (Viganò, “A Consideration on My Letter”), and engaged in
a “spiritual crusade, […] a war without quarter, in which Satan has been unchained […]” (Boezi).
‡
Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, Janis Pujats, and Joseph Zen Ze-kiun.
§
Rene Henry Gracida, Jan Pawel Lenga, Luigi Negri (1941-2021), Thomas Peta, and Joseph Strickland. Pope
Francis relieved Strickland from his post as Bishop of Tyler, Texas on November 11, 2023, which Viganó
immediately condemned as a “cowardly form of authoritarianism” by “Bergoglio” (Viganó, “Statement”).
**
Andreas Laun, Robert Mutsaerts, and Athanasius Schneider.

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father Senator Robert F. Kennedy and uncle President John F. Kennedy had been
assassinated),* and even fifteen medical doctors.
What moved these people to sign such an irresponsibly hysterical piece of fiction?
When Cardinal Mueller was asked to identify the powers mentioned in the Appeal that
would be using the virus for the purpose of a world dictatorship, he admitted his ignorance,
answering weakly, “You’ll have to ask the authors that.”321† What had gotten into Mueller’s
mind to support the ridiculous Appeal, apart from an instinctive inclination to side with the
opponents of a pope whom he disliked, can only be guessed at. But there are other
signatories, for whom the reason is a bit more obvious.
One of the 130 initial signatories was a medical doctor named Pasquale Bacco. In
the months following the Appeal’s publication, Bacco would become a well-known ‘anti-
vaxxer’ in Italy, speaking at various protest rallies. But in December 2021 he made a
complete turnaround when one of his unvaccinated followers died of Covid-19, and he,

*
It has been reported that Kennedy is personally acquainted with Viganò, as well as the ‘January 6’ (2021) coup
plotters Michael Flynn (whose family, according to Flynn’s brother Joseph, has appointed Viganò as its “spiritual
guide”), Roger Stone, and Steve Bannon (Crosse), who are all incidentally Roman-Catholic. The latter have all
sung Kennedy’s praises, as has Trump, whose support made him “proud” (Lewis, “Trump’s praise”). A few
months after the publication of the ‘Appeal’, on August 29, 2020, Kennedy showed he had fully understood and
agreed with its contents when he had signed it, because he spoke about the same conspiracy in roughly similar
terms. Speaking to a crowd of protesters in Berlin, he accused “big important people like Bill Gates and Tony
Fauci” of “pumping up fear” and pretending not to know anything about the sickness despite the fact, so Kennedy
claimed, that they had “been planning and thinking about this pandemic for decades,” thereby insinuating that
Gates and Fauci were guilty of causing, prolonging, and exploiting the spread of the virus (Minimalist Nomad).
Like Viganò, Kennedy employed the cowardly tactic of ‘defamatory association’. By (1) relating specific unethical
acts to unspecific actors, (2) in a separate sentence naming specific actors but not specifying their responsibility
for any particular behavior, and (3) putting the one statement right next to the other, they deliberatively gave
occasion for making crosslinks between the specific unethical acts and the specifically named actors, while never
actually making a clear accusation to anybody in particular.
On November 12, 2021, Kennedy held another dramatic speech during a demonstration in Bern,
Switzerland, to urge the Swiss to reject in an upcoming referendum the legalization of an official pass, which
would certify that its carrier had been vaccinated or had recovered from Covid. A majority of 62 percent of the
Swiss citizens would vote in favor of this pass (Agence France Press). “I promise you,” Kennedy pompously
declared from an outside podium, “that I and many others are ready to die with our boots on for liberty” (Actions
Suisse). According to the ultra-Catholic online paper The Remnant, Kennedy had asked Viganò to also participate
in this demonstration. Viganò complied with Kennedy’s request by sending in a video message in which he once
again made a series of grotesque accusations, mixed with a good dose of the usual bigotry. “This colossal farce,”
he proclaimed, “is based on a virus produced in a laboratory that has been spread in order to create an emergency
pandemic that would give a pretext for placing all of humanity under control” (Viganò, “Robert Kennedy, Jr.”).
And while Kennedy told the Swiss crowd he was be ready to die on the “barricades” for freedom (Actions Suisse),
Viganò made clear that this freedom should not include “the right to kill children in the mother’s womb, the
elderly, and those who are sick in their hospital beds,” the right “to abort, to live against the precepts of Christian
morality, to be able to behave as if God did not exist,” the right to “sexual liberty,” or the “freedom that would
legitimize homosexual unions and gender theory” (Viganò, “Robert Kennedy, Jr.”).
That Kennedy has sold himself to become a pawn in the hands of some of the worst enemies of
democracy and civil rights is a tragedy. It is worse that he has been heralded as a progressive savior by such DMT-
inflated podcast egos as Aubrey Marcus and Joe Rogan.
†
That was not Mueller’s only defense. He also stated that “not a single line in it is mine. But 30,000 people have
so far with their signatures supported its general direction, without weighing every word. Many doctors and other
scientists have also worked on it.” So, despite being the highest ranking member of the clergy supporting the
‘Appeal’, he could not be held responsible for its contents. Blame the ‘authors’ and the ‘many’ doctors and
scientists’ who contributed to it (Maksan; in the original German: “Das Papier und keine einzige Zeile darin
stammt von mir. Aber 30.000 Menschen haben es bislang mit ihrer Unterschrift in der allgemeinen Zielrichtung
unterstützt, ohne jeden Satz auf die Goldwaage zu legen. Auch viele Mediziner und andere Wissenschaftlicher
haben daran mitgearbeitet.”).

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miraculously, felt responsible. Bacco admitted that he and his fellow anti-vaccine leaders had
“deaths on our conscience,” adding: “We were really big bastards.” What had motivated him
to urge vulnerable people to reject vaccination? Partly because it made him a lot of money:
he had patients lining up on his doorstep whom he reportedly could charge whatever he
liked.322 And perhaps also in part because of criminal elements he alleged had infiltrated the
Italian anti-vax movement, and the fact that he had received death threats when he had tried
to leave that movement, possibly from those same criminals.323 Another Italian signatory,
the judge Angelo Giorgianni, had been sacked in 1998 as junior minister in the Italian
government on suspicions of having ties with the Sicilian mafia (the Cosa Nostra).324
For some, apparently, promoting paranoia, cynicism, and confusion around the
Covid pandemic was a means of drawing in gullible people for profits and power. Dr Bacco
may never really have believed the full nonsense of the Appeal. But others may have been
genuinely deluded. For the elderly cardinals and bishops on the list of signatories, the crude
conspiracy theory in the Appeal may have agreed at a fundamental level with the apocalyptic
fantasies they seem to be delighting in, and which seriously debilitates them psychologically.
During their dull years at the seminary, the bewildering End Time scenarios in the Old and
New Testaments, filled with riddles, strange beasts, forbidden sex, and extreme violence,
may have been the most exciting topic in Bible class. The insane but sensational revelations
of Marian apparitions – heavily discussed in the ultra-conservative universe – continually
gave those stories further impetus by upgrading their relevance. And in the age of the
Internet, the lure of a large Twitter following tends to cluster people in likeminded groups
who – in the hunt for ‘likes’ – reinforce each other’s viewpoints.
It might also rather appealing to be ‘in’ on a secret that others are believed to be
deluded by, and exciting and self-affirming to imagine oneself to be a participant in a cosmic
battle between the forces of absolute good and evil. It is possibly what makes the belief in
CDP and end-time conspiracies intoxicatingly alluring, and addictive.
Another reason for the Appeal’s popularity, and that of its secular and protestant
versions, is the psychological propensity to perceive causal connections between all kinds of
bits and pieces of information. This trait is called ‘apophenia,’* which may find expression
in political and religious theories, and in the tendency to see world events through the lens
of conspiracies on a grand scale. Political and religious apophenia is a mental affliction,
which, when combined with a strict religious upbringing, gives birth to – and is also in a
circular manner borne by – a general belief in CDP and the imminent end of times. There
is nothing absurd about the notion that people sometimes conspire with criminal intent.
But it becomes problematic when each and every unfortunate incident is consistently
explained as the result of wicked intrigue, and the possibility of such an event being
accidental or unintentional is automatically, unthinkingly discarded. And once anybody is
branded ‘evil’ in a literal sense – ‘liberal’ governments, freemasonry, the ‘mainstream media’,

*
DeYoung, Grazioplene, and Peterson (2012, 63) defined apophenia as “the perception of patterns or causal
connections where none exist.“

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George Soros, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and so on – nothing that comes from them can
ever be considered innocent or reasonable, and there is no room whatsoever for distinction
or dialogue.
This is also why adherents to CDP narratives appear to be suckers for the unlikeliest
conspiracy theories. You may have noticed how easily, almost overnight, preachers like Wiles
and Schneider moved from presenting Covid-19 as a punishing rod in the hands of God to
it being an element in a grand conspiracy devised by malignant mortals. These were two
messages addressed by the same people to the same audience. How can the same individuals
not see the contradiction? What we need to recognize are the commonalities between CDP
and conspiratorial narratives. Both of these storylines appeal to people who tend to look for
patterns in unrelated events, and who prefer explanations that are based on nefarious
intentions over those that take into account the possibilities of coincidences and innocent
slipups.
When CDP happens in response to human transgressions, and ‘evil’ things occur,
conservative believers do not charge God with doing ‘evil’, but imagine him unleashing it
and so allowing it. God would temporarily open the gates of evil – wide or just a crack – to
wreak havoc on the wrongdoing collective. Evil conspiracies are then just one more type of
CDP, next to earthquakes, volcanoes, and hurricanes. And both global conspiracies and
CDP are themes that can easily be integrated into the third related topic of end-time
scenarios. This seems to be an interesting topic of further scientific exploration: the extent
to which apophenia gives rise to the three types of irrational explanations for disasters.
Additionally, could the three themes of CDP, End of Times, and devilish conspiracies be
causally related? To what degree do they overlap and get entertained by the same individuals?
Do they tend to bond individuals or cause separation between them? Do they emerge
simultaneously or sequentially in the same people? To what degree do each of these themes
give rise to militancy, intolerance, religiosity, and authoritarianism?

Whether it gives rise to CDP, end-time apprehension, or conspiracy theories, political and
religious apophenia is a phenomenon that can easily be exploited, as some have discovered,
like the Kremlin and Dr Bacco. The apparent glee with which some religious leaders greet
the latest disasters might point at them having an opportunistic desire to add another
instructional device to their arsenal for recruitment, discipline, and reprimand, and to prove
themselves right. Anthropologist Holmgaard spoke to missionaries in Samoa who reaped
the benefits of blaming the 2009 tsunami on people sinning. Holmgaard managed to have
these missionaries admitting, fascinatingly, that the period immediately following the
disaster period was “a good time,” and that they used the anxiety as a “harvesting tool.” One
pastor told Holmgaard that “people were afraid and had so much remorse and they were
ready to listen and accept everything we said.” Another pastor said to her, “‘oh, it was so
great, they all repent. They just say ‘yes pastor’. It was too easy!”325

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However, any suspicion of opportunism and insincerity on the part of the often
media-savvy and calculating religious professionals should not blind us to the reality of actual
fear, experienced by ordinary believers of CDP through natural disasters because God is
angry, or by those who expect to get turned into a living object by an ‘Internet of things’ that
is ultimately commanded by the antichrist. Religious leaders are likely to know their flock,
and to know that their attributions of disasters to divine punishment or demonic
manipulation do not fall on deaf ears. The fear may not be real to all who express it with the
certainty and self-righteousness of the many preachers featured above. But to their following,
it most certainly is.

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4. Failed attempts at a counter-narrative

Contrary opinions are plentiful but inconsistent, and therefore
powerless

At first it seems logical. You are overcome by a disaster or crisis that happens suddenly,
unexpectedly, fully outside the reach of any normal human capacity to foresee and control,
also fully outside human comprehension, and apparently driven by an enormous force that
must proceed from an awesome source of power. It must be God’s doing. But why would
God, who is good, bring all this pain and devastation upon us all? He must be angry. But
then, why would he, who is also all-powerful, act on his anger in this indiscriminate manner?
Surely it would be wrong to picture God as a giant toddler having a temper tantrum?

The rationale of CDP

While there is no shortage of theories about whatever sin causes God to become sufficiently
angry to inflict whichever mishap, to my knowledge there is no official theological
explanation for why God would punish collectively instead of individually. Any attempt at a
theological explanation, I found, is no more than a reiteration of the biblical evidence that
it is simply something God does occasionally. Hesiod, Augustine, Salvian, Palmer,
Constable, and Sutton only noticed what they supposed was God’s behavior, but did not
explain its rationale. Even when adherents of the idea of CDP seem to explain why it makes
sense, they often simply restate the same belief with different words.
Take Pope Benedict XV (1854-1922), who in 1917, in the midst of World War I,
distinguished between on the one hand “private misfortunes” and on the other hand “public
scourges.” The former could either be “deserved punishment,” the pope explained, or an
“exercise of virtue for individuals,” an educational method to correct their life course
towards less sinfulness and a purer faith. ‘Public scourges’ would probably include large-scale
disasters, which, according to Benedict XV, “are penance for the sins of public authorities
and nations that have turned away from God.”*326
This does not explain anything. It is still individuals who suffer from those ‘public
scourges’, individuals who may have had neither part nor parcel in the supposed sins of their
communities or countries, like the thousands of soldiers dying in the trenches right at the
time Benedict XV held his speech. Surely, the omnipotent deity would have the surgical
capacity to practice ‘precision bombing’ instead of ‘area bombing’ to correct and educate
‘authorities and nations’, just as he supposedly does in the case of ‘private misfortunes’.†
Why God would not use that capacity remains a mystery no theologian has ever solved.
*
I have Professor Roberto De Mattei to thank for unearthing this quote (Gomes).
†
The biblical evidence shows God is not in the habit of striking with precision when the calamity of choice is
substantial and widespread, and is meant to target a group of people, instead of a single individual. Biblical

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‘Church Father’ Tertullian did not even presume God himself made the distinction
between punishment and correction. “He deals with all sorts of men alike,” argued the 3rd-
century theologian, “so that all together share His favors and reproofs,” and humanity –
including both the “outcasts” and the “elect” – God means to “have adversities and
prosperities in common.” The difference lies in how these are being interpreted. In the case
of us, Christians, Tertullian wrote, adversities are “gracious admonitions, while in yours they
are divine punishments.” But then, why inflict misery on people at all? Tertullian’s answer
was that God wants us all to have “the same experience of His goodness and severity.”327
Fine, but then God would not have any intention of punishing us in this life at all, which is
an odd thing to argue for when you have just blamed the Roman pagans for attracting all
kinds of adversities by worshiping the wrong gods, as Tertullian did in the very same
paragraph.
Similar to Benedict XV, historian De Mattei, recently explained that individual
misfortune, caused by God, could either be a form of “punishment or a trial.” But, he added,
“evils that afflict nations are always punishments.” More specifically, according to De Mattei,
“[w]ar is the punishment for the pride of the people, epidemics are the punishment for their
luxury, and famine is the punishment for their avarice.” Now, individuals can be rewarded
or punished both in this life and the next. But because nations “do not have an eternal life,”
De Mattei reasoned, “[their] reward or punishment can be applied only within the course of
history.”328 De Mattei used the occasion of the corona crisis to reiterate his claim that the
Catholic faith teaches that, while individuals who die without repenting “are punished for
eternity, […] cities and peoples, which have no eternal destiny, are punished in the temporal
time for their sins.”329
The same idea was put forward by United States President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-
1885), who explained that, “as all evil must be punished in some form at some time, and as
nations have no organized existence hereafter, they must be punished here for their national
sins.”*330 That makes sense perhaps, but it does not answer the question why nations need

evidence to the contrary is rare, as when he caused the sixth plague on the Egyptians and only they suffered from
“boils” but miraculously not the Israelites living among them. A similarly ‘precise’ but rare collective punishment,
God would have inflicted in post-biblical times on the English, according to the 17th-century theologian John
Trapp, which came in the form, Trapp recounts, of “the sweating sickness, with which, no stranger in England
was touched.” Trapp adds that “the English were chased therewith, not only in England, but in other countries
abroad; which made them, like tyrants, both feared and avoided wherever they came” (Trapp at Exodus 9:8).
The mysterious sweating sickness, in the words of the Welsh medical historian Alan D. Dyer,
“apparently came from nowhere in 1485 and disappeared without trace in 1551,” and typically caused death
within 24 hours after its first symptom of profuse sweating (Dyer, 362). However, death was far from certain with
a mortality rate differing widely between places, which included in 1529 – proving Trapp wrong – Copenhagen
(400 dead), Amsterdam (between 400 and 500 dead), Augsburg (800 dead), and Hamburg (1,100 dead) (Patrick,
“Consideration,” 274). What may have been a viral disease spread by rodents (Taviner, Thwaites, & Gant, 98),
appears to have originated in England, but it was later also reported in the Low Countries, Germany, Scandinavia,
the Baltic area, Switzerland, and Austria (Flood).
*
By the same “reason of their nearer approach to immortality” – they have longer lives than individuals – argued
Diodorus in the 1st century BCE, states should expect to be punished at some point in their existence, and
therefore they should also take better care of religious worship than individuals (Library of History, Vol. III, 407).

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to be rewarded or punished at all, when God is also able to turn his judgmental attention
on each individual human being separately.*
The closest thing to an excuse I could find – which is different from a justification †
– was used, not by a theologian, but by the lawyer, senator, and diplomat Joseph de Maistre
(1753-1821). Born in Piedmont-Sardinia, a former kingdom that is now mostly part of Italy,
but having a French name and being partly of French descent, De Maistre took considerable
interest in the French Revolution. When this turned terribly violent under the dictatorship
of some of its radicalized instigators, De Maistre considered the Revolution itself to be a
divine punishment of the French nation. He acknowledged that in punishing France, God
had also caused some collateral damage: “There are undoubtedly innocent people among
the unfortunate, but there are far fewer than is commonly imagined.”331 So, when God is
angry, he may cause some innocent individuals to suffer; however, there are far more people
who do deserve what they get. Then what is less impressive? De Maistre’s narrow imagination
of divine power, or his debilitated compassion for the victims?‡
Many would claim that, wrapped in a crisis or a disaster, God is sending us a message,
collectively. Take Presbyterian Reverend Ian Brown from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who,
referring to what he saw as the simultaneous threat of Islamic extremism and homosexuality
in the 21st century, claimed “God is saying something through this. He is shaking the
nations.” But how is punishment without a preceding verdict a proper means of
communication? God might be saying something, but how can he be any less clear? “This is
his method through history,” Brown observed, “He shakes us up to send us back to
himself.”332 Supposing that this is so, why would God not address each of us individually?
With clearly audible words preferably, or in writing. Again from a religious leader, there is
no explanation, only reiteration of the same claim that God sometimes punishes collectively,
and this having some higher purpose that is shrouded in mystery. As we will see from the
many religiously interpreted disasters in history, apart from platitudes like the general need
for repentance, theologians have rarely agreed about the message these tragedies would
reveal, let alone about why that unintelligible message needed to be presented in such a
painful packaging.

*
De Mattei clarified why every individual will undergo two judgments by God after death: one immediately at the
end of one’s physical life – the “particular judgement” – humanity’s fork in the road leading to either Heaven or
Hell, and one at the end of time – the “universal judgement.” Why two judgments? Because, De Mattei explained
helpfully, some people continue to have an influence on the world beyond the grave. For instance, “Luther,
Voltaire, and Marx will be punished for all the evil that their works have brought about until the end of the
world,” because these continue to be harmful supposedly after their death. But God also judges, rewards and
punishes in the temporal world, according to De Mattei. And he does so with regard to individual people and
entire nations. But nations must be punished in the here and now because they have no soul that can be punished
in the afterlife (“The Judgement of God in History”).
†
A justification turns a transgression of a rule into a repeatably proper act – in fact adds to the rule itself – while
an excuse mitigates the blameworthiness of the transgression but does not make it right.
‡
De Maistre wrote, “never has Divinity shown itself so clearly in any human event,” and not for “a long time” had
he seen “such a frightful punishment […] on such a large number of culprits” (Maistre, Considérations sur la France,
9, 10; in the original French: “jamais la Divinité ne s’étoit montrée d’une manière si claire dans aucun évènement
humain; […] une punition aussi effrayante, infligée à un aussi grand nombre de coupables”).

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From a limited human viewpoint it might make sense to attribute mysteriously

occurring disasters to a powerful being, who wants to force us into doing his bidding. From
the perspective of a loving and all-powerful god, who takes our best interests at heart and
can do anything because he is omnipotent, collective divine retribution has no legitimate
purpose. That same God should also be perfectly capable of inflicting individual chastisement
“to send us back to himself,” whatever that means.
At the time when Benedict XV explained the difference between ‘private
misfortunes’ and ‘public scourges’, in 1917, to the dismay of the world, German occupying
forces were inflicting collective punishment on Belgian citizens in what came to be known
as the ‘Rape of Belgium’. The pope would surely have been aware of that. Like the god
imagined by Benedict, those Germans were causing multiple ‘private misfortunes’ to
produce a ‘public scourge’. After the Second World War, civilized society demanded such
atrocities would never happen again, and to this end produced the 1949 Fourth Geneva
Convention. This widely adopted treaty decrees that it is a grave crime to punish, in times
of war, an individual “for any offense he or she has not personally committed.”333 Why would
it be alright if God did what we condemn as some of the worst human behavior? But despite
divine ‘public scourges’ lacking any theological sense, or morality, many conservative
theologians continue to justify it, and spread the fear of it.

Denials of CDP

As we have seen in the examples included in the last chapter, when disaster strikes, quite a
few theologians and highly religious politicians tend to point at sinfulness as the ultimate
cause; not necessarily that of all the victims themselves, or even any of them, but at least of
some people nearby, often implicating complacency or even complicity of the worldly,
‘temporal’ powers that made that sinful behavior possible. Importantly, in all these cases,
there are victims completely innocent of the sins supposedly being the reason for their
misfortune, either because God is unable or unwilling to discriminate, or because they are
part of a sinful collective that is being punished collectively. The sins to which all these
momentous punishments supposedly are a heavenly response, include heretical viewpoints,
promiscuity, cursing, homosexuality and gay marriage, recognition of transgender rights,
euthanasia, and abortions. Almost all possible combinations of penal calamity and these
forms of punishable behavior have been made at some point in time by Jewish, Christian,
and Islamic religious leaders and theologians, and some also by their non-Abrahamic
counterparts.
But should every catastrophe necessarily be considered a judgment? Is it possible that
an accident happens and no sin is involved, and that no punishment was intended?* This is
apparently the position of more mature voices in recent times, who try different perspectives

*
At least no specific sin apart from the original one that is supposedly ever-present in this fallen world.

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to avoid impossible questions like ‘what sin caused this calamity?’, ‘whose sin?’, and ‘why do
some people suffer more even if they appear to sin less?’ Thankfully, it appears that the
majority of current religious leaders and serious theologians,334 including as we have seen
Catholic clergy loyal to Pope Francis, do not ascribe to the idea that any calamity is
necessarily proof that a specific human sin caused a specific divine response.
Their main reason for denying that disasters are proofs of punishment appears to be
a sincere desire to prevent cold-heartedness towards their victims. Most current religious
influencers, fortunately, appear to consider it an intolerable cruelty to add to people’s
suffering by casting suspicion on their conduct and character.* And so, they deny the
existence of a direct link between suffering and sin, or at least between suffering and the
sufferer’s sin, and reject, for instance, the notion that earthquakes or epidemics are a form
of divine punishment proving the sinfulness of the victims.
Callousness has indeed been a side-effect of linking suffering to sin. Seemingly with
satisfaction, the Irish Methodist minister Adam Clarke (1760/2-1832) noticed the
misfortune befalling the French – it is unclear what misfortune exactly – “by the just
judgments of God, in revenge for the massacre of the Protestants on the eve of St
Bartholomew!” The event, Clarke referred to, happened some 250 years before, in 1572,
when thousands of Protestant Huguenots were murdered in Paris and other French cities by
Catholic mobs. “Yet for all this,” Clarke concluded, “God’s wrath is not turned away, but
his hand is stretched out still.”335 Pat Robertson would agree that God may remain angry for
centuries, as shown by Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.
The connection between sin and suffering provides a justification for shelving
compassion, and the consequences of the resulting callousness are dreadful. With regard to
HIV/AIDS, a library of studies exists showing how stigmatization and discrimination are
associated with the belief that the sick and infected undergo punishment from God. 336
Stigma and marginalization in turn lead to the avoidance of health care services, thereby
hampering prevention, testing, and treatment, with the further detrimental effect of
increasing the spread of the disease. And that is not just true for HIV/AIDS, but also, the
United Nations entity UNAIDS found, for Covid-19.337
An even more serious example is two millennia of antisemitism. Any misfortune
befalling Jews has been used by Christians as evidence for God’s displeasure with his
erstwhile Chosen People, and all the more reason not to give a damn, or even to contribute
to their suffering. Since the beginning of Christianity, the Jewish diaspora has been exploited
to demonstrate God’s condemnation of the Jews’ supposed role in the crucifixion. Take
pastor Spurgeon who, in 1855, preached that “unbelief” caused “the destruction of
Jerusalem by Titus,” “the tragedy of Masada,” and the fact “that to this day the Jew walks

*
Another reason for religious leaders to reject the belief that disasters are God’s response to sinful behavior, was
offered by Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), who pointed out that when people “seek to affirm and support
our religion by the prosperity of our enterprises […], it is to be feared, lest when they fail of success they should
also stagger in their faith” (Montaigne, Complete Works, 94). A prosperity-threatening disaster would break the
link between religiosity and material success, and create a more firm foundation for faith.

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through the earth a wanderer, without a home and without a land.” The still highly esteemed
evangelical preacher once counseled his listeners thus:

Each time you see a Jew with a sad and somber face, pause and say, ‘Ah! It
was unbelief which caused you to murder Christ, and now it has driven you
to be a wanderer […].338

Such blanket accusations became rather unfashionable after the Holocaust, but even then
not for Constable’s colleague at Dallas Theological Seminary professor Lewis Johnson (1915-
2004). Writing in the second (!) half of the 20th century, he professed his belief in the
“certainty of the recompense of the wicked,” of which “Israel [is] a living illustration,” and
explained that “the nation Israel, by its disobedience and by its response to the ministry of
the Messiah and the crucifixion of Christ, scattered to the four corners of the earth.”339 With
that reasoning, antisemitism is an unfortunate but logical extension of the belief that Jews
are being punished by God, and deservedly so.
Therefore it is for good reason that mainstream religious authorities, conscious of
the evils of marginalizing unfortunate minorities, shrink from publicly drawing evidence of
the sinfulness of the victims from their misery, and condemn those who do. When it came
to light that pastor Wagner had claimed that homosexuality, prostitution, and abortions
were the reason for Hurricane Katrina, this was one of the reasons that prevented him from
getting promoted to auxiliary bishop of Linz in 2009.340 And when father Cavalcoli suggested
that the 2016 earthquake in central Italy was God’s punishment for the country’s recent
legalization of same-sex civil unions, clergy higher up in the church came down hard on the
Dominican priest. Cardinal Angelo Becciu, representing the Vatican, asked the earthquake
victims to “forgive us” for the priest’s “offensive” and “scandalous” comments, which, he
declared, “have nothing to do with Church teaching and are contrary to the vision of God
as offered to us by Christ.”341 The Bishop of Cremona, Antonio Napolioni, called these
attributions of the earthquake to divine punishment “blasphemies” and called on priests
“not to hurt [victims] with unfortunate words that do more harm than stones.”342
However, the Dominican friar had not suggested the nearly 300 dead victims
themselves were guilty of the legislation, as the cardinal and bishop implied he had said. He
had simply explained calamities from a biblical point of view. “Have you read the story of
Sodom and Gomorrah?” Cavalcoli asked when confronted with his superiors’
condemnations. There are sins, he stated, “that deserve divine punishment, I am not saying
anything new.” Responding to the criticism that his viewpoint was not theologically sound,
Cavalcoli replied, “I am a doctor of theology since 30 years,”* and: “This is the Bible. Review
the catechism.”343

*
Indeed he is. Father Cavalcoli is an emeritus professor of ‘Dogmatic Theology’ and of Metaphysics (“Padre
Giovanni Cavalcoli”).

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This points to the existence of a fundamental problem: from a biblical and a

traditional Christian viewpoint, Cavalcoli was right. We do not need to go as far as De
Mattei, who argued that “thinking that God does not send scourges makes someone […] an
atheist,” to concede that it is a core part of traditional Christianity to believe disasters are
the divine way of collectively punishing people.344 As Bible scholars Baden and Moss
commented, when religious leaders attribute unfortunate events to divine punishment,
“[t]hey are simply raising to prominence a standard element of the theological repertoire.”345
Therefore, with regard to Christians who cherish the Bible and take it entirely, or much of
it, as the literal ‘word of God’, Becciu and Napolioni are at a clear disadvantage vis-à-vis their
counterparts in the church, equally high-ranking clerics like Burke, Castro, Cavalcoli,
Eleganti, Schneider, and Zeigler. In the United States 58 percent of adults, including non-
Christians, consider the Bible to be a mostly true account of history: of all Americans, 31
percent take the whole of the Bible, and 27 percent much of it, literally.346 Most reactions
from theologians who try to counter the notion of CDP simply fail to address the fact that
the Bible is in fact fully in accordance with that concept. Thereby the ancient logic is left
intact that God allows bad things to happen because bad people misbehave, that those bad
things may also happen to good people for that very same reason, and even that bad people
may escape those bad things altogether.*
A case in point is a passage in the New Testament that would purportedly prove that
the concept of CDP is unchristian. Jesus once asked his followers whether they thought the
eighteen people who died, when “the tower of Siloam” collapsed, “were sinners above all
men that dwelt in Jerusalem?” Jesus answered himself, “Nay” (Luke 13:4-5), thereby denying
that victimhood is proof of sinfulness. Unfortunately, this passage is less helpful than it
seems. Proponents of the notion of CDP would remind believers that Jesus added in the
same verse, “except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” In other words, we are all sinners,
bad enough to deserve to ‘perish’, except if we ‘repent’. Moreover, did they die because of
the sins of others, and was Jesus actually stating that the disaster of the collapsing tower was
an instance of CDP that carried the message that people should repent because they were
just as much or maybe even more deserving? Does that mean that the victims of the collapsed
tower of Siloam would have survived if they had repented? And repent of what?
At a deeper level, the attempts to counter the disaster-as-punishment claims rarely
affect the belief in a personal God who determines the course of human lives directly or
indirectly in a physical way, and who must therefore have a reason both for causing good
things and bad. Take the Catholic Bishop of Den Bosch, the Netherlands, Gerard de Korte,
who, in line with the Vatican’s position, denied that Covid-19 is God’s punishment. He
argued that God “almost only” acts in this world indirectly, by inspiring people supposedly.
But then De Korte got himself in a bind by illustrating his argument with the claim (in the

*
This is apart from the minor problem that the argument that other factors may be at play, other than punishment
for sin, is more complicated and more difficult to communicate, which explains in part why the mature voices
are neither the loudest nor the most effective.

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very same piece!) that God used Russian soldiers as his tools to liberate Auschwitz.* Then
why on earth did God not use them in 1940? Or at any time before the Jewish death rate hit
six million? If God’s belated intervention shows that he had taken an interest in the suffering
of Holocaust victims, as the bishop contends, then it makes more sense to assume the deity
thought it was all perfectly fine before 1945. Just as it makes sense to assume that this same
intervening God thinks the pandemic is perfectly fine, before the rollout of vaccines and
medicines, which he undoubtedly caused to develop, put an end to it. Why should we
assume these interventions, or lack thereof, are not meant to punish?
The conservative Catholic professor of apologetics, Trent Horn, also rejected the idea
that God is punishing mankind with Covid. However, he argued, this is because the disease
hurts too many good people. Horn made the baffling self-serving argument that

If the disaster only affected a group of people who we’d expect God to punish,
like a group of abortion doctors or the attendees of a Satanic black mass, that
could be evidence of divine punishment.347

So when Horn believes an individual does not deserve to suffer, but nonetheless does, then
this is yet another case of God behaving mysteriously. But if somebody else gets hurt whom
Horn believes deserves it, then this is because God was angry and meant to punish, and
proof, moreover, that Horn was right about the sufferer being a bad person. With this kind
of reasoning you can never be wrong. The major point is that according to Horn God does
punish groups of people in this life by causing disasters, just not in the case of Covid. Thank
God Covid is not a disease that is commonly transmitted sexually, or theologians like Horn
would likely blame the victims for their promiscuity.
“That God, through crises, knocks at our door and invites us to reflect,” Cardinal
Schönborn stated, “that I firmly believe.”348 But not that God would knock down our door
to beat us up in wrath. Cardinal Schönborn argued that the virus was not a divine
punishment, because, he said, “I cannot imagine God to be like that.”349 If that is so, his
image of God is quite contrary to the divine character portrayed in the Old Testament,
unlike the image held by his countryman Wagner. Bishop Wilmer went even further than
Schönborn, declaring that the idea of a punishing God who presents us with the “receipt
for misconduct” is “horrible and also totally unchristian.”350 In that case, Wilmer’s notions
of both God and Christianity are contrary to how either have been dogmatically described
throughout history by religious authorities.

*
The bishop wrote: “God did not open the gates of Auschwitz himself. No, the machine of terror in Auschwitz
ended through the liberation of the camp by Russian soldiers. God works almost always indirectly, in this case
through soldiers of the cruel dictator Stalin” (De Korte, “God en Corona”). (In the original Dutch: “God heeft
de poorten van Auschwitz niet zelf geopend. Neen, de terreurmachine in Auschwitz kwam tot stilstand door de
bevrijding van het kamp door Russische soldaten. God werkt bijna altijd middellijk, in dit geval door soldaten
van de wrede dictator (!) Stalin.”)

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The collectively punishing deity is not only biblical, it is the dominating image of
God as presented consistently by the highest theological authorities for centuries.
Countering the idea of a punishing God asks for more than mere denial: it requires a
complete overhaul of church dogma.

Obfuscation

Using a clever play on words, Pope Francis himself sidestepped the issue when he declared
at the start of the Covid-pandemic, addressing God himself: “It is not the time of your
judgement, but of our judgement.”*351 It is an admirable sentiment: to focus on what we can
do for others instead of looking for somebody to blame, and if it leaves the question of ‘why’
unanswered, then so be it. But it would scarcely satisfy anxious Catholic believers who
hunger for explanations, and leaves them looking for answers with extremist clergymen.
Also quite unhelpful for preventing people from seeing the virus as divine
punishment was the month-long “Marathon of Prayer for an end to the Covid-19 pandemic”
the Pope organized in May 2020, described above. It included the request to the Virgin Mary
to pray to God that he would “free us from this terrible pandemic.”352 A comparable
initiative was taken by Cardinal Sako during the annual three-day ‘Nineveh Fast’,
traditionally observed by Christians in the Middle East. Sako invited believers in 2021 to
“repent our sins,” and “let us pray for salvation from the corona pandemic.” 353 He did so
again in 2022.354 If God can stop the pandemic, for what reason would he allow it? So we
will then humbly ask him to end it, with his son’s virgin mother as our intermediary? It
makes no sense.†
A few months after the Marathon, the Pope again declined to take a clear stance in
the matter, when he addressed the pandemic at length in his Encyclical Tutti Fratelli. He just
said, revealingly: “I do not want to speak of divine retribution.” Apparently eager for clarity,
the Italian national newspaper La Stampa read in these words what it wanted to, or what it
believed its readers wanted to, and printed an incorrect headline that blasted that the Pope
had said that the pandemic “was not divine retribution.”355 He could have, and he should
have, and he probably believed it, but he hadn’t. He had for some reason decided not to
dwell on it.
Another tactic of avoidance, apart from not speaking about divine retribution, is to
point at the unfathomable mystery of divine planning and simply declare one’s ignorance.

*
The first term ‘judgement’ in this quote means ruling, and the second means discernment. Pope Francis
explained: this time of our judgment is “a time to choose [between] what matters and what passes away, a time
to separate what is necessary from what is not” (Pope Francis, Urbi et Orbi, 2020).
†
What is the theological reasoning that would be rationalizing one month of prayer but not a year-long ‘marathon’?
Why would asking God to end the pandemic once not be enough? Why would you need to repeat it over and
over? Why would God listen to the Virgin Mary, but not to the pope, or any other person? If God does not
answer these prayers, would that mean he wants the pandemic to continue, and if so, should we then refuse
vaccination or medication?

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“In the end, we have no answer as to why we are suffering,” said Cardinal Marx in response
to questions about the deeper meaning of the Covid pandemic. But in any case it was not
to punish us, the Cardinal from Munich was certain.356 The present-day Old Testament
scholar Walter Brueggemann observed that God sometimes does things in “utter freedom
without reason, explanation or accountability, seemingly beyond any purpose at all.” 357
Seemingly: so there is a purpose, but Brueggemann was uncertain as to what that is, at least
in the case of Covid. And because he acknowledged the fact that this purpose has been
punishment numerous times before, according to the Old Testament, Brueggemann did not
disprove that option either. Covid could be punishment, but we cannot be certain, was
Brueggemann’s conclusion, which from a biblical viewpoint was probably correct, but also
disappointingly unhelpful.
As long as theologians hold on to the idea of a personal god having a personal interest
in the world – and, worse, that god being the God of the Old Testament who reportedly
punished people en masse without distinction repeatedly – the discussion does not seem to
evolve much. This can be seen by taking a look at a very similar discussion that took place
150 years ago.
At the very beginning of his highly successful career as a preacher, in 1855, at the age
of just 21, Charles Spurgeon gave in to the tendency to link supposed sin to general misery:
the sin and the misery of the Jews, to be specific, as related above. According to the English
pastor, the sacking of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans – the “worst massacre which
time has ever seen” – showed “how God has punished” the Jews for their “unbelief.”358 He
may not have been so bold on the same topic later on,* as he would consistently reject
attributing disasters in his lifetime to divine punishment. Six years later, in 1861, Spurgeon
felt he had to respond to two terrible train accidents that had recently happened in England,†
and then struggled with the same problem facing theologians today, namely of having to
square two apparently contradictory notions: that on the one hand ‘good’ people suffer, and
on the other that God has caused that suffering. Referring to a psalm’s verse that states that
the Lord’s “judgments are a great deep” (Psalms 36:6), and cunningly swapping the word
‘judgments’ for ‘providence’, Spurgeon argued that it would be wrong to reflexively assume
that anything bad happening is proof of God’s anger. He posited:

The idea that whenever an accident occurs we are to look upon it as a

judgment from God would make the providence of God to be, instead of a great deep,
a very shallow pool.359

*
Spurgeon was not an anti-Semite. In 1872, he preached: “certainly the Jew is of an honorable race, ancient and
venerable, having been chosen of God of old” (Spurgeon, Root Out of a Dry Ground, 3).
†
In August 1861 two trains collided inside the Clayton Tunnel near Brighton killing 23 passengers. In September
of the same year a passenger train clashed with a freight train in London killing 16 people and wounding
hundreds. That same week, Spurgeon made these disasters the theme of his sermon titled ‘Accidents Not
Punishments.’

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But accidents are not accidental, Spurgeon also claimed in another sermon. All that happens
is predestined, he declared, “from the motion of a grain of dust on the threshing floor to
that of the flaming comet which blazes athwart the sky.” And so naturally, “the catastrophes
of nature [have] the Lord distinctly in them,” argued Spurgeon.

Who shakes the earth? Is it not God that looks on it and it trembles? When
the mountains vomit fire, is it not because He touches the hills and they
smoke?360

The question remains, why would God visit such misery on us deliberately if not to punish?
By pointing at the ‘great deep’ of his judgments, like so many of his colleagues then and
now, Spurgeon declined to answer, except that he wisely admonished his audience to
consider the fact that “men of bad character sometimes escape where saints are left to die”
and therefore to “dismiss from your minds the idea that a sudden death is necessarily a
judgment” – of the victims, he might have added – or to “draw any inference from the
destruction of a building, or the wreck of a ship, or an explosion […], as to the character of
the persons who perish […].” However, Spurgeon admitted, if not for Adam’s sin, “there
would have been no famine, no war, no catastrophe of shipwreck by sea, or of accident by
land,” and now, “famine, pestilence, and war, are as rods in His hands.”361 So all the
misfortune that befalls people in this life could well be punishing ‘rods’ for which they are
ultimately responsible.
Like, Brueggemann, Spurgeon simply did not know how to make sense of tragedies:
they could be punishment and they could also not be. Like other relatively moderate,
responsible theologians and religious leaders in the present day, Spurgeon in fact advised
people not to try to make sense of it either, and at least be humble in their judgment.

Alternative explanations

Other answers – real answers instead of simple denials and evasions – have been put forward
to the question why God causes all kinds of unpleasantness, or allows these to be caused, to
ostensibly good people. Unfortunately, these tend not to make him appear any less of a
despot.

Edification
One answer is that misery may have a justifying beneficial purpose: to edify the person
undergoing the ordeal, or perhaps onlookers, as in the biblical case of Job. The disaster
might then serve as a test of faith, a demonstration of God’s might, or an opportunity to do
good to others, and learn from that experience. Saint Augustine, for instance, argued that
“to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime,

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but the test of virtue.”362 But who knows whether he or she is just in the eyes of God, or dare
to proclaim, as Job did, that he had done nothing wrong? Christians, wrote Augustine, “must
humbly consider those very sins which have provoked God to fill the world with such terrible
disasters.”363
Also recognizing that diseases befall both the deserving and the undeserving, the
Prophet Muhammad would have declared that a plague was not just punishment by Allah
“on whom He wished” – elsewhere he appears to claim that a plague is a collective rather
than an individual punishment – but also “a blessing” for believers. To the latter, a plague
would be both an encouragement to remain faithful and a message of future reward:

None (among the believers) remains patient in a land in which plague has
broken out and considers that nothing will befall him except what Allah has
ordained for him, but that Allah will grant him a reward similar to that of a
martyr.364

Again, for the ordinary faithful it would be a brazen claim to make, that any serious illness
is a form of martyrdom rather than a form of punishment. However, the knowledge that
one is a believer offers hope that illness is not a preview of a more horrible hell that awaits
the unlucky but physically healthy unbeliever.
The French/Swiss priest John Calvin (1509-1564) made a distinction between two
types of judgment, divine punishment and divine chastisement. The former is to be
understood as God’s “punishment accompanied with indignation”: him “taking vengeance,”
displaying anger, and “confounding, scattering, and annihilating” his enemies. The latter
signifies that God is “offended, but not in wrath”: divine chastisement is intended as
“correction and admonition.”365 So how do you know the difference if some form of calamity
occurs? The short answer given by Calvin: when it happens to bad people it is punishment,
in “anticipation of the punishment of hell”; it is chastisement if it happens to good people,
“that they may learn his statutes,” “reflect on their sins,” and – “struck with fear and dread”
– be “led to repent.”366
Of course, good people may just as well learn from bad people getting punished, a
believer might ask, who feels he is getting more severely chastened by, for instance, an
earthquake, than the next-door unbeliever is getting punished: why me? Indeed, responded
Calvin, “[i]t is certainly a sore temptation, when God, sparing unbelievers and overlooking
their crimes, appears more rigid towards his own people.” Then, Calvin argued, you may
find solace in the knowledge that you, although bruised, are ‘saved’, and not the wicked,
who seem lucky now, but will end up in “the pit.”
But what is it you are being chastised for, if not for something you did wrong?
According to Calvin, “disease, pestilence, famine, and war, are curses from God,” when they
“operate as instruments of divine wrath and vengeance against the reprobate,” but the very
same calamities become teaching tools when they strike the just and faithful.367 Is it not a

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little too convenient – and therefore questionable – that God uses the exact same
instruments both to punish and to chastise? And what maniac would teach by killing?
The present-day British Rabbi Raphael Zarum sees “God as a loving and enabling
teacher,” rather than “an authoritarian schoolmaster.” He declared that, if you have done
nothing bad, and know your Torah, then you can be confident that your “suffering [from
Covid] is not your fault, it is because God loves you.” Why would Covid given to you by
God be a sign of his love? Quoting Proverbs 3:12, Rabbi Zarum explained, “For whom God
loves, God rebukes.”368 A similar answer was given by the Indonesian Christian theologian
Samuel Hakh. He maintained that “discipline from the Lord, though painful, shows that
God cares for and loves [His] children.”369 So if you suffer from Covid, then, at best, this is
a sign that you are being rebuked by God. But rebuke for what? Like Calvin, Zarum and
Hakh assumed that when good people, respectively good Jews or good Christians, suffer,
they are not being punished but chastised or rebuked. In either case, they would not have
suffered if they were completely blameless and not in need of correction. So no matter what,
if you contracted Covid, you better believe you did something wrong. By the way, it is a hell
of a chastisement or rebuke if you die from it. Again, who teaches by killing? And who learns
from dying?*
With a god who is believed to exercise his omnipotence at least habitually, and who
is described in Holy Scripture as responding with regularity to sinful behavior with physical,
material punishment, and with theologians giving inconsistent explanations, there is no easy
way to avoid concluding that there is a continuing pattern of events consisting of human
sin, followed by godly anger, followed by godly retaliation, followed by human suffering,
without distinction between degrees of deservedness. This is not to deny there is a level of
uncertainty in this mechanism: not all human sin is followed by godly punishment in this

*
Allow me to suggest a better way for theologians to explain the Covid-pandemic from a religious point of view.
To me, the mature way of making religious sense of the outbreak of the coronavirus would be for theologians to
tell believers that this is not a punishment from God, and that no disaster ever is. When your religious doctrine
prescribes that God is personally involved in all earthly matters, tell them you do not know why bad things
happen, and that in any case a good god would not want to inflict punishment but might want to give opportunity
for learning and growing, and bring people together: to provide a “test of virtue,” as Saint Augustine believed. In
the same spirit, Cardinal Schönborn said he “firmly” believed, “that God, through crises, knocks at our door and
invites us to reflect” (“Kardinal Schönborn: Ist Corona eine Strafe Gottes?”; in the original German: “dass Gott
durch Krisen bei uns anklopft und uns zum Nachdenken einlädt, das glaube ich fest”). Or take the view of a
particularly conservative Italian Catholic priest, Michele Chimienti, who told believers that “plagues, epidemics,
earthquakes, catastrophes are God’s warnings to make us change our path and correct us” (Volpe, “Don Michele
Chimienti”; in the original Italian: “peste, epidemia, terremoti, catastrofi sono ammonimenti di Dio per farci
cambiare strada e correggerci”).
If your religion insists on the existence of Hell, use your authority to tell people God punishes only in
the hereafter. And, when confronted with biblical stories of divine punishment in the physical world, of which
there are many, and supposing you are a biblical literalist, tell them that it may have happened then, but only
then, and that it would never happen again. And the reason for biblical times to be different from the present,
is that God used to tell Old Testament prophets unequivocally that his intention was to punish, and what the
reasons for that punishment was (cf. “Dominee Bert van Veluw”), and that time of clear communication between
God and prophets is surely over. Or make the case, as the Spanish theology professor and Jesuit priest Gabino
Uríbarri Bilbao did, that the idea of divine punishment is confined to the Old Testament, was discontinued in
the New Testament, and is simply not part of Christianity (Uríbarri, “Pandemia y Fe Christiana”). But, so far,
no Abrahamic authority appears to have made these arguments, categorically.

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life, neither in biblical times nor thereafter. But when you find yourself in the grip of disaster,
and you are overcome with distress, grief and despair, the urge to find a reason may be too
strong to accept that God’s ways are mysterious and indecipherable. And when you already
believe God gets involved with everything deliberately, and so conclude that he must be
angry, the effort it takes to accept – emotionally and intellectually – that he is not angry with
you per se, but with somebody else, and just wants you to reflect on what correction of
behavior he might be requiring from you, may just be too much to ask. Who in that situation
would be able to do what the 16th-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne
recommended: “to believe that all things come from God, […] and also thankfully to accept
and receive them, with what face soever they may present themselves”?370
The easier response is to blame supposedly bad people for being the reason for your
suffering, and go after them. The emotional purpose of such blame is to channel grief and
vent your own anger. The rational purpose is to discontinue God’s punishment. Pointing at
sinful, non-conforming, traitorous ‘Achans’ as the reason for crises and disasters is a
psychologically attractive means of casting out the terrifying thought that one is oneself
personally responsible for causing God’s anger. The obvious targets are heretics, witches,
gays, abortionists, Sunday recreationists, and so on. Swedish Professor of Cultural Sciences
Jonas Svensson observed that the explanation of divine punishment “demands less cognitive
effort than the alternatives.”*371 When the cause is clear, the solution is near: a solution that
lies in the repression of sinners, as I will show below.

End-time prophecy fulfillment

Yet, we have seen that there is a whole different class of explanations of why God would be
causing disasters: they announce that we are approaching the end of the world. This has
been most pronounced recently with regard to the Covid pandemic. A team of Norwegian
researchers encountered an Ethiopian Muslim who pointed out that the word ‘corona’ is
code for the number 666: the word consists of six letters, and the numerical value of each
letter adds up to 66.372† It is the number that sends chills down the spines of Abrahamic
believers everywhere. It is the number of the “beast,” according to the Bible, and it is the
mark that everybody will reportedly get on their hand or forehead once the antichrist takes
control in the final years before the world as we know it ends (Revelation 13:16-18).
“Throughout history, pandemics and apocalyptic narratives have run closely
together,” wrote British professor Simon Dein, an expert on religion and psychology.373 Like
all narratives, they offer meaning to any experience, and that is especially welcome when the
experience is loss and devastation. Abrahamic eschatology – the theology of the end time –

*
In addition, Svensson argued, the same notion is also “more congruent than its alternatives,” and “generates a
wider range of inferences.” In other words, it fits the predominant religious narrative better, and also explains a
lot of other unpleasantness (Svensson, “God’s Rage,” 572).
†
3(c) + 15(o) + 18(r) + 15(o) + 14(n) + 1(a) = 66. One apparently Christian user of 4Chan saw significance in the
meaning of the word ‘corona’ – crown – as in ‘corona spinea’ or ‘crown of thorns’ (Anonymous, March 16, 2020,
in: Koblentz-Stenzler, The Far-Right Leverages COVID-19 Pandemic).

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is multi-faceted and incredibly complicated, based on prophecies with various levels of

authority, ranging from the biblical and Quranic, canonical and apocryphal, to Marian
apparitions and channeled messages. It takes quite an effort to fit all of them together into
one comprehensive narrative, especially since these prophesies are often contradictory.
What is relevant, is that most End Time scenarios feature disasters. For instance, in
Islam, according to the Quran, God will cause a final “tremendous” earthquake at the Hour
of Doom (Quran 22:1). Hadiths report the Prophet predicting what appears to be a volcano
in the region around Mecca and Medina,374 and three “land-slidings,” which may refer to
earthquakes, one in the east, one in the west, and one in Arabia, that will happen at some
time before the ‘Last Hour’.375
For Christians, the most elaborate End Times prophecy is found in the New
Testament book of Revelation, which predicts “lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and
an earthquake, and great hail” (Revelation 11:19; cf. 16:17-21). These disasters are all
supposed to take place at a future time period, which Christians call the ‘Great Tribulation’
(Matthew 24:21). This period is typically seen as lasting seven years (Daniel 12), right before
Christ returns to defeat the antichrist and all who are in league with him, and then establish
his kingdom on earth that will last a thousand years. From the earliest days of Christianity,
disasters were seen as signs that the End was near. When Eucherius (c.380-c.449),
Archbishop of Lyons, witnessed “in these last days [...] the plagues of famine, pestilence, war,
destruction, and terrors,” he considered these to be “fatal symptoms of time [...] fainting,
and ready to expire.”376 This explanation has always remained an alternative interpretation
of disasters next to that of CDP.
Some Christians, Dein observed, have associated the Coronavirus with one of the
four ‘horsemen of the Apocalypse,’ mentioned in the book of Revelation. During the time
of tribulation, these horsemen would each be riding on a different-colored horse – a white,
a red, a black, and a pale horse – and bring with them all kinds of calamities.377 While
discussing the Covid pandemic, pastor Bakker declared himself convinced that the four
horsemen had “already left the stable.”378 The coronavirus-spreading horseman would be the
one riding on the fourth, pale, horse (Revelation 6:8), said pastor Stephen Flurry of the
‘Philadelphia Church of God’, son of the forementioned Gerald Flurry.379
Perhaps related to the four horsemen are the four chariots seen by the prophet
Zechariah (Zechariah 6:1). The chariot described as being drawn by black horses and going
to the north, according to Gerald Flurry, is “a representation of violence, famine and
pestilence.” Covid, Flurry senior believed, is a sign that these “[a]ngelic beings are already
being positioned and instructed for [the] catastrophic events” of the Great Tribulation.380

It appears that protestant Christians, especially Evangelicals,* are the most active in spreading
the notion that the end is fast approaching. It seems likely that the tendency to view disasters

*
Father and son Flurry would not describe themselves as ‘Evangelical’ by the way.

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from an eschatological viewpoint is also greatest among these type of Christians. There are
roughly 80 million Evangelicals in the United States, among whom the belief is widespread
that the Second Coming is imminent. About 40 percent of Americans – Evangelical or not
– believed in 2010 that the Second Coming will happen sometime before 2050.381 A large
proportion of Evangelicals seems to believe that those Christians who are truly ‘born again’
will be spared the Great Tribulation, because Christ will transport them all together up into
heaven in an event they call ‘the Rapture’. Most Christians, however, will not be quite good
enough to partake in the Rapture, and will be left behind. ‘Left Behind’ is the title of a series
of books, co-authored by Tim LaHaye who has been described as “the most influential
evangelical of our time.”382 It is also the title of two film adaptations of that series, recounting
the adventures of these imperfect believers. During the Great Tribulation, the unfortunate,
not-good-enough-for-heaven-yet Christians will have to endure all kinds of bad things at the
hand of the antichrist, amidst a vast majority of non-believers, and try very hard to gain the
‘saving grace’ that will rescue them from eternal Hell.*
A long-running website called ‘Rapture Ready’, co-edited by Todd Strandberg, the
man who alleged HIV was transmitted mostly by sin, is dedicated to keeping track of signs
of the Second Coming, and presents a weekly updated ‘rapture index’, analogous to the Dow
Jones Industrial Average.383 The rapture index number is the product of various indicators,
including disastrous events like volcanoes, earthquakes, famines, droughts, plagues, and
floods. The higher the index number the faster mankind is believed to be moving towards
the rapture. Strandberg and his co-editor Terry James are in fact continuing a long-standing
Christian practice of trying to decipher the ‘book of nature’, written by the Creator himself.
It is unclear how current calamities fit in with the scenario of Apocalyptic events that
should occur after the born-again Evangelicals have been raptured. Perhaps disasters can be
interpreted as a foretaste of the Great Tribulation, and not quite the ‘real deal’. Baxter
believed Covid would be a “privilege” compared to what would be coming during the
Tribulation. So while they would put current disasters in some minimalizing perspective, for
pre-tribulationist Evangelicals, who hope to be raptured in time, these do bring to mind the
many dreadful Doomsday calamities described in the Bible books of Ezekiel, Daniel,
Zechariah, and Revelation. Enough for them to see current earthquakes, hurricanes, and
epidemics as signs that the inevitable end is imminent. For instance, Hurricane Katrina in
2005 was welcomed by Evangelical television host Hal Lindsey as a sign “that the judgment
of America has begun,” a judgment that would be part of the sequence of events surrounding
the Second Coming.384 Ethiopian Christian-Orthodox clergy were found to see the Covid
pandemic as a sign of Christ’s impending return.385 We have seen that Bishop Schneider

*
This theory of ‘pre-millennialist dispensationalism’ was developed around 1830 by the Irishman and one-time
Anglican priest John Nelson Darby, and has slowly become the dominant viewpoint of Evangelicals in the United
States. A minority of Evangelicals suppose it is also possible that the Rapture will take place sometime during or
even after the Great Tribulation.

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predicted that the ‘abortion-tainted’ vaccines against Covid would take us “into the time of
the Apocalypse.”386
Evangelicals around the world tend to be informed by theologians based in the
United States, who are mostly organized within Baptist (Jerry Falwell), Pentecostal (Pat
Robertson), and Independent Bible churches. As demonstrated above, it is quite common
for representatives of these denominations to attribute disasters to divine punishment for a
particular kind of sinful behavior, but they can also choose, at will, to declare catastrophes
to be portents of the Great Tribulation as well. Many of the disasters and crises that have
plagued Abrahamic believers in the past, and were believed to be a form of divine
punishment, have also been interpreted as signs of the approaching End Times. While it
would make sense to prefer one interpretation over another and stick to that, it is not
uncommon to point at a specific sin as a reason for God’s anger expressed as a catastrophe,
and also maintain that the same disaster is part of God’s plan to end the world. Some do not
make a choice between the one and the other, and embrace both alternative interpretations
at once.
Almost millennium ago, the French Cardinal Odo of Châteauroux (c.1190-1273), at
one time Chancellor of the University of Paris, was able to explain disasters using both
perspectives alternately. In one sermon, he claimed that “our transgressions have been
multiplied,” and that “therefore the wrath of God has flown over men bringing along
famine, pestilence, sword, lightning and storms, earthquakes and other kinds of scourges
from God [...].”387 In another sermon, Odo took the earthquakes that had hit central and
northern Italy in 1268 or 1269388 as an occasion to refer to the prophet Isaiah (24:18-19),
who divined that the earth, in Odo’s words, will be “broken,” “crushed,” “moved,” and
“shaken.” And this, according to Odo, will “have its consummation in the end of the world
when the day of final judgment approaches.”389
Five centuries later, the Danish theologian Christian Henrik Biering (1729-1804)
blamed Catholic idolatry for the Lisbon earthquake. He wrote a poem in which he pointed
specifically at the Catholic worship of relics, which would have “shamefully defiled” God’s
honor, and prompted divine punishment of the Portuguese. But what is punishment for
one nation, might be an omen for another. In the same breath Biering also alleged the
earthquake was a sign of that we “are now seeing the last age of the world.” 390 So the same
disaster was both a form of CDP and a warning that the last days were just around the corner.
More recently, reverend Baxter suggested Covid could be both a sign of the End
Times and a punishment for some specific sin.391 Pastor Bakker has consistently presented
disasters as signs of the End Times and as forms of CDP for the sins of a nation. The founders
of the Rapture Ready website seem to favor interpreting disasters as portents of the end of
days, but they have also featured many articles arguing that these are forms of divine
punishment in response to specific evils.
So what do disasters like earthquakes and pandemics signify? The wrath of God, signs
of the approaching end, or both? Could it be that what has been prophesied is that God will

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become increasingly angry, causing him to occasionally deliver punishments here and there
in various forms, and that this steady build-up of anger culminates in one final furious
outburst at the End of Time, when he is, at last, surrounded by those who won’t anger him
anymore, and the sinful are locked away and punished perpetually? The Finnish historian
Jussi Hanska pointed out that both the explanation of disasters as caused by divine wrath
and the eschatological explanation are “related” and “not fundamentally different.” They
are simply explanations of the same physical phenomena from a different vantage point: the
one from a micro-level, and the other from a macro-level.392 A crisis or disaster is punishment
or castigation at the individual or even national micro-level, and a point in time signifying
progress towards the end of time on a global macro-level. András Kraft, a scholar of
eschatological thinking in Medieval Greece, pointed at the similarities between both
interpretations. Kraft observed that calamitous natural events that were seen as early signs
of the Apocalypse during the Middle Ages were believed to have the same origin and purpose
as disasters as a form of CDP. The origin was people’s bad conduct, and the purpose was
getting people to change that. Kraft wrote that “anything that happens at the end times […]
solely depends on people’s previous or anticipated behavior […],” while its purpose “is solely
aimed at enticing – either through reward or reproach – mankind to act properly.”393
But these observations do not address or solve a fundamental problem: what is
humanity’s proper response? In either case – CDP or sign of the Apocalypse – people would
need to repent, because obviously the disaster signals that some ending is at hand, and God’s
judgment imminent, whether this ending relates to the end of one’s personal life, or to that
of the planet as a whole. But collective measures to prevent God from becoming angry with
the community make less sense when his interventions are part of the foretold chain of
events leading up to the End of Time. The first, micro-level explanation would likely drive
collective action. The second, macro-level explanation would only turn people’s attention
inward. If a disaster is to happen anyway because Sacred Scripture says it is prophesied, then
no amount of piety or sinfulness will be able to ward it off, and there is no choice but to
make good with God on a personal level.
Perhaps this double, simultaneous perspective on disasters explains an ambiguity in
the way present-day Apocalypse-focused Christians respond to them. A hurricane, flood,
earthquake, or epidemic gives them occasion for railing against the sinners who are angering
God. At the same time, they tend to be resigned to the inevitability of God’s anger, and
hopeful about the fulfilment of prophecies they hold dear. Policy measures that could
mitigate God’s wrath should be welcomed and fought for, in part because it shows believers’
worthiness of being included in the rapture. But at the same time such measures will not
postpone the Apocalypse and push the rapture further into the future, as every world event
is a stage in God’s plan that is unfolding. It is therefore likely that political acts promoted by
end-time believers are at least partly for show. The eschatologically-minded faithful feverishly
try not to be the targets of God’s anger, but also know, or profess to know, that God is angry
anyway, and increasingly showing it, whatever they do. Then, to the world, no worldly

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measure matters. The inevitability of ever more frequent and violent disasters turns the fear
of an angry God, who stands ready to punish, into a hopeful, if anxious resignation that
increased suffering will soon be over, and either be replaced by eternal bliss or eternal
torment.
Some make it seem that such resignation is easy. Holmgaard quoted a young Samoan,
probably an Evangelical priest who did not consider the 2009 tsunami to be punishment
from God, but rather a sign of the End of Times: “I saw everything shaking, it was so
powerful, and I raised my hands and yelled “praise God! The Lord is coming and I’m ready
to be united!”394
Joy at the sight of a calamity seems contrived: a forced expression of a willed emotion
to convey one’s confidence at being on God’s good side, while trying to contain the instinct
to fight for survival. That might be the proper emotional attire for an impassive priest, but
from a psychological point of view it is alarmingly worrying: when fear is seen as a sign of a
lack of faith, and faith alone can save from the worst possible fate – Hell – then the
suppression of that fear is an urgent and absolute necessity. The Indonesian theology lecturer
Yanto Hermanto, who accepted the possibility that Covid-19 was a sign of the Second
Coming, assured Christians that if they prayed for God’s help to endure the difficulties in
the runup to the End of Times, and lived in accordance with his commands, “then the
second coming of God is not something frightening.”395
Perhaps not for a confident Christian like Hermanto. But imagine having to hide
your fear of actually having fear – a fear of fear itself – for what should be but is not yet quite
complete confidence in the adequacy of your faith when any sign of such fear is itself a sign
of not being good enough. ‘Be confident or else!’ And then, the stakes could not possibly be
any higher. Take the belief of a former pastor and current blogger, Grant Phillips, who claims
there are “[m]illions of ‘good’ people” who are not Christians, but who, when they die, “are
condemned by God to everlasting hell.”396 Phillips is one of 62 percent of all Americans who
believe in the existence of Hell, and one of 44 percent of American Christians who believe
eternal life in Heaven is only available for Christians.397 How many of those think the End
of Time will end well for them is unknown, but there are psychiatrists specializing in treating
patients traumatized by the fear of Hell who can categorically declare that not all of them
are quite completely optimistic.
Also on a societal level, the alternative, or complementary, eschatological
interpretation is hardly reassuring. When the response to natural catastrophes is either an
increased fear of sinning neighbors who need to be restrained or punished, or apathy because
there is no way of avoiding what is inescapable, then doors close to constructive, rational
action to help victims, and to mitigate the risks and consequences of future disasters. A man
in Fiji, who experienced heavy flooding in 2012 and interpreted this as a sign that Judgment
Day had arrived, decided not to flee his house, explaining,

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It’s in the Bible. Some they run away and they search a place to hide. You
can’t go. You can’t go away. […] I was sitting just down here and sing, and
pray, and thank God.398

In addition, the requirement for good Christians to force themselves into desiring the
advancing dreadful but inevitable Day of Doom appears to suppress sensitivity towards the
fated victims. To illustrate, Terry James, who eagerly awaits the Second Coming, has alleged
that the people of Israel, whom he assumes to be the heirs of the biblical Israelites, commit
the offense of depending “upon strange gods” for their protection – meaning military
innovations – instead of the true God of the Bible. Thereby, argued James, the Israelis – or
perhaps he meant Jews in general – are fulfilling the prophecy that “their foot shall slide in
due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand” (Deuteronomy 32:35). Whatever the
nature of this calamity, the Bible testifies that it is God’s intention to “destroy both the
young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs” (Deuteronomy
32:25). But for James, that is no cause for concern, because the world is “destined for God’s
wrath and judgment” anyway, and God’s condemnation of Israel and its subsequent troubles
signifies the passing of a signpost and the opening of a new chapter in the history of the
world. Then, “a remnant” of the Jews, according to James, “will turn to their true Messiah,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and God will restore His people and make them the head of all nations
in the Millennial Kingdom.” Supposedly, all’s well that ends well, even if it comes at a
calamitous cost to the Israelis (or Jews) bar a “remnant.” Compassion for the innocent
‘suckling’, who is about to be ‘destroyed’, is replaced by pious resignation and joyful
anticipation.399 “The fear of the Lord is […] a crown of joy,” says the Bible (Ecclesiasticus
1:11). Really?
The Catholic Church has generally been successful in controlling and “directing
hopes and fears away from this life and towards the next,” as the historian Norman Cohn
(1915-2007) put it,400 and thereby preventing the faithful from becoming overly excited by
current events that could herald the second coming, and by the prospect of a revolution that
would bring them everlasting worldly power and glory. Cohn has shown that vested
authorities in the Christian world – secular and religious alike – have had good reason to try
to curtail a popular desire for the realization of eschatological phantasies: initially benevolent
religious movements, inspired by the thought of living in the final days and hoping to see
an end to all earthly troubles, preparing for their own divine judgment, often derailed and
became violent mobs worshiping martyrdom, while attacking the supposed enemies of God,
which often included regular priests and princes. The notion of being somehow special and
superior on account of membership of a collectivity, the opportunity for a conclusive revenge
that will compensate for all injustices suffered, and the essentially infantile desire to be taken
care of by an all-knowing and all-powerful father figure – the Messiah – must have been
particularly potent among the impoverished, the disillusioned, and the humiliated. And it
still is.

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Sober minds within Christianity have acknowledged the risks of eschatological fever
dreams. While the early theologians Irenaeus (c.130-c.202), Tertullian (c.155-c.220), and
Lactantius (c.250-c.325) believed in the Second Coming as a physical event that would
actually happen rather sooner than later, others, most prominently Origen (c.185-c.253) and
Augustine (354-430), espoused a symbolical interpretation of biblical eschatology, and it was
the latter’s viewpoint that became dominant. The early Church included the Book of
Revelation in the official biblical canon, but only because it mistakenly believed it was
written by the apostle John.401 All other apocalyptic writings dating after the Old Testament
were left out of the Bible.402 This Catholic policy of discouraging eschatological enthusiasm
continued to this day. In 1998, Pope John Paul II said, “Christ has not specified any
chronological date. Attempts to predict the end of the world are therefore deceptive and
misleading.”403
However, just as with regard to the Church’s faltering policy of countering the
tendency to ascribe disasters and crises to divine punishment, these efforts do not appear to
be quite effective. Pope John Paul II tried to dissuade Christians from setting a specific date
for the Apocalypse, but not from interpreting natural events as portents of the last days, and
not from living their lives without restraint as if our planet will be destroyed anyway, and
neither future generations nor the natural world should matter much. Even the supposedly
more progressive Pope Francis is credibly suspected of taking the biblical phantasy of a future
apocalyptic end of the world literally. According to the English Catholic author Stephen
Walford, he “has spoken more of Satan and his evil influence than any other Pope in recent
memory.”404 The Supreme Pontiff has personified “the spirit of evil” as Satan,405 and has
accorded this personalized evil active participation in world events. In 2015, he remarked
that he thought “the devil is punishing Mexico with great fury,” by causing gang violence.*406
And in 2019, Pope Francis described the devil as “the Lord of the world.”407 That phrase is
a reference to a dystopian novel with that title, which appears to have inspired the pope,
because he advised journalists to read it, suggesting it would clarify some of his beliefs. 408
This book – The Lord of the World – written in 1907 by the English Catholic priest Robert H.
Benson (1871-1914), describes the ascent of the antichrist, the destruction of Rome and the
martyrdom of all cardinals and the pope, and the eventual Second Coming of Christ, who
is victorious over the antichrist and his forces at the Valley of Megiddo, or Armageddon.†409

*
Incidentally, when Pope Francis believes the devil is able to punish a nation, it makes him much less convincing
when he rejects the mirrored idea that God does the same.
†
The Lord of the World is about the rise of an American politician, named Julian Felsenburgh, who becomes the
antichrist. Felsenburgh has a supernatural command over other people. The entire world population, except for
a few faithful Catholics, falls under his spell and joins his cult, which is described as “Humanity worship without
its inadequacy” (Benson, The Lord of the World, 187). The nations make him ‘President of the World’, hail him
as the Messiah, and even proclaim him God. When Felsenburgh orders the destruction of Rome and all Roman
Catholic cardinals in it, Percy Franklin, an English priest, survives and is elected pope, in secret. Franklin takes
the name Silvester, and moves to the town of Nazareth in Palestine, which is then ruled by Russia. In the end,
Silvester and his twelve newly appointed cardinals witness the defeat of the antichrist in the valley of Armageddon
by the real Messiah. The heroic Franklin mirrors another character in the book, named John Francis, who is a
Catholic priest who has lost his faith and joins the cult of the antichrist. Did Pope Francis take inspiration for
his own papal name from the book’s two priestly antagonists, Francis and Franklin?

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In summary, Pope Francis seems to embrace the idea that the world is being divinely
prepared to become the battlefield for a final confrontation between God and absolute evil.
That makes him less convincing as an authority to guard against eschatologically inspired
human behavior.

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5. The repressive forms of remedy

Preventing God’s wrath is a public matter that requires a unified
effort by all sections of society

If calamities strike when people sin, there is another side of the coin. The whole divine
mechanism of bad behavior by a few leading to bad consequences for the rest may work the
other way around as well. What kind of good behavior would bring good results, when bad
behavior seems all around and to be already stoking God’s anger? I could find two
complementary strategies that have been used throughout history: placation and regulation.

Placation: taking the ‘Ninevehan’ approach

It seems people have always recognized the need for placating potentially angry gods. Their
efforts at doing so reflected the reasons for the deities’ anger and whether the kind of fear
the gods inspired was purely personal or collective. In ancient Sumer and Egypt it was the
priests’ responsibility to prevent divine wrath for religious transgressions, such as neglecting
collective ritual offerings and the celebration of festivals. The fear of collective divine
punishment for other reasons, like misbehavior between humans, appears not to have been
prevalent at that time.
While the priestly professionals entreated the Heavens for the community’s general
welfare, ordinary people would plead with the gods to relieve them from personal mishaps
because of divine punishment they believed was directed at them personally. An inhabitant
of Ur, named Kug-Nanna,* found himself afflicted by a debilitating illness. He put to writing
a plea with the deity Ninšubur, whom Kug-Nanna believed he had somehow angered, and
who had therefore sent disease-bringing demons to enter his body. He prayed devoutly:

If it pleases you, my god, allow me to soothe your angry heart, so that your
spirit will be assuaged. May the maškim demon that perpetrates evil be ripped
apart, so that he will flee my body. May the asag demon be extirpated from
my limbs, so that my dark days will become bright. I cannot bear your heavy
punishment any longer; declare that ‘It is over’! May I, the humble servant,
not be destroyed; declare that ‘It is over’!410

Another, anonymous Sumerian suffered physical pains, which he believed was the result of
a decision by the goddess Inana to punish him for some undisclosed transgression. “My body
has experienced your great punishment,” he wrote. Mixing pleas – “May your heart be

*
The high-ranking Kug-Nanna, a son of the rich trader Pu’udu, married a princess named Geme-Nanna
(Steinkeller, “How the Merchants Acquired Their Wares,” 104).

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soothed towards me!” – with praise – “Your divinity is resplendent in the Land!” – he prayed
to Inana for “mercy,” “compassion,” “care,” and “lenience.”411 In both cases, the divine
punishment was personal, and so was the reason for it. It is unfortunate that we do not know
what that reason was. Had they forgotten to bring sacrifice, or had they committed some
interhuman crime?
If these individual attempts at placation failed to bring results, outsourcing to
dedicated professionals might. Such services may have been on offer in Sumer, and
simultaneously in Egypt. The priests and priestesses dedicated to the Egyptian goddess
Sekhmet, who was feared for her habit of causing diseases, were arguably in the best position
of pacifying her anger, and thereby indirectly of healing her victims. According to
Egyptologist Lucarelli, Sekhmet’s priests worked as a kind of medical doctors, and “there are
hints that they also functioned as veterinary surgeons.”412 Part of the Karnak temple complex
is the so-called ‘Precinct of Mut,’ a collection of temples that were built and added to during
a long period from about 1500 BCE to the first century CE. At some time, it appears to have
become a center for the worship of Sekhmet, because it once housed as many as 572 tall
statues representing the lion-headed goddess.* There is some evidence that Egyptians flocked
to the ‘Precinct of Mut’, perhaps to seek relief from illness or to prevent it, turning it also
into a center of healing. The early French Egyptologist Georges Legrain (1865-1917)
remarked that the statues of Sekhmet were unevenly worn down, as if they were polished by
the touching of thousands of hands during centuries of popular worship. His present-day
colleague Randa Baligh suggests that this might be evidence of the belief of “most Egyptians,
ancient and modern, in the power of the good energy or the notion of ‘baraka’ [blessing]
which may be transmitted by touch.”413
These practices were responses by individuals to actual or potential negative personal
experiences attributed to an angry deity, not concerted attempts to prevent or mitigate a
collectively experienced disaster. Perhaps the first instance in history of a communal measure
to prevent disaster is described in the Old Testament.
The Book of Jonah provides a clear failsafe remedy to divine wrath looming, and
notice that this story refers to a collective punishment for an unidentified collective sin. At
God’s command – “for their wickedness is come up before me,” he said reportedly (Jonah
1:2) – the prophet Jonah preached to the Assyrians of Nineveh, and proclaimed that the city
would “be overthrown” in forty days (Jonah 3:4). It is unclear what kind of punishment God
actually had in store, but Bible commentators tend to think it would have been either the
fire and brimstone used on Sodom and Gomorrah, or an earthquake. Jonah’s preaching
convinced: the Bible testifies that the people of Nineveh “believed God” (Jonah 3:5), and
followed the king’s decree that everybody – “man and beast” – abstain from eating and
drinking, “be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God” (Jonah 3:7-8). It worked,

*
This number would have been calculated by the pioneering French archaeologist Auguste Mariette (1821-1881).
Most statues of Sekhmet – many of which are now in museums around the world – were once positioned in the
Precinct of Mut (Lythgoe, “Statues of the Goddess Sekhmet,” 3).

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in the nick of time, because “God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do
unto them; and he did it not” (Jonah 3:10).
In the wake of the Lisbon earthquake, the Jesuit Malagrida strongly urged his fellow-
Portuguese to emulate the Ninevehans, and pursue the same remedy to prevent yet another
calamity.414 Modern-day Christian religious leaders too occasionally refer to the Ninevehan
solution as a proper response to a national crisis.
But while the remedy of Nineveh is the ideal, it is not always necessary that absolutely
everybody is completely pure and pious for God to bestow his blessing, or not to remove it
right away whenever one slips. Sometimes, it is said, a few exceptional individuals may ward
off God’s vengeance on their own, at least for a while. “[O]ne good man may be the means
of safety to a thousand others,” preached Spurgeon.*415 By atoning for sins “with fasting and
penance,” Viganò explained in March 2022, “the arm of the Justice of God is stopped by
the few, when it should fall upon the many.”416
To Abrahamic believers, the Bible story of Sodom and Gomorrah provides evidence
for the correctness of the idea that a small minority may temporarily make up for the
behavior of the masses. According to the Bible, the two notoriously evil cities would have
been spared if only ten righteous people had been living there. (There were not.) This was
thanks to Abraham’s “haggling” with God, like “a Middle Eastern merchant,” as the current
Christian philosophy professor William Lane Craig put it.417 Abraham started at a price of
fifty righteous inhabitants of Sodom to spare all, and was able to bring this gradually down
to ten (Genesis 18:26-31). For this reason, the present-day theologian Constable concluded,
“a godly minority does play a role in influencing God’s judgment. It can delay judgment by
promoting godliness.”418 Metropolitan Daniel agreed that because “even through the prayer
of ten righteous people, God will have mercy on an entire city,” it is worth to “repent” and
“ask forgiveness” to contain the Covid pandemic that he maintained is God’s punishment.419
There are many more non-biblical stories promoting a ‘Nineveh lite’ solution,
showing religious professionals successfully easing God’s anger. Notice that the following
such cases are not examples merely of a belief in the psychological benefits of prayer,
contemplation, and fasting in response to personal misfortune, benefits that might include
consolation, spiritual clarity, or a deeper connection with God. These examples show a belief
specifically in the efficacy of religious practices to prevent or temper divine punishment.†
The most obvious example of successful intercession on behalf of humans is that
done by an individual who is himself divine. Presaging Jesus Christ, Apollo’s son Aristaeus
made a sacrifice to his own father on the island of Ceos, which, according to Diodorus,
ended a plague that raged throughout all of Greece.420 Unlike Christ, Aristaeus did not
sacrifice himself, but one important aspect is similar: the offer made a bigger impression on

*
This he proclaimed at the very beginning of his ministry, and the philosophy behind it is not in accordance with
his later preaching.
†
See also James 5:16: “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

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the punishing deity because the one doing it was a close relative of his. Next best to being a
god yourself, is to be as godly as possible when placating the angry god higher up.
The monk Barsanuphius claimed that it was only because of “three men who are
perfect before God,” that total destruction due to the bubonic plague in the port city of Gaza
was averted in the 6th century CE. These three men, according to Barsanuphius, “stand
upright in the breach to ensure that the world is not wiped out at one blow, and, thanks to
their prayers, God will chastise with mercy.”421 Later monks and nuns would have served
that very same purpose; a purpose that may have been part of the raison d’être of some of
their orders. “If there were no religious virgins” – meaning nuns – according to Pope Gregory
I ‘the Great’ (c. 540-604), “none of us could have survived for so many years in this place” –
meaning Rome – “among the swords of the Lombards.”422
In the central-German village of Niklashausen, in 1476, a young, simple shepherd,
named Hans Böhm or Behem, heard the Virgin Mary speak to him.423 Next, miraculously,
the lad turned into a prophetic preacher capable of captivating a large following with his
eloquent sermons, calling for repentance. The great historian of millennial movements,
Norman Cohn, suggested that Böhm had been deceived and used by the local parish priest
and a hermit. Aspiring to gain wealth and power, these two men may have spread stories of
miracles, which, they would have claimed, had been produced by the boy’s divine powers
bestowed on him by the Virgin Mary. This included his ability at one point to prevent God
from destroying all local corn and vines by means of prayer.424* It was apparently believable
that one man praying could bring God to reconsider his intention of punishing the people
in the praying person’s vicinity.
Another Marian apparition occurred in 17th-century Ecuador. In 1634, the Virgin
Mary, appeared for the seventh and last time before the nun Mariana de Jesús Torres (1563-
1635) – of whom more below. The ‘Mother of God’ would have exclaimed, “Woe to the
world if there were no Monasteries and Convents! … there is found the remedy for all
physical and moral ills.”425 Apart from “the salvation of souls” and “the conversion of great
sinners,” the mother of Jesus said that these religious institutions serve to bring “the
dissipation of great scourges, the production and fertility of the fields,” and “the cessation

*
The Niklashausen phenomenon was more than a local affair. In the Spring of 1476, a mass of peasants from far
and wide began to take the road to hear the shepherd, be absolved of their sins, and secure a place in Heaven.
This movement shook the foundations of the rigid social structure of the time, because it challenged both clerical
and secular authority with its increasingly revolutionary and militant zeal. In the words of Richard Wunderli, a
historian who dedicated a book to the Niklashausen apparition, what worried authorities so much was that the
peasants “did not ask anybody’s permission, not from their landlords to leave work, not from their priests to go
on a pilgrimage.” Officially approved pilgrimages took the faithful along a prescribed route to a particular site,
where they bought priestly services (indulgences) and filled the coffers of the clergy. The lay-preacher Böhm
claimed he could grant salvation, and the Church did not look kindly on anybody challenging their lucrative
monopoly. “Social rank and obligations just seemed to dissolve,” according to Wunderli (Peasant Fires, 48). But
worse than that, Böhm preached that society should dispense with emperors and popes, princes and priests.
Anarchy! Just before the situation could get completely out of hand, the local prince-bishop Rudolf II von
Scherenberg had Böhm arrested. The peasant insurrection that the preacher had called for ended with a massacre
of the badly armed peasants who tried to liberate their Messiah. In no time the poor manipulated shepherd was
found guilty of heresy and sorcery, and subsequently beheaded (Bax, German Society at the Close of the Middle Ages,
44-50; Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 230-2).

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of plagues” and “wars.” According to the Holy Virgin, “all this comes from the prayers that
rise from the monasteries and convents.”426 Monastics, she summarized, are able to “stop the
arm of Divine Justice.”427 It would make sense that if one pious shepherd boy praying could
prevent disasters, a monastery containing a group of pious people continuously praying
would be much more effective.
Of a similar mind was Pope Pius VI (1717-1799). The Italian city of Bologna “could
not have survived,” wrote the pope, “if the divine anger had not been partially appeased by
the continuous, fervent prayers of our religious” – meaning the city’s nuns.428 By the time
the pope made this observation, the north-Italian city had suffered immensely at several
instances from the Black Death. The worst occurred in 1630, when between a quarter
(15,000) and a third (24,000) of the population of Bologna died from the plague out of a
total of 62,000 people.429 Yet, in the mind of Pius VI it would have been worse if not for the
incessant praying inside the city’s convents.
His 19th-century namesake Pope Pius IX (1792-1878) was also a firm believer in the
power of prayer. Referring in 1854 to “ferocious wars, internal discords, plagues,
earthquakes, and other serious troubles” that afflicted Christians worldwide, he called upon
all priests “to arouse the faithful […] so that they might strive to appease the wrath of God
provoked by the shameful deeds of men” by having them do “true penance.” “Do not cease
night and day,” Pope Pius IX told his worldwide subordinates, “to cry to the Lord Our God
with Us [and] [i]mplore His divine Mercy so that He may turn away the scourge of His wrath,
which we deserve for our sins […].”430 (Notice that the pope did not write ‘our’ with a capital
‘O’ and therefore meant other people’s sins or all people’s sins in general.)
The pope was panicking about the decline of papal power and the rise of democracy.
Five years later, Pius IX feared greatly for popular rebellion against his secular rule over the
papal states in Italy, and again feared that “the anger of the Lord” (“l’ira del Signore”) was
somehow behind it. In a letter to all Catholic clergy, he urged them to follow the example
of Moses and Aaron who, with a disastrous divine punishment looming on the entire
Israelite people, “fell upon their faces, and said, O God [...], shall one man sin, and wilt thou
be wroth with all the congregation” (Numbers 16:22)?431 Indeed, on that occasion, by
burning incense, the high priest Aaron managed “to pacify an offended God, and so stayed
the progress of the judgment,” commented the English theologian Matthew Henry.432 This
time, however, Pius IX and the monastic orders would be spectacularly unsuccessful. The
papal domain would eventually shrink to become the tiniest country in the world – Vatican
City – with a boundary of just two miles long.
Around the world, rituals that include reciting formulaic prayers, burning incense,
and making offerings have been tried again and again to appease, somehow, magically, angry
deities. Especially those who command such lethal weapons as active volcanoes. In the
eastern part of Java, Mount Bromo (2,329 meters) is one of many Indonesian volcanoes that
demand such an annual ritual. A local tribe has tasked itself with keeping Mount Bromo
from erupting. The Tenggerese, as this community of 100,000 individuals is called, worship

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gods and spirits derived from Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism, and animism, all of which
are manifestations of the one almighty God (‘Ida Sang Hyang Widhi Wasa’). The Tenggerese
believe some or all of the deities – or all of them merged into one – inhabit Mount Bromo.
Every year during the holy festival of ‘Yadnya Kasada’, large numbers of Tenggerese, almost
on a Ninevehan scale, assemble on the small ridge between the steep slope on the outside
and the steamy abyss on the inside, where grey clouds of poisonous sulphureous gas obscure
pools of bubbling lava. Their ritual consists of throwing into the crater bundles of vegetables
and fruits, money, and, sadly, live goats and chickens. “If the god is not satisfied with our
offerings,” explained the Tenggerese high priest in a recent interview, “he erupts.”433
Indonesian authorities have been careful to grant the continuation of religious rituals and
make exceptions from Covid-related restrictions to allow worshippers, as one Tenggerese
stated, “to express gratitude to the gods and the ancestors.”434 They are not quite thankful
enough apparently, given the fact that Mount Bromo has erupted on average every four years
since the 1800s.435
The god or gods on the neighboring Mount Semeru,* the tallest mountain on Java
(3,676 meters) and just as active a volcano as Mount Bromo,436 are served by other equally
unsuccessful villagers living on its slope, as well as Hindu pilgrims from elsewhere in
Indonesia who take it to be the abode of Lord Shiva.437 When Mount Semeru erupted in
December 2021, people from nearby Supiturang village placed offerings on an Hindu altar
on the crater edge. A pious young Javanese Muslim was of a different opinion, naturally.
The man had himself be filmed by a companion as he kicked the offerings unceremoniously
into the crater, uttering “Allahu Akbar.” He declared on camera: “This is what precipitates
God’s wrath, it is rarely realized, that this is what invites God’s wrath and brings down his
punishment.” The young man was later arrested.438 Like the controversy between pagan and
Christian Romans over who was offending whose god or gods, this incident again shows
that one religion’s divine pacification is another’s divine provocation. And while Indonesian
authorities try to keep adherents of different religions to live peacefully side by side, it
provides a good argument for the enforcement of a unified religion. At best, contrasting
rituals might be less effective at placation, but at worst they are counterproductive if the
angry god considers one of them sacrilegious. The fear of CDP is likely to encourage religious
intolerance.
For some of the Italian villages around the volcanic Mount Etna, preventative God-
placating rituals are also an annual practice, because frequently, from its crater, “rivers of
fire kindled by God have flowed like a torrent down the steeps,” as Saint Augustine described
an eruption.439 Those Catholic rituals have rarely proved to be more helpful than the Hindu
ones on Mounts Bromo and Semeru. The Sicilian town of Mascali, for instance, could not

*
According to Javanese Hindu mythology, Mount Semeru was taken from the sacred and mythical Mount Meru
– perhaps Mount Kailash – on orders from Lord Vishnu, carried on the back of a giant tortoise, put on land on
the western part of Java and then dragged to the eastern part, leaving a trail of mountains, where it is now Java's
tallest peak (3,676 meters), the home of Lord Shiva, connecting Heaven and Earth (Larasati, “Legenda Gunung
Semeru yang Melekat di Masyarakat”).

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be saved from the lava in 1928, despite the performance of many ritual processions, and the
positioning in front of the advancing lava of the statue of the patron saint.440 Nonetheless,
up until this day, whenever the volcano rumbles, relics are carried around in solemn
processions with incense belching from swinging thuribles.441 Demonstrating the continued
belief in the power of placation, the Archbishop of Catania, Luigi Bommarito (1926-2019),
said during Mount Etna’s eruption in 2001: “The warmer our prayers, the colder the lava.”442
The responsibility resting on the shoulders of the professionally religious could well
be unbearably heavy, whether one is a Hindu high priest in Eastern Java, or an archbishop
on Sicily, if they are believed to have the ability to prevent disasters but then fail to do so.
They could be moved to take serious personal risks. A mythical case in point is the 17th-
century Spanish-born nun Mariana de Jesús Torres. At a young age, she emigrated to the city
of Quito in what is now Ecuador, but then the Spanish colony of Peru. When still just a
teenager, in 1579, she had an encounter with the Virgin Mary, who warned that Quito
would befall a fate similar to that of Sodom and Gomorrah 400 years into the future, unless
some souls would manage to soothe the angry God now. “Woe to the Colony in the 20th
century!” the Virgin said.

In it, this land will be guilty if souls are not found that with their life of
immolation and sacrifice appease Divine Justice, it will rain fire from heaven
and, consuming its inhabitants, it will purify the soil of Quito.443

This alludes to the most extreme type of ritual to ward off divine punishment: human
sacrifice. A few years later, in 1582, the same sister Mariana would have had a rather lifelike
vision of Christ hanging on the cross, with the Virgin Mary, and Saints John and Magdalene
at his feet. Over Jesus’s head, she reportedly saw three swords suspended, with on each the
text, “I will punish heresy, blasphemy, and impurity.”444 Next, she reportedly heard God the
Father say, “these punishments are for the 20th century.”445 According to one version of the
story, the Holy Virgin then turned to her, asking, “My daughter, will you sacrifice yourself
for this people?” Mariana replied, “My will is ready.” Right at that moment, the three swords
fell down and plunged into the nun’s heart, killing her instantly. However, like Christ, she
would only be dead for a short time, and resumed her life, as if resurrected from the grave.
As a result of Mariana’s self-sacrifice, God would supposedly have withheld his punishment
for the heresy, blasphemy, and impurity in the world some four centuries later.446
When Mount Etna erupted in 1928, and the Sicilian commune of Sant’Alfio was in
danger of being destroyed by the approaching stream of lava, the local priest, Monsignor
Nicotra would have offered his life in exchange for God’s mercy. The small village was saved,
and four months later Nicotra died, which suggested to some that God had accepted this
trade-off between receiving a human life and inflicting punishment.447 The idea that sacrifice
satisfies the godhead and quells some of his anger is of course the central theme of
Christianity.

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With regard to Covid, placation has again been the response of choice by the religious
professionals, showing how little has changed in essence over the centuries. Technological
progress has only altered the optics. Compare the ritualistic efforts before the Information
Age with the spontaneous actions of two 21st-century Catholic priests who, independently
of each other, took to the skies in planes, and then doing exactly the same as their
predecessors had done hundreds of years before in similar circumstances: praying fervently
and holding up relics to call on the Heavenly forces to protect against the new plague. In
March 2020, the Lebanese Father Majdi Allawi Haqq Qurban flew over his native land,
while holding a large monstrance, to plead, in his words, “with the Lord to protect Lebanon,”
and to “bless the country, protect the homeland and heal those who have been infected by
the virus.” Suggesting Covid was a form of punishment, Qurban urged believers to
“repent.”448 Around the same time, for the same reasons, Father Cezary Chwilczyński of the
Polish parish of Żórawina circled above his parish in a light airplane with a figure of the
Blessed Virgin Mary of Fatima, a monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament, and a reliquary
containing remains of the Polish Pope John Paul II. Most significantly, he was praying the
so-called ‘Chaplet of Divine Mercy’.449 That prayer, which repeatedly pleads with God to
have mercy, indicates that Chwilczyński saw the pandemic as a form of divine punishment.
Jesus Christ himself, allegedly, would have revealed the ‘chaplet’ in 1935 to the Polish nun
Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), explaining: “This prayer will serve to appease My wrath.”*
Other placation efforts to avert the effects of the pandemic took a more traditional
form: praying and fasting on the ground with as many people as possible. In constitutionally
Christian Samoa, the government ordered that every family was to fast and pray for seven days
in the last week of March 2020.450 If indeed everybody in the island state had obeyed this
decree, it would have been the most Ninevehan event in the modern era. Samoans have
good reason to believe it had been a great success. For the next two years, nobody in Samoa
died from Covid-19. Tragically, at the beginning of April 2022, suddenly, in just a few days,
13 Samoans fell ill and died.451 What may have helped the Samoans to accept the seriousness
of the Covid-pandemic instantly was their recent traumatic experience with a measles
epidemic, which killed 83 – most under the age of four – hospitalized 1868, and infected
5707 people in just three and a half months at the end of 2019.452

*
The sanctified Polish nun Faustina Kowalska kept a diary in which she recorded several visions she claimed to
have had of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and various angels, who allegedly gave her horrific teachings about divine
punishment. “God wants to inflict terrible punishment on us,” Faustina noted in her diary, “but He cannot
because the Mother of God is shielding us” (note 686, August 15, 1936). However, such terrible punishment
should be welcomed, Faustina also believed. She wrote: “O my God, even in the punishments You send down
upon the earth I see the abyss of Your mercy, for by punishing us here on earth You free us from eternal
punishment” (note 423, April 29, 1935). At another occasion, Jesus would have told her “that He would cause a
chastisement to fall upon the most beautiful city in our country. This chastisement would be that with which
God had punished Sodom and Gomorrah” (note 39, August 1, 1925). Asked by her confidante, father Michael
Sopocko, what sin would make Poland deserve such harsh punishment, Faustina answered it would be
“especially” for abortions: “the killing of infants not yet born, the most grievous crime of all” (“The Origins of
the Chaplet of Mercy,” 2).

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Pennsylvania representative Borowicz professed the same trust in prayer and fasting
as the Ninevehans to protect her state from the effects of the coronavirus. Because her bill
did not pass, we do not know if it would have made a difference. Ghanaian President Nana
Akufo-Addo declared March 22, 2020 to be a national day of fasting and prayer, and
appealed to all Ghanaians, both Christians and Muslims, to pray to God so he may protect
the country and save them from the Coronavirus.453 Other similar efforts were less
prolonged, and arguably less successful. On April 4, 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro
posted a video that called on all Brazilians to spend the next day fasting and praying for an
end of the pandemic. The video also included a bombastic statement, saying that this “holy
proclamation” was supported by the 34 “greatest evangelical leaders,” who would “summon
the army of Christ for the greatest campaign of fasting and prayer ever seen in the history of
Brazil.”454 In Tanzania, President Magufuli declared in June 2020 that in his country Covid-
19 had been “eliminated thanks to God,” at the end of a three-day prayer event he had
organized. At a Catholic church service, the president said to the congregation, a little
prematurely:

I want to thank Tanzanians of all faiths. We have been praying and fasting
for God to save us from the pandemic that has afflicted our country and the
world. But God has answered us. I believe, and I’m certain that many
Tanzanians believe, that the corona disease has been eliminated by God.455

Nonetheless, Magufuli died in March 2021 amidst speculation that he had contracted
Covid-19.456
Pastor Flurry senior made an important point in 2018: God will only halt a disaster
if people repent. Looking back at past National Days of Prayer, as proclaimed regularly by
U.S. Presidents since John Adams in 1798, often when the nation was in crisis, Flurry was
certain they all had been met with a favorable response from God. Except, when President
Trump called for a special day of prayer on September 3, 2017, on the heels of hurricane
Harvey, it did not. Harvey was quickly followed by the even more devastating hurricanes
Irma and Maria. So what went wrong? According to Flurry, “there is one stark difference”
with previous national days of prayer. “It boils down to one word: repentance.”457 As Flurry
explained,

In each of the cases where God dramatically responded to days of prayer and
miraculously intervened, American leaders had not only called on their
citizens to pray and beseech God to intervene, but to fast and to repent of
sin.458

Pastor Andrew made the same claim in 2020 about the centrality of repentance, when he
said that “God protects the USA from danger as the country repents of LGBT, false gods,

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abortion and other sins.”459 In 2022, Archbishop Viganò wrote that “God’s wrath because
of our sins and betrayals can only be appeased with contrition and penance.”460 So, if that is
all true, Borowicz’s proposal for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer together with the
recognition of “our presumptuous sins” may well have averted Covid in Pennsylvania!*
The critical nature of repentance to prevent divine punishment was also expressed
in a German poem published in the Bavarian city of Bamberg in 1770, that was at that time
suffering a lack of food. Part of the poem read.

God will still keep us from war, hunger, floods, and pestilence,
If we in all seriousness resign ourselves to repentance.461

The opposite of repentance, impenitence or ‘Unbußfertigkeit’, German historian Claudius

Sebastian Frenzel noticed was claimed to be an aggravating factor for several transgressions
causing the wrath of God in the laws of the German city of Ulm during the 15th to 16th
centuries.462 This too underscores the indispensable nature of penitence in avoiding the
wrath of God. The motto is: ‘repent to prevent’.

Regulation: eliminating the ‘Achans’

In summary, because of his anger towards a few transgressors, God may punish the lot, but
also because of a few righteous ones praying fervently, and, importantly, repenting, he may
spare the rest. But how confident may we allow ourselves to be that a devout subgroup will
be successful in warding off divine punishment that might hurt us, the larger group? “Who
placates the angry god and goddess?” an almost 3,000 year-old Assyrian text wonders,
confirming that the deities of old, like the one God of late, could become angry, whom
humans felt they needed to pacify when they were angry, no doubt to prevent disasters.
Meanwhile the effectiveness of placation efforts always remained in doubt.463 “Will
God spare a city or nation today because of the Christians in it?” worried American
theologian Constable three millennia later. If the majority is particularly sinful, or not active
enough in repressing a sinful few, they will soon run out of luck, and out of steam, to issue
God-appeasing prayers. According to Constable – quoting Genesis 18:20 – “a godly minority
may not prevent God’s judgment if ‘sin is exceedingly grave’.”464 In that case, God may decide
to close his ears, as the Bible states he said to the prophet Jeremiah (7:16): “pray not thou
for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for
I will not hear thee.” In 2022, prayer would no longer be able to save the United States from
God’s judgment, argued another American theologian, Jonathan Brentner, citing abortions

*
Incidentally, not the state where the Philadelphia Church of God is located.

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and drag queens.*465 If group sinfulness exceeds a particular level, the righteous, despite their
efforts, will suffer together with the wicked.
A safer bet than to count on the placating efforts of the few would be to practice
godliness on a large scale habitually, turning curses into blessings of the nation at large.
Ideally, this should bring some comfort, especially when both the ruler and the ruled are
committed to displaying the proper behavior. The Japanese Confucian scholar Matsuzaki
Kodo (1771-1844) tried to feel such comfort in 1830, despite the ominous facts that the new
era of ‘Tenpo’ (December 1830 till December 1844) had commenced, that the cherry trees
had been blooming out of season, and that an earthquake with an unusual amount of
aftershocks had just killed 280 people in the imperial city of Kyoto. He wrote, on the second
day of Tenpo: “Our ruler is virtuous, and our habits upright […] so there should be no reason
for any disasters. […] All we can do is pray for the Heavenly Protection of yesterday’s new era
name.”466 One can read Matsuzaki’s anxiety between the lines. We shouldn’t be worried,
because we’re doing everything right. And yet, why then these terrible omens?
There often is an undertone of concern that divine blessing may not last, no matter
the aplomb. Referring to the United States, Tim King, the president of Presence Ministries
International in Colorado Springs, wrote that “there has never been a nation in the history
of the world that has been blessed with such a degree of prosperity for its citizens.” But that
is only, he maintained, “[b]ecause of our Christian heritage.”467 Rapture Ready’s Todd
Strandberg believed “firmly that this nation [the United States] is blessed because it is
predominantly a Christian nation.”468 Strandberg got from the Bible that this was
preordained: “The Bible says that we are the salt of the earth; this is a key reason America
has become so great a nation.”469 That blessing does great wonders. Lamenting government
spending, Terry James, Strandberg’s partner in running the Rapture Ready website, claimed
that “[o]nly God’s staying hand has prevented the complete implosion of the U.S. and world
economies to this point.”470 Such assertions, however, are almost always followed by stern
warnings that America is not so salty anymore, that this protective Christian layer is wearing
off. And then there is often a lot of finger-pointing at the sin du jour, and a call to the faithful
to repent, and to the people in power to take corrective action.
There is hardly a nation whose history has not been marked, or scarred, by the idea
of being providentially ‘chosen’, and for that reason enjoying special blessing from above,
being exceptionally gifted in one area or the other – mostly some moral attribute, like faith,
fairness, or love of liberty – and having a special mission to fulfill in the world, like spreading
the ideals of faith, fairness, or liberty. Some have been able, through humbling defeats and
other ‘reality-checks’, to shed some of their nationalist egomania. France, for instance, would
no longer produce a schoolbook, as it did in 1912, that declared, “France is the most just,
the most free and the most humane of fatherlands,” and “France since the Revolution has
given to the world the ideas of justice and humanity.”471 The United States, from its very

*
According to pastor Brentner, “drag queen shows […] are a hideous and indecent repudiation of all that God’s
Word says about gender and morality” (Brentner, “Is America at the End of the Road?”).

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beginnings, has suffered the same affliction, with its founders, from the very pious pilgrim
fathers to deist rationalists like Thomas Jefferson, considering the American people to be
equivalent to the ancient Israelites. American political scientist Andrew Murphy observed
that the “American rhetoric of divine punishment has always been closely interwoven with
the notion of the United States as a ‘chosen nation’.”472 Current fundamentalist Americans,
like James and Strandberg, are still continuing this rhetoric of being divinely chosen to
receive potentially an extraordinary amount of blessings, as well as a disproportionate
amount of disasters.
So the downside of being special is the responsibility it brings. Murphy explained: “a
special relationship implies a special responsibility, the ignoring of which brings special
punishment.”473 Another disadvantage may be that a ‘falling from grace’ is more painful and
shameful in the eyes of Christians who believe they were once chosen by God, putting them
potentially on a par with the Jews who suffered marginalization during most of their recent
history. Therefore, claiming special divine status may come with both pride and anguish.
To take another example, the cherished curse of divine chosenness is shared with
many of the original inhabitants of Fiji, the ‘iTaukei’, who are known, according to one local
researcher, for their “widespread and deep-rooted religious devotion.”474 When Tropical
Cyclone Winston – the fiercest storm ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere475 – made
landfall on the island nation in 2016, killing 44 individuals, displacing more than 120,000
people,476 and causing damage worth one-third of Fiji’s economy,* many iTaukei gave this
catastrophe a biblical meaning. They linked Cyclone Winston to the new constitution that
had been adopted three years earlier. Departing from the preamble of the previous 1997
constitution that Fiji was a “Christian State,”477 the 2013 constitution specified that
“Religion and the State are separate,” meaning the State must be completely neutral with
regard to religion. More specifically, it declared that the State must not dictate any religious
belief, treat religions differently, or advance one religious belief over another. However, these
basic principles of modern statehood clashed with the long-standing practice by Fiji’s
Christians of modeling their national identity on ancient Israel. Some Fijian Christian
nationalists even go so far as claiming that the original islanders are one of the ten lost tribes
of the Biblical Israelites. By making Fiji a secular state, these Pacific Israelites would have
offended God, who in turn would have punished them with the devastating cyclone. “We
are the ancient ones,” declared one Christian islander,” in other words Israelites, who, like
the Chosen People of old, “made a covenant with God and have broken it.”478 The benefits
of the divine blessing that results from having a special contract with God are mirrored by
the damages that will come from reneging on the duties that this contract stipulates.

*
This is based on the USD 1.4 billion declared to have been the damage by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama
(Tuilevuka, “$2.98 Billion Damage”), and a reported Gross Domestic Product of USD 4.5 billion (Varandani,
“Cyclone Winston”).

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But whether one claims a special relationship with God or not, the consequence of all this
reasoning is that preventing God’s wrath and maintaining the protection of God’s blessing
is a common duty of all members of society. ‘Woe to the wicked and woe to his neighbor’,
means in effect ‘woe to all who fail to correct and punish their wicked neighbors in time’.
But since leaving correction and punishment up to individual initiative would be impractical
and uncertain, it is self-evident that society's secular rulers should be charged with policing
the fulfillment of this common duty. In Hesiod’s account, one man sinned, and Zeus, in
response, brought famine and plague on an entire city. It would then be prudent, required
even, for the city’s government to mobilize all its power to prevent that one man from
sinning. When Achan’s disobedience, unbeknownst to the rest of the Israelites, led to defeat
in battle, it would make sense for the tribal leaders to set up strict controls, and deal harshly
with such wayward individuals before doing anything that risks the common good. If
earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and the like are not inevitable, it would be right
for society’s leaders to take the necessary action to prevent these events from happening by
keeping citizens from transgressing biblical (or Quranic) laws. So, weeding out the Achans
among us is a solemn responsibility that rests on the shoulders of every member of society,
but for which the secular authorities especially should be held accountable.
This secular duty has been pointed out consistently by learned laymen and clerics
alike. Take the persecution of witches, which the 16th-century French legal scholar Jean
Bodin insisted on, not because they themselves pose an immediate danger to others, but
because to allow them to live would “gravely insult God.”479 To “chastise with the utmost
rigor the witches,” he claimed, is the best means “to appease the wrath of God [and] to gain
his blessing […].”480 Echoing the curses listed by the biblical prophets, Bodin wrote:

[T]he country which shall tolerate [witchcraft] will be scourged with

pestilences, famines, and wars; and those which shall take vengeance [on the
witches] will be blessed by him and will make his anger to cease.*481

Those blessed avengers of witchcraft are the Christian magistrates. Pestilences, famines, and
wars hurt witches and non-witches alike, and this fact therefore not only legitimizes but
requires interference with other people’s supposedly heretical practices, even when performed
in private and with the best of intentions. Appeasing God to avert his anger and avoid CDP
is a public matter – and therefore a matter of state – just as preventing the transmission of a
deadly virus is a public matter that commands the rulers to take action. Because the righteous
may get mixed up with the wicked, William Palmer argued, “it is the real interest of the
community, that all its members shall be virtuous and acceptable to God.”482 And therefore,

*
Compare this to the claim by Joseph Klaits that “[t]hroughout the era of the witch trials, universal disasters such
as plagues and wars were seldom attributed to witches” (Klaits, Servants of Satan, 29). Is Bodin an exception, or
his Klaits’ observation wrong?

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it is a duty of all leaders – the religious but foremost the sword-wielding secular – to force
everybody to do God’s will.
There may be various reasons why obeying the word of God would be beneficial, but
there is one overriding reason for secular authorities to get involved in the intimate, private
lives of their subjects: to prevent CDP. In 1440, Pope Eugene IV urged the punishment of
“grave crimes,” because, he reasoned, “if we delay to pursue and avenge what is grievously
offensive to God, we thereby provoke the divine patience to wrath.”483 When he pleaded in
1522 for the removal of paintings and statues from churches and chapels, the protestant
theologian Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt (1486-1541) argued that these images were
forbidden idols that did not serve to direct lay people towards salvation, as the Catholic
Church maintained. But when Karlstadt called upon the non-clerical authorities to remove
the images, he resorted to the social argument that this would stave off the wrath of God
from hurting the entire community.484
This logic may well have been decisive in shaping over the centuries the expectations
that subjects have of their rulers, and the authority that rulers have assumed over their
subjects. Fear of God’s punishment may have given a strong impetus to communal efforts
to placate God by constructing a gigantic network of churches to serve as centers of around-
the-clock worship, by establishing ritual weekly days of penance (Friday), and by
institutionalizing the non-stop intercession by the ‘prayer professionals’ – priests, monks,
and nuns – ready to step up their prayer frequency when needed, in order to quench the
flames of godly anger. But next to those means of placation, also to set rules to enforce God’s
laws, to seek out, punish, and eliminate the ‘Achans’.
Repression of personal freedoms that to some extent is necessary for the formation
of a government apparatus may be self-serving to the powerful, but becomes a matter of
common interest and popular demand when considered essential for weeding out god-
angering individuals who indirectly threaten everybody’s lives and livelihoods. From a biblical
point of view, government policy that to modern liberal eyes appears to be draconian,
invasive, and authoritarian, becomes actually measured, sound, and responsible when
looked at from the viewpoint of another looming case of CDP. Executing strict laws to
suppress behavior that offends God is necessary for the continued wellbeing of society, and
thus a noble endeavor. If the god of the Old Testament and the threat of his wrath are real
(or an angry Zeus in earlier times), then the suppression of, for instance, heresy,
homosexuality, and adultery is just as much a legitimate function of government as border
defense, public health, and road maintenance.
Then voters in modern democracies who elect politicians advocating policies with
the clear intention of satisfying God actually do so for the good of society, even when they
are well aware of those politicians corruptly serving their own interests against the interests
of those very same voters. From a secular viewpoint this voting behavior makes no sense, but
from a conservative religious viewpoint that considers God’s anger to pose a risk to the entire
community, it is vital. In 2015, a former police officer485 and protestant Ghanaian minister

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with the Belgian-sounding name Martin Vanderpuye, warned the president of his country
that “a large number of Ghanaians are saying that any politician who supports homosexuality
should not be put into office because that would incur the wrath of God upon the nation.”486
Agreeing with those Ghanaians, Vanderpuye was making the case that a self-serving, corrupt,
and unqualified anti-gay politician, would be preferable to an honest and capable one in
favor of gay rights.
Next to the popular demands of the God-fearing faithful, in this development of
governments adopting the role of God-appeasers, in the Christian world at least, clerics and
theologians may have exercised a significant influence. It appears that some of them
consistently chased and prodded civil magistrates into repressing sinful behavior among the
populace, and demanded they enforce its exoteric version of religion upon it, using the
threat of divine wrath as their principle argument. For instance, the 15th-century Saint
Bernardino argued that:

It is possible that one evil-doer may ruin not his own house alone, but the
whole city, and even all Italy. And therefore punish, punish, official! See that
thou dost not rest until the evil be plucked up by the roots.487

The Christian church should be understood as being, and sometimes acting as if it still is, a
de facto branch of Christian government, and at least equal in prominence to the other,
secular, branch.* Palmer acted as an official representative of that spiritual branch when he
declared in 1838, assuming that “those who reject [the doctrine of Jesus Christ] are subject
to the wrath of God,” that “it is the most bounden duty of the christian [sic] magistrate […]
to protect, to uphold, and [...] to propagate [...] christianity [sic] amongst his people.” And
this duty, according to the reverend, arises both “from a sense of submission to the will of
the Supreme Ruler,” and from “the obligation of promoting the welfare of the community,
and obtaining the divine protection and blessing for it.”488 Insisting that “the christian [sic]
magistrate […] repress all attempts to introduce heresies and errors,”489 Palmer warned that
public officials must protect Christianity “because the divine blessing rests on it [the
Christian religion] alone.”490
Echoing Palmer in the 1990s, pastor Joseph Morecraft, then of Chalcedon
Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Georgia, preached that the government should “protect
the church of Jesus Christ,” and no other, as “the state does not have the responsibility to
defend anybody’s pseudo-right to worship an idol.” In fact, said Morecraft, directly opposing
freedom of religion, “[n]obody has the right to worship on this planet any other God than
*
Or even a separate government onto itself. Pope Pius VI (1717-1799) quoted approvingly from the acts of the
Council of Sens in 1327: “From the [...] sacred scriptures it is very clear that ecclesiastical power is not only
superior to any other lay power, but it is also more worthy.” Indeed, Jesus Christ himself, according to Pius VI,
“gave the Apostles and their successors a power subject to no other on earth” (Pius VI, Quod Aliquantum; in the
original Italian: “Dalle [...] sacre scritture appare chiarissimo che la potestà ecclesiastica non solamente è superiore
a qualunque altra laicale potestà, ma è anche più degna. […] Gesù Cristo [...] diede agli Apostoli e ai loro successori
un potere soggetto a nessun altro della terra [...]”).

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Jehovah.”491 Religious leaders like Palmer and Morecraft insist that governments protect the
Christian church, assist the church in protecting Christianity, and not protect any other
religion than Christianity, to safeguard God’s blessing and keep God from causing
catastrophes.
Up until the recent decline of religiousness in Western countries, it would have been
difficult for secular leaders to ignore such calls from the clergy. If “every nation gets the
government it deserves,” as De Maistre famously supposed,492 then every nation also gets the
divine punishment that its government deserves. Institutionally, the fear of CDP may have
been a causal factor in the development of nation-states governed by a common law, that is,
a law that is common to all within the realm, nobody exempted, including the ruling elite,
whose sins could be considered representative of society.
But apart from making religious sense to pious magistrates, the latter also faced
competition from the church for popular allegiance and control. Among its flock, the church
consistently raised awareness of the reality and mixed blessing of divine intervention, of its
own supposedly vital role in attracting God’s benevolence and deflecting his anger, and of
the duty of secular authorities to impose God’s will to keep the total level of sin below the
godly wrath threshold.
Actively raising the dread of godly wrath strengthened the argument that clerics
ought to be revered and obeyed beyond questioning. Lamenting the voices in Portugal that
were opposed to some Catholic teachings, Malagrida in the 18th century self-servingly stressed
that the church, “without a doubt, must be listened to and followed, as an undoubtable
master,” if only to avoid future earthquakes.*493
Apart from the role of secular authorities, the church itself should chastise and
discipline individuals within their sphere of influence for their sinful behavior. The 1646
Westminster Confession, still part of the official doctrinal standards of many Presbyterian
churches, states that otherwise the church itself runs the risk of divine punishment.

Church censures [denunciations] are necessary […] for preventing the wrath
of God, which might justly fall upon the Church, if they should suffer his

*
Hidden in all these calls on governments to punish and prevent sin to avoid natural disasters, is a condemnation
of those governments when things go wrong. Prudent preachers try not to be too explicit if they wish to avoid
conflict with their temporal counterparts. Malagrida was not prudent enough when he wrote that the Lisbon
earthquake had been prophesied but that the secular government had dismissed that warning to the detriment
of the Portuguese: “God revealed, that he was gravely angry at the sins of the whole kingdom […], and
consequently, that he was to bring about a great punishment. […]” (Malagrida, Juizo da Verdadeira, 16). That
revelation, attributed to another, unnamed priest, who died before the 1755 earthquake, was foolishly and
culpably ignored, Malagrida suggested, and so, what could have been avoided, if the government had done its
job, was not. There is a fine line to walk between stressing sinfulness as a cause of mishap and accusing
governments of negligence, and the Jesuit priest Malagrida tragically crossed it, blaming the Portuguese for
ignoring these earlier prophecies. It made him an enemy of the autocratic prime minister of Portugal, the Marquis
of Pombal. Malagrida raged against the tendency to find a natural cause in earthquakes, because it led people
away from the real remedy, namely doing penance and changing ways, and instead led them to “persever[e] as
before in our practice of atheism” (Malagrida, Juizo da Verdadeira, 12). Malagrida was imprisoned and executed
in 1761.

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covenant, and the seals thereof, to be profaned by notorious and obstinate

offenders.494

If the church fails to do its duty in condemning the ‘Achans’, it risks becoming one itself.
According to the Mexican mystic Concepción Cabrera de Armida (1862-1937), Jesus himself
told her:

You should know that Divine Justice usually unloads terrible punishments
on entire nations, not so much for the sins of the people, but for those of the
Priests and Religious persons, because these are called by the perfection of
their state, to be […] the lightning rods of Divine Wrath.495

In other words, while priests, monks, and nuns play a vital part in deflecting divine wrath,
when they themselves are guilty of sins, they may actually attract punishment that hurts the
entire country. Punish others, and do penance yourself, or expect to get punished.
It is notable that religious leaders stress their importance for keeping God satisfied,
but generally seem to refuse being held accountable when he gets mad anyway. Perhaps to
escape accountability, Luther ignored the role of the church altogether when he accorded
the temporal powers and individual civilians a primary part in preventing God’s anger. He
wrote in 1522:

[W]hether we are officers of the state or private citizens, we should of one

accord oppose sins, lest the wrath of God come upon us and we all be consumed
together.496

Princes and lords, more importantly, according to Luther,

ought to do their part and use the power of their sword in the effort to ward
off and moderate to the best of their ability at least some of God’s wrath.497

Therefore, Luther urged, “let those who hold an office or are officers of the state do their
duty, and let them not wink at any offense, however small.”498 The 16th-century statesman
Bodin held that “the greatest and the chief” reason for the establishment of penalties by a
secular government “is the appeasing of the wrath of God, especially if the crime is directly
against the majesty of God […].”499* A century later, the theologian Henry argued that “[i]f
magistrates do not take care to punish sin, God will.” Therefore, Henry added, “their justice”

*
In a sense, governments enforcing biblical laws are substitutes for God: by doing his work of inflicting
punishment for him, they prevent him from doing so himself with the risk of more collateral damage. Still in the
1990s, the Presbyterian pastor Morecraft wanted the United States government to “enforce Biblical law” in order
to “terrorize evil doers” and “to bring down the wrath of God to bear on all those who practice evil” (Clarkson,
“Christian Reconstructionism”).

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– punishment by magistrates – “will be the best prevention of his judgment.”500 In imposing

church dogma, Palmer instructed in 1838, the church is to be helped by its secular
counterpart. The “christian magistrate,” he asserted with almost papal authority, “is to
enforce and execute the discipline of the church.”*501
The fear of God’s punishment brought everybody together in a stifling embrace.
Sovereign princes and civil servants who welcomed the legitimization of their authority;
clergy who stirred up the fear of God and pretended to be the ultimate arbiter of sin; and
ordinary citizens who worried about their lives and livelihoods, and those of their loved
ones: all society’s actors were united in the one common cause, namely to please God by
weeding out any and all sin. The fear of CDP glued together the interests of everybody.502
All authorities could equally revel in self-importance at playing a vital role in keeping God
satisfied and the people safe, albeit at an exceptional cost to personal liberty, happiness, and
self-realization. Not surprisingly, this order of the three classes (“Wehr-, Lehr- und Nehr-
stand”) was seen as God-pleasing in itself. A 1661 decree by the Swiss city of Bern demanded
that citizens “be obedient, loyal and deferent” to their secular rulers – “those who have been
appointed in their superiority by God, who guard day and night over the welfare and
preservation of the fatherland” – and to church officials – “the superiors in the clerical class
who show us the way to salvation.”503 Doing so would bring them the promise of a “long life,
temporal blessing and bliss.”504 But if they would not, then nothing but “curse and
corruption” would follow.505

So how much evidence is there that all these admonitions by theologians resulted in actual
laws, restricting actual behavior? The answer is that there is a plethora of evidence that public
policy makers have indeed taken the looming threat of CDP as a reason or even the chief
reason to penalize certain types of behavior. Perhaps the first is a law (Novel 77), issued in
538 CE by Byzantine Emperor Justinian (482-565), that prohibited “certain persons,
instigated by the devil” to commit “crimes contrary to nature” – commonly understood to
refer to homosexual acts – “in order that, through such acts, they may not incur the just
anger of God, and bring about the destruction of cities along with their inhabitants.” The
lawmaker would certainly have had the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in mind.
Likewise, Emperor Justinian’s subordinates were ordered to refrain from blasphemy, because
this would “cause famine, earthquake, and pestilence.” The emperor ordered the prefect of
Constantinople, to arrest and execute people guilty of these crimes, “in order that this city
and the State may not be injured by the contempt of such persons […].”506
A 13th-century law written under King Alfonso X of Castile in Christian Spain
referred to the city of Sodom as it declared that persons guilty of the ‘sin’ of sodomy would

*
When Palmer declared that it is one of his duties that the “christian [sic] magistrate relieves the church from legal
persecution” (Treatise on the Church of Christ, Vol. II, 325), we may wonder if this is a major reason governments
have been so lax in persecuting the countless priests, monks, and nuns who abused hundreds of thousands of
children physically and psychologically worldwide. The fear of God’s wrath may have brought clerical and secular
authorities alike obscene levels of power unimpeded by accountability.

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be hung upside down until they died. The Spanish king and queen Ferdinand and Isabella,
both descendants of Alfonso X, revived this law in 1497, and ordered that such sodomizers
be burned at the stake. Both laws explained why homosexuality should be punished so
severely: the older law claimed that of it “many evils are born on earth,” such as “famine,
pestilence, and torments, and many other evils that cannot be counted.”* The later law stated
that homosexuality “offends God,” and therefore causes pestilence and other disasters.507
Unfortunately, much of the evidence that secular laws were meant to prevent divine
punishment is rather inaccessible, since many legal texts from before 1800 are often buried
in various archives, are penned in antiquated language, and remain undigitized. For some
reason, most proof comes from early modern documents in central Europe, perhaps due to
the ardent efforts of a few dedicated German historians. A few examples should suffice to
demonstrate that secular authorities in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, at least in the
German-speaking world, justified strictly regulating the lives of their subjects by arguing that
otherwise God would take issue, and everybody would suffer as a result.
In 1548, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V released a new imperial order
prohibiting blasphemy (“Gotteslästerung”). The reason, the emperor declared, was that this
would prevent God from getting angry and punishing the land with war and pestilence
(“Krieg/Pestilenz”).508 This decree required some local adaptation. Ten years later, the
council of the German city of Ulm, smack in the middle of the Empire, issued a list of
forbidden behavior, including blasphemy, cursing, swearing, drinking, gambling, adultery,
and fornication, which, it alleged, had taken root among the population. Why? Because, the
1558 document explained, “thereby undoubtedly God Almighty was [...] angered against us
to [inflict] just vengeance and punishment.” That punishment included, the city council
feared, “wars,” “pestilence,” “unheard of illnesses,” and other “well-deserved plagues” to
come daily “over our heads and grow.”509 A 1683 decree, also from Ulm, named “war,
bloodshed, pestilence […], scarcities and other plagues” as the “well-deserved punishments”
for people’s “horrible and abominable sins, misbehavior, and misdeeds” inflaming God’s
“divine wrath.”510
To the south, the ‘Swiss confederation’ became de facto independent from the Holy
Roman Empire in 1499. However, the same concerns drove city councils to issue the same
draconian laws as their counterparts in the north. Why did the Swiss Catholic city of Luzern
prohibit adultery in 1588? Because, by this sin, God would be “so deeply insulted and moved
by anger” that he would “send great and heavy punishments over the people.”511 Why did
the Swiss Protestant city of Bern order children, in 1601, to go to school and learn “the true
knowledge of God and his beatifying word,” so they would “fear God and know His will and
beware of all vices”? Because, the Bernese government declared,

*
In the original Spanish: “[P]or tales yerros embia nuestro senor Dios sobre la tierra, hambre, e pestilencia, e
tormentos, e otros males muchos que non podria contar” (Garza Carvajal, Vir, 94).

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all sorts of evil sins, vices and misbehavior are increasing, such as blasphemy,
cursing and swearing, […] witchcraft, fortune telling and magic, [...] guzzling,
day and night, sitting by wine, lavishly dressed and proudful, also playing,
dancing.512

These are all behaviors, the Bernese council’s decree went on, that would provoke

God’s wrath and displeasure against the whole country, so that punishments
hang over us, like inflation, hunger, war and pestilence, [and] the rod of the
bloodthirsty Turks and other enemies.513

The decree ended with a hopeful note: “So by this God’s wrath will undoubtedly be
tempered and his punishment be averted and prevented.”514
Why did the same council of Bern order its citizens in 1621 to dress modestly and
shun foreign fashion, and prescribe in minute detail what they were and were not allowed
to wear? The reason, this decree stated, was “to avert Gods rightful wrath and [...]
punishments.”515 Why did Bern in 1628 increase punishments for, in no obvious order,
idolatry, wizardry, digging for treasure, blasphemy, swearing and cursing, dancing, skipping
church, whoring, and adultery?516 Because, in “these latest evil times,” it recalled, God had
shown his disapproval “through wonders and signs, earthquakes, fire, rays and hail,
thunderstorms, frightening air and wind.”517 And why did that same city in 1649 ban “the
impudent, annoying mixing of boys and girls, [...] hopping and jumping in the streets,”
which it declared was “opposed to common discipline and chastity and displeasing to all
God and virtue-loving people”?518 Because the Bernese government feared that God would
otherwise punish the citizens with “war, inflation, pestilence, unusual weather and similar
visitations.”519
Was the fear of God’s collective punishment then the only reason for such
legislation? Not necessarily, and perhaps not likely. However, for each of the laws mentioned
above it was the only reason provided. In other cases, the fear of God’s anger was one of a
number of stated reasons. For instance, the policy regulation for the German landgraviate
of Hesse of 1526 prohibited transgressions against ‘God’s law’ and listed among its purposes
the “appeasement of God’s fury” in between other motivations, including “establishment
and foundation of an honest and modest life,” “Christian unity and proper customs,” and
“the promotion of public utility.”520 But it can be argued that the appeasement of God was
a necessary condition for the fulfillment of the other objectives, and therefore more
important by far. Without the fear of CDP, many of these laws would not have been
imagined, drawn up, and promulgated.
It seems that a majority of early-modern legislation in Europe was, at the very least in
part based on the fear of CDP. Volker Haas, a German professor of law, concluded that,
during “the late Middle Ages up to modern times,” judicial punishment “had the function

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of softening God’s wrath [and] to save the people from epidemics, crop failures, natural
disasters and other misfortunes,” apart from the goal of deterrence.521 The judge, Haas
observed, “was the administrator of divine justice, and performed his job ultimately on
God’s behalf.”522
According to German historian Helga Schnabel-Schüle, the fear of divine wrath has
been the “driving force of all penal regulations” in that period,523 and on that basis concluded
that “the importance of the fear of divine sanctions cannot be overstated in order to
understand the normative and social mechanisms of early modern church discipline and
criminal prosecution.”524 Supporting this conclusion was her colleague Frenzel’s finding that
the term ‘God’s wrath’ (‘Zorn Gottes’) was mentioned explicitly in a majority of the decrees
issued by the council of Ulm in between 1491 and 1630 (31 out of 55).525 But even when
legislation made no reference to divine punishment, it may very well have been implied. A
glance at laws passed in the Swiss cantons in the early modern era reveals that not all law-
givers were in the habit of stating a reason – any reason at all – for rules and regulations at
every occasion.526
Before supposing that all these restrictions were a form of suppression solely
instigated from the top down on the citizenry, it should be noted that calls for restrictions
may well have come from the bottom up as well. The majority of citizens likely wanted their
rulers to be this repressive. In 1690, the miners of San Pedro de los Pozos in central Mexico
rose up in revolt against their overseer, Don Bernardo de Benavente Quiñones, because he
supposedly had made a habit of slandering the Virgin Mary, and so had invited imminent
disaster by way of divine punishment.527 They demanded that Don Bernardo be disciplined
for the sake of their own safety.
If the fear of God’s wrath and subsequent punishment caused significant social
unrest among miners in Mexico, it may have hung over similar high-risk situations. Think
of the fear that a cursing sea-captain may have caused among his crew, or a blaspheming
military officer among the troops he commands. With regard to the latter, take Saint Jerome
(died 420), a Christian theologian and Bible translator living in the eastern part of the
Roman Empire, who remarked in 396 that “It is by reason of our sins that the barbarians
are strong, it is our vices that bring defeat to the armies of Rome.”528 This fear would have
legitimized strict codes of conduct that would not otherwise have been necessary, and if not
ordained from above, then demanded from below. Apart from avoiding God’s anger
expressed through natural disasters, preventing social ferment among literally god-fearing
citizens is reason enough for a host of public measures that would make no sense from a
secular viewpoint, like prohibiting businesses from opening on Sundays, censuring novelists
who are using blasphemous language, and discriminating against foreigners who adhere to
a religion that is very different from that of the majority.
It stands to reason that all segments of society have, in various periods of history,
mostly in agreement and unison, been participants in maintaining pressure on each other to
take up the responsibility to do, whatever was fitting within their respective social roles, to

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stave off CDP. And also, that at all social layers – not just at the top and the bottom, but
also at that of the ‘managers’ in the middle – people have been blamed for failing to live up
to the sometimes repressive policies deemed necessary to placate the Heavens. Everybody
must have felt the pressure to do their part in preventing CDP and remind each other to do
the same. The fear of CDP may have thus contributed to the formation and organization of
a modern, integrated society in Western Europe.

Where this may have happened quite differently, despite a similar notion of CDP, and
perhaps because of a crucial difference in that notion, is China. The fear of CDP has both
been a check on China’s centralized government and a means for its leadership to hold the
reins of power. The Chinese concept of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ (tianming), which might
date back as early as the Zhou Dynasty in the first millennium BC, states that the emperor
– or any Chinese leader for that matter – derives the legitimacy of his power from having a
balanced relationship with the forces of nature, at first perceived as the benevolence of
anthropomorphic deities, and later envisioned more abstractly as cosmic harmony.
“Essential to obtaining and preserving the Mandate of Heaven,” according to Jiang Yonglin,
a current professor of Chinese history, was for the emperor to take steps to “investigate
things, extend knowledge, make the will sincere, rectify the mind, cultivate personal life,
regulate the family, bring order to the state, and pacify the world.”529
A Chinese leader loses his legitimacy when disasters happen despite his best efforts
and intentions, as these disasters are considered his failures, and signs that the Heavens have
removed his mandate. Historian Kallie Szczepanski noted that “peasant uprisings, invasions
by foreign troops, drought, famine, floods, and earthquakes,” as well as “disease epidemics,”
were signs that a particular emperor’s Heavenly mandate has been revoked.530
The doctrine may well have been – and may still be – both an after-the-fact
justification of a victorious usurper, and a driving philosophy for proper social policies. The
concept stands out from European conceptions of legitimate rule in that it justifies rebellion
in case of calamities, and sanctions a successful rebellion as it demonstrates that the Mandate
has been bestowed on a new leader, not necessarily one of noble birth. A European
traditional ruler’s authority would not lose legitimacy simply because a disaster happened
under his or her watch, but it would compel that ruler to clamp down more on the sinfulness
of his or her underlings.* In China, and countries influenced by Confucian thinking, like
Vietnam and Korea, the occurrence of a disaster invites the notion that a ruler’s time is up,
and is ready to be replaced by another.

*
Nevertheless, this argument has also been tried in Renaissance Europe. Pope Pius V accused Duke Alfonso II
d’Este of Ferrara of having provoked God to cause the earthquakes that struck that North-Italian city in 1570.
Following the 1570 earthquake, the pope sent open letters to Ferrara, telling the duke’s subjects that God had
sent the earthquake to punish Alfonso for his hospitality to the Jews. (Busi, “The Seismic History of Italy”;
Guidoboni, “Riti di Calamità”). This accusation was likely a means for the Pope to assert his political hegemony
over a secular leader.

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The philosophy of the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ is similar to the belief underlying the
fear of CDP, but then focused on the behavior of the ruling class, heaping blame on
authorities when disasters occur and the people are rattled by it, and giving those authorities
legitimacy when the forces of nature appear to be in harmony or under control. So while in
Europe, disasters would cement the power of a ruler, in China they would undermine it.
This explains why the movement of celestial bodies has been observed and recorded since
the beginning of Chinese civilization; not, according to German sinologist Oliver Corff, out
of scientific curiosity, but to “confirm the continuity of the Mandate of Heaven, with the
purpose of safeguarding the stability of rule and thus the existence of the empire.”531
It may also explain China’s often draconian ‘zero-Covid’ policy: compared to the
United States and countries in Europe, China has put its population far more often and far
longer under severe restrictions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, as shown by the
‘government stringency index’.* In Western states, the population might feel sympathetic
and lenient towards government leaders overwhelmed by the scale of the pandemic and the
difficulty of juggling different interests. In China, this would be less so. The Chinese
population might interpret the Covid pandemic as a sign that the government, or more
broadly the Chinese Communist Party (CPC), has squandered Heaven’s blessing, and is up
for replacement. “Like the emperors of China who preceded it,” explained international law
professor Daniel Chow, “the CPC’s ascension to power over rivals is evidence that the CPC
holds the Mandate of Heaven […].”532 But this mandate can be lost. “Like all of the emperors
of China before it,” Chow continued, the CPC “realizes that it holds the Mandate of Heaven
[…] only so long as it bestows protection and beneficence on its citizens.”533
It is that protection against Covid, which the Chinese government hopes to ensure,
but which, when in doubt, will put its legitimacy in danger of getting lost. From as early as
February 2020, observers of Chinese politics have warned that the outbreak of the Covid
pandemic could have dire consequences for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Mandate of
Heaven, and even that of the CPC.534 Roger Garside, a former British diplomat once
stationed in Beijing, even predicted at the end of 2022 that President Xi Jinping will be
removed from power in 2023 because the Chinese population would have become
convinced that he had lost the Mandate of Heaven, based on the failure of his Covid policy
and on economic decline.535 One outside observer noticed the “twist of history,” that Wuhan
was both the pandemic’s ground zero and the place where the latest revocation of the
Mandate of Heaven had started.536 It was in the Wuchang District of Wuhan in 1911, where
a popular uprising began that would eventually lead to the toppling of the imperial Qing
dynasty, and the formal abdication of the Empress Dowager Longyu (1868-1913) by edict in

*
A team of data analysts operating out of the University of Oxford have been using nine metrics to calculate the
Government Stringency Index, including “school closures, workplace closures, cancellation of public events,
restrictions on public gatherings, closures of public transport; stay-at-home requirements, public information
campaigns, restrictions on internal movements, and international travel controls.” (See “COVID-19: Stringency
Index,” https://ourworldindata.org/covid-stringency-index.)

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1912 in which she formally admitted that her dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven.537
The birthplace of the CPC could thus also become its final resting place.
The Mandate of Heaven has also been used as a means to centralize imperial power.
Australian environmental historian Mark Elvin has shown that a succession of Chinese
emperors used disasters to reprimand their subordinate regional magistrates for failing to
secure Heaven’s blessing. “There has now occurred a large and sudden earthquake,” wrote
the Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722) in 1679. The earthquake had an 8.0 magnitude and is now
known as the ‘Sanhe-Pinggu earthquake’, so called for the area where its effects were felt
most, which included the capital Beijing. The emperor, likely to his dismay, noticed that
“[t]he general explanation for this is that We [meaning ‘I’] are lacking in virtue.” Quick to
divert the blame, he added that there was also a general feeling “that many of those whom
We have employed to administer the government are not sincere or helpful.” In fact, the
emperor argued, not he but his administrative subordinates had caused the disaster. He
charged:

Central and provincial officials, you are unable to purify your heart-minds …
you deceive your superiors, act in your personal interests […] or behave
wantonly and oppress the people, turning right and wrong upside down, […]
disrupting the harmony of Heaven above, and calling down this disaster.538

Elvin argues that the Chinese so-called Yongzheng Emperor (1678-1735) unleashed a reign
of “psychological terror against both local populations and officials” by threatening
punishment in case of negative weather-related events. For instance, the emperor observed
“abundant harvests everywhere last year throughout the province of Zhili,” except for three
‘administrative subdivisions’ that “missed being fertilized by the rains,” namely Xuanhua,
Huailai, and Baoan. He concluded, “We thereupon entertained suspicions toward the
officials and commoners of these localities, fearing there might be causes for them to have
called this down upon themselves.”539 According to the emperor’s reasoning, bad harvests
were a sign that both local authorities and ordinary Chinese were guilty of whatever caused
the weather gods to become angry.
The last quote from the Yongzheng Emperor shows that CDP in China was not
necessarily considered the consequence of the magistrates’ behavior only. Commoners could
be blamed as well, which may explain why the Yongzheng Emperor’s reign was marked by
religious intolerance, perhaps induced by the pure fear of CDP next to the fear of losing the
Mandate of Heaven. It is quite possible that the Chinese and the European interpretations
of CDP did not differ as much in terms of the actual consequences for ordinary citizens. As
shown above, the fear of CDP gave rise to serious restrictions on the behavior of the common
man and woman in Christian Europe. The difference with China might be that such
restrictions were more evenly spread over Chinese society, affecting the magistrates to a
greater degree than their European counterparts. While in China the ruling class, whether

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personified by the Emperor or the General Secretary of the CPC, manages the relationship
of the nation with the divine mostly through its own virtuous behavior, in the Abrahamic
world it seems this used to be done – and still is in places – mostly by policing the private
behavior of ordinary citizens.

To what extent the concept of CDP has produced different ideals and styles of government
around the world remains a fascinating topic of further study. There is one more common
aspect shared by the Chinese and the Western notions of CDP, I would like to highlight.
Compared to their underlings, rulers in both cases have an disproportionately strong
influence on the occurrence of CDP through their own behavior. The Rapture Ready
website points out that “[p]unishing the people for the sins or mistakes of their leaders was
a practice God carried out beginning with Abraham,” and therefore counsels Christian
politicians – referred to as ‘men of God’ – thus:

Men of God must remember that because they are in positions of leadership
they must be extremely careful to obey God in all things for those under them
may be punished for their sins.540

So political leaders are imagined to play a key role in inviting divine blessing and averting
godly anger for two reasons: first, they must be exemplary Christians themselves since they
would have an outsized impact on the average godliness of their country as supposedly
perceived by God; and, secondly, their task is to minimize the level of sin among the
population. This role may be seen as more important in democratic countries. If divine
punishment is a response to collective guilt, then perhaps the sins perceived to be part of the
policies of a democratically elected government may add to that guilt, since the electorate,
by choosing their leaders, bear responsibility for the fact that those sins were made possible.
In general, the sins of a few have been perceived to add to the sins of the collective, and to
become a burden of guilt on the group or the nation as such. But this would be more so
when the nation or group is directly responsible for the position of these few sinners as the
collective’s representatives.
This may partially explain the hysteria that erupted in recent years among some
conservative Christian Americans whenever their preferred presidential candidate was not
elected. One Christian writer contended that “the result of President Clinton’s godlessness
in office was terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001.”541 The faith of the actual president
at that time – George W. Bush – was apparently not sufficient to ward off God’s punishment,
nor was the faith of the 3,000 actual victims. With the election of Barack Obama as President
of the United States, this reasoning occasioned an avalanche of self-righteous panic among
conservative, mostly white, and mostly Evangelical Christians.
There is no telling whether the following examples are merely anecdotal or indicative
or a wider movement. In any case, as it appears from Evangelical Christian political writings,

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their hostility against Obama was immediate, absolute, and relentless: the new president was
portrayed to be everything but Christian, and nothing but evil. Right after the election, a
parttime pastor and vociferous writer named Ron Graham (1951-2013) claimed to know
that the “usurper”542 Obama was “a man completely opposed to God,”543 one who is “making
a firm stance against the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,”544 and one who “stands for
everything God abhors.”545 He concluded: “Obama hates God.”546 At the same time Bill
Keller, a Florida-based minister, maintained that Obama is “consumed by the spirit of the
anti-Christ.”547 (The belief that Obama was himself the antichrist would later be shared by
13 percent of all American adults, and at least considered possible by another 13 percent.548)
Graham predicted that, with the election of Obama, the country would “completely turn its
back on Israel,” and there would be a surge of “immorality such as abortion, homosexuality,
same-sex marriage, pornography, [and] sexual abuse of young children.”549 There could not
be any compromise or middle ground, whatsoever. “We can’t be for Obama and with Jesus
at the same time,” declared Graham, “that’s impossible.”550
Only a few months into Obama’s presidency, the vilification became fully venomous.
Keller wrote that Obama “opposes God on every major spiritual issue of our day,”551 and
asserted that Obama was leading the United States “in all-out rebellion to God and His
Word.”552 Pentecostal pastor Joseph Chambers claimed that “[t]he entire Obama agenda has
been evil from his first day in office.”553 According to Graham, Obama “is undoubtedly being
led by Satan,” which would be why his “government is filled with people who follow Satan
[…].”554
Worrying about the country’s safety under the new administration, ‘Christian
Zionist’ radio presenter Jan Markell wondered, “[W]ill God remain our Homeland Security
Director?”555 That was no question for an ostensibly terrified pastor Chambers, who told
believers: “What is occurring in America is nothing less than moral suicide.” And the
consequence would be dismal. “America is quickly going to Hell.”556 According to Tim King,
writing in 2009, God had sent “a wide variety of remedial chastisements to our land.” Those
included “hurricanes, tornado outbreaks and severe storms, destructive flood and fire events,
terrorism and lately the financial crisis.”557 This all showed that the United States was “living
in the shadow of God’s judgment for a long time.” But now, King warned:

our new presidential administration under the guidance of Barack Hussein

Obama is working feverishly to carry us to a much deeper level of rebellion
against our Creator.558

Could it be that the purpose of this rebellion was to bring down divine punishment of the
nation? That would make the president the country’s enemy number one. Pastor J. Grant
Swank, Jr. of Maine contended that Obama is “chief enemy of the country.” “Being a
Muslim,” Swank lied, “Obama would delight in nothing more than the implosion of
America.”559

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Perhaps because of a tendency to compare the people of the United States with the
ancient Israelites – like the American colonists conquerors of a new land – it would be easy
to imagine a similar fate. If even the Chosen People could be punished for rebellion, then
the United States could certainly not expect more leniency, argued Keller:

The United States is no different than the children of Israel. We are a wicked
and rebellious people who have forsaken our God. We have squandered His
many blessings and have turned this blessed land into one that is cursed. […]
Just as God spared not His wrath on his own chosen people, punishing them
for their rebellion, so will the wrath of God be felt on this nation for our
rebellion.560

As a result of the immorality brought on the United States by Obama, according to Graham,
God will “remove His supernatural covering from where it’s been placed for the past two-
hundred plus years.”561 Another Christian conservative added, “With the election of Obama,
Christians in America […] know that God’s judgment on America is right at hand.” 562 God
could then judge the United States in a similar fashion as he did Sodom and Gomorrah,
because “America is guilty of the exact same things as Sodom and Gomorrah,” warned
Graham.563 Fearing the imminence of divine judgment, Keller admonished Christians “to
call this nation to repentance and to turn back to God and His Truth.” But he clothed this
message in ominously militaristic appearance. “It is time to mobilize the troops and send
every man, woman, and child to battle stations,” Keller proclaimed. “THIS IS NOT A
DRILL!!!”564
Something in these expressions of fear feels insincere, even when disregarding their
obvious political purpose. There is no saying that this fear was actually keeping these
religious leaders awake at night, but there seems to have been an additional point in stoking
it: they seem to have relished it as something devilishly enjoyable. The continuous, absolute
demonization of the first African American president, of everything he stood for – real and
imagined – and of everybody associated with him, including most importantly Hillary
Clinton: maybe it was proof of a radicalization of conservative Christians that had already
occurred. Or maybe it was a self-generating process that drove aggression to spiral upwards
out of all proportions and beyond any logic. Whatever the underlying causes of this
escalating demonization of political opponents, it seems to have done a tremendous amount
of damage, as it broke down mildness of judgment and manners, coarsened speech, shrunk
perspectives, and cast darkness over empathy and compassion. One effect was a clamor for
a leader who joined in fully with their contempt of decency, who embodied their hatred,
and who committed himself to open hostility towards all who dared to be different. They
got what they wanted.
Looking back at the eight years of “the Obamanation,” British evangelist Alan
Franklin rejoiced at the election of Donald Trump and the defeat of Hillary “Jezebel”

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Clinton, but feared that the United States and the United Kingdom “will still be judged, for
spitting in the face of God in so many serious ways, but particularly so-called homosexual
‘marriage’ and abortion.” With the new president that judgment he predicted would be
postponed: “we now have a short breathing space,” Franklin sighed.565
Why was it impossible to imagine God’s blessings resting on the head of a sincerely
religious but non-conservative president, but a self-evident truth for the next? At the start of
the Trump presidency, Franklin warned: “Make the most of it. Time is short.”566 Short for
what? One observer wrote in 2017 that she knew “many good Christians [who were] saying
that the election of Donald Trump is a reprieve from [...] coming judgement and destruction
by God.”567 The thinking was that, before long, the United States might again be led by a
president who would pick up where Clinton and Obama left off: provoking God to punish
the nation. Indeed, as soon as the United States’ electorate replaced Trump with Joseph
Biden, the demonization that conservative Christians levelled at Obama resumed with a
vengeance. And so did the panic. Now, with Biden as president, assured one “Bible-believing
born-again” Christian writer, the people running the United States are “Godless pedophiles,
Sodomites, communists, Lesbians, traitors and haters, and assorted other criminals.”568
Born-again ‘Jewish-Christian’ Ungurean, warned that “[w]ith Globalism looming over us and
the Biden admin in power, we should expect threats to the nation of Israel,” and, by
implication, a rising threat of calamities befalling the United States.569 Presumably the vitriol
thrown at President Biden would be even more intense had he not been an older white man,
but an African American with an Islamic-sounding middle name.
But something more fundamental appears to have shifted on the webpages I tend to
consult to take the pulse of conservative Christian thought. Fear is stoked, again, relentlessly,
but this time any sign of divine anger appears to be welcomed as an opportunity to become
an active participant in the Heavenly war between good and evil that is becoming
increasingly more intense. Disasters are no longer feared as God’s punishment that may
cause personal harm, but desired as divine vindication of one’s own righteousness and as
divine vengeance on one’s political opponents. From this standpoint it is not a big leap to
see that a disaster can be caused, and that it is God’s will that it be caused, by one who
presumes he or she could be his human representative observing his dictate. For some, the
fear of CDP is a cynical political tool that is divorced from any genuine concern about
people’s wellbeing.

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6. The peculiar reasons for divine anger

Belief in a calamity-causing god lays the ground for authoritarianism

You may have noticed in the examples given above of CDP-motivated legislation, that the
regulated behavior is often of a certain type. In the Christian world, in any case, any credence
given to the notion of CDP has made repressive measures targeting commoners reasonable,
especially when reference was made to the Old Testament. Anybody taking the Bible literally
and using it as a personal guidebook would conclude that disasters interpreted as divine
punishment are a response to the same kind of infractions that scripture alleges have been
causing God’s anger since the beginning of time. Issues like democracy, racial equality,
eradication of child poverty, affordable healthcare, clean drinking water, and animal welfare
are then at most ‘nice to have’: mere hobbies for lefties and atheists. Those issues appear to
leave the god of the Old Testament indifferent because they are never described as causing
divine anger, followed by divine punishment. More importantly, those issues are a
distraction from what really matters, and what really matters is what really matters to him:
getting worshiped properly and regularly, and suppressing a certain type of sin and sinners.
And what constitutes ‘sin’ is, for some reason, rarely a violation of the fifth and sixth of the
‘Ten Commandments’: the rules against killing and stealing. Among current Christian
fundamentalists, this reasoning is alive and well.
It is therefore not an accident that theologians and clerics who espouse the belief in
an angry god also serve an authoritarian agenda. Their conservative followers are not aware
of that necessarily. They may simply respond favorably to the messages of their religious
leaders as these correspond to some values, like veneration of the sacred and deference to
authorities, that social psychologists have found to be universally human. But the often
unspoken, implicit threat of divine punishment – whether or not as part of an apocalyptic
scenario – is necessary to fill in the logical gaps in the argumentation in defense of
authoritarian policies that are contrary to other, also universally human values: those of
compassion and fairness. Some extreme conservative positions on topics like sexuality,
abortions, and non-Abrahamic customs and beliefs, can only be explained in reference to a
wrathful god who punishes collectively, and who himself is conspicuously lacking in
compassion and fairness.

Moral motivations

A group of social psychologists, led by Jonathan Haidt, Craig Joseph, and Jesse Graham, has
convincingly shown that normally functioning people judge behavior to be right or wrong,
to some extent at least, based on two sets of values: first, whether it provides care or prevents
harm, and, second, on whether it is fair or evenhanded.570 Most often, a particular act is

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considered morally wrong when it hurts somebody else or creates an unfair situation. And
also the other way around: if an act brings relief to somebody in pain or despair, or sets right
what is unjust, we tend to consider that morally commendable. Reflecting the high value
placed on care and fairness, good government from early on meant having a king who
brought justice to the land. Of the Sumerian King Lipit-Eštar, who ruled around 1865 BCE,
is written: “The mighty do not commit robbery and the strong do not abuse the weak
anymore: you have established justice in Sumer and Akkad and made the Land feel
content.”571
This is, of course, neither the entire basis for moral decision-making, nor that of
good government, which Haidt, Joseph, and Graham also point out. If divine anger were
imagined to be based on the violation of these two value types alone – God being angry for
mortal humans’ lack of care or of equity in their dealings with one another – all the fear of
that anger leading to collective misfortune would not have made much of an impact on the
direction of public policy. That is because the wish to minimize harm and guarantee fairness
would have shaped people’s understanding of good government regardless of the fear of
divine punishment. Furthermore, it is hard to see how a god who truly cares about alleviating
suffering and fostering fairness would punish people indiscriminately over an overall lack of
compassion or equity in their society. If these two value types, or ‘moral foundations’ as
Haidt and his colleagues termed them, were the only ones that mattered to the god that
believers imagine, they would still revere that god but not fear him, and not interpret
calamities as an expression of his anger. Believers who fall victim to a disaster may call on a
purely fair and compassionate god for his support and thank him for giving it, but will not
expect that god to be the cause of their misfortune.
What accounts for the belief in a fearful, angry god must be an additional number
of value types or ‘moral foundations’, next to care and fairness. Indeed, Haidt, Graham, and
Joseph have found, that many people, but especially religious conservatives, tend to add
three extra moral concerns to the mix. These other three foundations they describe as loyalty
to the ingroup, respect for authority, and concerns about purity and sanctity.* The demand
for loyalty should be understood as a pressure to conform to the judgments and norms of
the ingroup. Strongly related to this insistence on loyalty is the moral foundation ‘respect
for authority’. Both require a central set of common values, often embodied by an ingroup-
approved authority figure, to obey and respect, the measure of which grants group
membership and proves one’s loyalty. The third additional moral foundation – reverence
for purity and sanctity – includes often religiously motivated taboos, related to chastity or
behavior that can be considered at an intuitive level ‘revolting’, ‘disgusting’, or ‘unnatural’,
but have no harmful effects on other people, and are impervious to argumentation. This
moral foundation is also strongly related to the ones regarding loyalty and respect for

*
Occasionally, this number is raised to six with the addition of ‘liberty/oppression’ as one extra ‘moral foundation’
(Haidt, 2012).

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authority, perhaps because strong adherence to articles of faith is a test of devotion to the
ingroup’s central values and obedience to their leader’s authority.572
All five types of values are represented in almost everybody to some extent, Haidt
and his colleagues claim to have found. But not in the same amount. Religious conservatives,
who Haidt refers to as ‘the right’, tend to appreciate the latter three moral foundations much
more than less religious and less conservative people do, or who Haidt designates as ‘the
left’. “It appears,” Haidt wrote, “that the left relies primarily on the Care and Fairness
foundations, whereas the right uses all five.”573 These three other types of values – labeled
‘binding motivations’, as opposed to the ‘individualizing motivations’ of care and fairness –
cause sharp divisions on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, flag burning, and the death
penalty.574
It is these binding motivations, I contend, that give rise to the image of an angry,
punishing god who validates those motivations.* People who are equipped only with
‘individualizing motivations’ – concern for care and fairness – would not be able to come
up with that kind of god. To imagine a god who is capable of CDP, these believers would
need a good dose of loyalty to similar people (i.e. other churchgoers), a disinclination to
question their ingroup’s authority figures (i.e. priests), and the presumption that they are
allowed to demand from others that they behave in every respect according to their own
particular notions of what is decent and ‘natural’ or ‘normal’.†

*
A different grouping of the moral foundations was suggested by Haidt and Graham: the harm/care and
fairness/reciprocity values relate to an “ethic of autonomy”; ingroup/loyalty and authority/respect link to the
“ethic of community”; and purity/sanctity belongs to the “ethic of divinity” (Haidt & Graham, “When Morality
Opposes Justice,” 107).
†
Haidt, the main spokesman for this ‘moral foundations theory’, has called himself a political centrist (Wehner,
“Jonathan Haidt”). He appears to see centrism as a noble aspiration when he urges ‘liberals’ or ‘the left’ to
appreciate the binding motivations more than they tend to. Likening the value types to flavors, he suggested
conservatives have a more refined taste than non-conservatives as they enjoy a broader range of tastes: “it
sometimes seems,” he wrote, “that liberals lack the moral taste buds, or at least, their moral ‘cuisine’ makes less
use of them” (Haidt, “Why Working-Class People Vote Conservative”). In addition, Haidt saw the binding
motivations as having a higher purpose that makes them worth considering. “Loyalty, respect for authority and
some degree of sanctification,” he observed, “create a more binding social order that places some limits on
individualism and egoism” (ibid.).
That argument may represent the stated rationale behind the religious-conservative care for the
‘binding motivations’, but I fail to see its logic. As a side note, even when supposing Haidt is right, this does not
mean binding motivations put more limits on individualism and egoism than concerns about harm, which limits
abuse of power, and fairness, which has also the limiting principle of ‘equality before the law’ built into it. More
importantly, the binding motivations are likely to place fewer limits on individualism and egoism, because they
give room for the abuse of power by those in authority when people driven by binding motivations fail to hold
them to account out of respect for their office, loyalty to their leadership, and reverence for sanctimonious
misinformation.
Haidt tries to foster a more inclusive climate for political discourse by presenting binding motivations
as being worthy of respect, and by calling for an approach of moral issues from different points of view than just
the principles of care and fairness. This is highly admirable. But I do not share his understanding of the binding
motivations as somehow contributing to a more cohesive society, than the individualizing motivations would do
on their own. And when those binding motivations overshadow the individualizing ones completely, society will
be cohesive alright, but only because it is so repressive as to prohibit any deviation from the official norm.
Haidt and his co-writers are properly averse to pronounce moral judgment on other people’s moral
judgment: proclaiming one ‘motivation’ to be somehow better or worse than another. Doing so would not be
objective. But Haidt breached that principle himself when he addressed people morally motivated by
individualizing values (‘liberals’ and ‘lefties’) to plead for more respect for binding values, because an approach
of moral issues from five value types is supposedly better than an approach from just two. Even if such a more

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Do the ethics of religious people lead to their image of God, or does their image of God lead
to their ethics? Both could be true at the same time. It seems probable that both these factors
reinforce each other, and bond into a concretized, stable relationship of god-image and god-
prescribed ethics, no matter the proportion of the moral flavors that go into the cocktail.
The point is that any religious person is likely to believe in a god who reflects his or her
ethical beliefs. It is no wonder that the god imagined by religious conservatives cares as much
as they do for the ‘binding motivations’. Just as it should be no surprise that the god of
religious progressives cares mostly about compassion and justice. The Greek philosopher
Xenophanes (c. 570-c. 478) already remarked that

if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and
produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like
horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their
several kinds.575

But unlike oxen, horses, and lions, people have a left-brain ability to choose a god who serves
their personal interests best. And some people are better than others at branding and selling
the god of their choosing, notably theologians, clerics, and politicians who appeal to religious
foundations of public policy. Below, I will argue that those theologians, clerics, and
politicians who promote the belief in a collectively punishing god may well be doing so, at
least in part, because of the self-serving reason that this gives them the argument to stifle the
freedoms of individuals who think differently, and that it furthers their own authoritarian
ambitions.

Interestingly, and at first somewhat surprisingly, is that the conservative punitive god appears
to cause disasters almost only in response to behavior in contravention of ingroup loyalty,
respect for authority, and purity and sanctity concerns. With the exception of just one
individual* in this century, I have not come across any theologian or religious leader who
ascribed a divinely caused, presumed punitive calamity to a lack of social justice or to human
rights violations, for instance.† And even the exception, Burundian Pastor Ndayizeye, put

encompassing view were wise, it does not mean that Haidt’s research precludes the possibility that the various
moral foundations can be fitted logically in a hierarchical model somewhat akin to Lawrence Kohlberg’s five-
stage model of moral reasoning, which his theory is meant to replace because it relies too much on rationality
(Haidt & Graham, “When Morality Opposes Justice”).
*
Pastor Joseph Ndayizeye (Onyulo, “Is COVID-19 God’s Punishment?”).
†
It is doubtful that IS spokesman al-Quraishi’s attribution of the Coronavirus to God’s wish to punish “tyrants”
is a reference to care and fairness. The writer of a pamphlet printed in 1598 about the recent fire that destroyed
much of the Devonshire town of Tiverton, blamed God’s obvious wrath on the “unmercifulnesse, & small regard
of the poore, which were dayly seene to dye and perish in their streetes for lacke of reliefe.” The pamphleteer’s
confrontational message, likely to put him or her in a difficult spot vis-à-vis more powerful interests, may explain
the fact that he or she wished to remain anonymous. (Anonymous, The True Lamentable Discourse of the Burning
of Teuerton (1598), quoted in Tomlin, “‘Exhorting and Persuading’”). The writer may or may not have been a
theologian or cleric. United States President Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) considered slavery a ‘national sin’

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the killing of innocent people next to same-sex marriage as a cause of divine punishment, as
if the two supposed sins are comparable in level of egregiousness.576 This is not new. It
conforms with the finding by Frenzel that the primary sins that have been linked to the
wrath of God in the laws of the German town of Ulm after the Reformation were blasphemy,
fornication, and drunkenness.577 Referring to ‘sodomy’, Saint Bernardino stated that “God
has always poured down His wrath upon this sin more than any other.”578
So, almost none of the sins claimed to contribute to the occurrence of disasters are
common crimes that are directly harmful to others or that create unfairness: they almost all
involve private conduct only, such as if, who, and how you worship, with whom you establish
an intimate relationship, and what spiritual knowledge or religious opinion you adopt and
spread. Showing just how private supposedly CDP-provoking conduct can get, a 1628 decree
by the Swiss city of Bern includes the prohibition of “wanton, frivolous and annoying
dancing [...] before, during and after weddings [...] nobody exempted, nor at any other time
in or outside the towns, whether publicly or secretly, day or night.” If anybody was caught in
the act of dancing, the wedding party would be fined 100 guilders.579 Dancing in secret, at
night, was forbidden on pain of a steep fine. For this there could only have been one reason:
to prevent God from causing disasters. Such a god is not driven by the individualizing
motivations, as proposed by the moral foundations theory, at all. He is driven by binding
motivations only.
How can this be? How can the conservative god be lacking the values of care and
fairness that conservative Christians would supposedly not be lacking, according to Haidt
and his colleagues?580 How can this punishing god be such an exaggerated caricature of its
believers?
One possible explanation is that the care and fairness components of the morality of
conservative Christians find expression in concern for the welfare and fair treatment of the
victims of God’s anger, who happen not to be, or to a much lesser degree, the cause of that
anger, i.e. people like themselves. Why should heterosexuals have to suffer from Covid-19,
when it is homosexuals getting married who are inviting the coronavirus by fueling God’s
ire? From this perspective it is incredibly irresponsible of gays and lesbians to endanger the
lives of straight people for such a selfish reason as wanting to have the same administrative
rights as heterosexual couples. Surely the rights to life and being free from suffering –
including those of children – surpass the right to get married?
Another explanation is that the conservatives’ god is much less the product of the
intuitive morality that Haidt and others have been trying to uncover, but more of purposeful
left-brain reasoning. Haidt and his fellow researchers claim that binding motivations, like all
moral motivations, are derived primarily from intuition, a “sudden appearance in
consciousness”581 or, put more prosaically, a ‘gut feeling’. Only after that quick, automatic

worthy of divine punishment. Grant believed it was a reason for God punishing his country with the American
Civil War during which he commanded the northern states’ Union Army to victory (Cramer, Ulysses S. Grant,
106). But this exceptional statesman was neither a theologian, nor a religious leader.

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judgment, a more effortful process gets on steam to rationalize the intuitive impulse. This
‘social intuitionist model’, and the idea that intuition comes first and reasoning second, and
that the latter tends to adapt to the former, certainly have merits. However, I posit that the
individualizing motivations, as identified by Haidt and his colleagues, are much more
intuitional and far less reasoned post-hoc than the binding motivations, which appear to be
mostly the result of reasoning that is overruling intuition.
I am not denying that the binding motivations have some basis in intuition,* but I
do believe that they are better explained based on the slow process of reasoning, no matter
how irrational that reasoning sometimes seems to be. Conservative Christian preachers –
and perhaps Jewish and Islamic preachers as well – expressly state, with great emphasis, that
our values should not be derived from our intuitions, but from holy scripture and the
teachings that they – the theological experts – draw from it. Declaring God to be the only
“standard of righteousness,” the Californian pastor Robert Roe (1922-2004) left no room
for personal moral intuition when he declared with crystal clarity: “Whatever God likes is
righteous. Whatever God does is righteous. Whatever God dislikes is sin. Whatever God
doesn’t do is unrighteous.”582
Secular Christian leaders tend to be in accord. In 2008, Tim Wildmon, president of
the American Family Association, said: “God in his word, the Bible, tells us what’s good and
bad and right and wrong.”583 Two hundred years before, De Maistre stated his belief that it
was the Enlightenment philosophy of Rousseau and Voltaire that was chief among the sins
of the French that had caused their ill-fated Revolution: the idea, as he put it, that “there is
no longer a master: the mind of each man is his own.”584 Instead of uncritically obeying their
religious instructors, De Maistre complained, the French, inspired by the ideals of the
Enlightenment, had begun to listen to their own conscience.
To take an example of how overriding one’s moral intuition plays out in practice, an
emphatically Christian writer, named Bill Wilson, recently condemned as unchristian, a
“government paying for health care, tuition, and housing.” That is wrong, he explained,
because, “[f]rom a Christian worldview, it is Christ’s people, not a centralized government,
that must minister to the poor and provide healing, restoration, comfort, and vigilance over
Liberty.”585 No moral intuition appears to be at work here: it is all tortuous, self-enforced
reasoning, based on outside input applied with cold logic to justify a disregard of unfortunate
fellow humans, and a dislike of a supposedly socialist government.† Intuition and emotions,
like empathy, are unwelcome when judging according to learnt biblical truths.

*
One natural tendency supporting an intuitional dislike of ‘loose’ behavior, I believe, is the urge to stress being
different from animals, and being as different from animals as possible. This explains the value placed on self-
discipline, elaborate dress, ‘good manners’, complicated speech, and so on. The less we resemble an animal the
less others may be inclined to try to ‘own’ us, and use us as cattle. The more we appear to be evolved away from
our animal ancestors – or to be created in the ‘image of God’, as fundamentalist Christians prefer – the better.
This may also explain the purity value that conservatives apparently appreciate so much.
†
The extent to which moral judgment is intuited instead of reasoned is no indication of it being more evolved or
enlightened. Racism, for instance, may well have a strong basis in intuition, which, thankfully, can be overruled
by reasoning.

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Another case of moral reasoning overruling moral intuition is the adoration of the
modern country of Israel, no matter its policies. This is based on the belief that disrespecting
Israel is to invite divine wrath. The basis for this belief is God’s promise to Abraham that he
would “bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee” (Genesis 12:3).586 Some
theologians argue that this promise to bless or curse extends to Abraham’s offspring into
eternity, and this would include present-day Israel. “God says that when any nation divides
up the land of Israel,” pastor Hagee explained, “they are subject to judgement.”587 Hagee
warned that “to the man or nation that has cursed Israel the judgement of God came in
spades.”588 Another particularly pious Christian claimed that the Obama administration was
“turning its back on the Nation of Israel,” and concluded with dismay: “Our country will
face the wrath of Almighty God for this.”589 To be critical of Israel would then be a form of
national suicide. In general terms: God would punish a collective entity for its policy towards
another collective entity. Again, there is nothing intuitional about this moral judgment.
Non-intuitive moral reasoning can make short work of hindering moral emotions
that are naturally stirred when cruelty is witnessed. The conservative Jewish, Christian, or
Islamic faiths prescribe that any accurate description of God be in accordance respectively
with the Hebrew Bible, the Old and New Testament, or the Quran, including the hadiths,
and also maintain that these holy scriptures are an infallible guide to distinguish between
good and bad. The professional interpreters of those holy scriptures have made a habit of
prioritizing the binding values as the rock-solid confines within which somehow
consideration of care and fairness must find room for expression. People caught up in a
conservative religious milieu may try hard to accommodate their natural attraction to
compassion and fairness within the limitations imposed by the principles of loyalty,
authority, and purity and sanctity. But when this is logically impossible – as it often happens
to be – and when they are recruited for spiritual warfare against the evil others, there may
be no choice but to suppress such natural tendencies.

Let us take a closer look at the types of behavior mostly considered as having contributed to
disasters, to see how they match with the three binding motivations, how intuitional the
hostility to such behaviors really is, and what government policies such hostility calls for.
Based on the examples listed above, the sins most often mentioned by clerics and theologians
as incurring the risk of divine wrath, and subsequent CDP, include the following three.

1. Deviations from official religious doctrine or practice, also disapprovingly

referred to as heresy and sacrilege;
2. Uninhibited public behavior and expressions of sexuality other than between
heterosexual married couples, or, simply put, the wrong kind of sex; and
3. Abortions.

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It occurred to me that authoritarian leaders – both secular and religious – have professionally
weaponized these issues to get people up in arms and united in anger, to demonize
opponents and drive a wedge between the two sides, and to retain their own position and
increase their power. This weaponization is done by consistently portraying other religions
as uncultured, deviating sexual behavior as unnatural, and abortions as ‘killing babies’.
But it also became clear that the animosity against these maligned acts could not be
sustained fully without the threat of godly anger hanging over all of us. Without the
viewpoint of CDP, other rational arguments cannot sufficiently explain why these issues
generate such vexation among religious conservatives. When examined closely, their
positions on these issues do not appeal either to the rights of individuals or to beneficial
outcomes for the collective, but in the end only to the fear of a wrathful god. That fear is
often the only way to turn a private issue of personal choice or conscience into a matter of
public concern that makes the exercise of authoritarian rule indispensable. Indispensable,
that is, to serve the need of keeping God happy, and to prevent the release of the forces of
evil. The belief in the risk of CDP is the major force driving the opposition against these
three supposedly God-angering behaviors, even though the fear of divine punishment or the
fear of the withdrawing of divine blessing, are not always clearly expressed.

Heresy and sacrilege

First, deviations from official or true religion, however that is defined, and from any precept
about correct religious practice, are a sure way of causing God’s displeasure. But while the
idea that divine disapproval of such unorthodoxy will set off CDP is often implied by clerics,
it is seldom openly stated. That risk of CDP would be evident anyway to all serious believers
with a fleeting familiarity with the Bible, but it takes quite some courage to put it into
concrete words so a secular public may understand what is meant, and allow the fear-stoking
clerics to be subjected to ridicule. To his detriment, the English councilman David Silvester
had mustered that courage when he wrote:

The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons
its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel […] will be beset by natural disasters
such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.590

Indeed. The idea that having the wrong beliefs, or tolerating them in other people, causes
terrible earthly punishments in response, is absolutely biblical. Whenever in the Old
Testament God meted out collective punishment, religious purity was almost always one of
the reasons, and often it was the only reason. Of the seven times the Israelites “did evil in
the sight of the Lord,” after the death of their leader Joshua, as told by the Book of Judges,
the Bible reports what that ‘evil’ entailed in only three of those cases. But twice that evil

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involved serving various other gods, and once serving another god and intermarrying with
foreigners.* Sometime later, God punished the Israelite tribe of Manasseh by having the
Assyrians take them away in chains. Their wrong: they went “a whoring” after other gods (1
Chronicles 5:25). So, in all four cases where the ‘evil’ that underlaid the Israelites’ CDP was
identifiable, that evil was heresy or sacrilege.
The same pattern of God’s Chosen People doing ‘evil’, collectively, and then getting
punished for it, collectively, is repeated multiple times in the books of 1 and 2 Kings, and 1
and 2 Chronicles.† In all these cases, none of God’s alleged complaints against the ancient
biblical monarchs or their people included a lack of compassion or fairness. They all recall
‘binding motivations’ only, applied to religious beliefs and practices. The Bible reports that
all of the punishments inflicted by God were in response to intermarriage with foreigners
(ingroup loyalty), disobedience to priests or prophets (respect for authority), and disregard
for religious laws (devotion to purity and sanctity).
Not surprisingly, Christians interpreted current affairs in the same biblical vein. The
accepted idea that heresy and sacrilege risked CDP, but not lack of compassion or fairness,
was used to explain disasters, warn against disasters, and justify repressive policies to prevent
disasters. We have already seen that Justinian claimed that blasphemy caused famines,
earthquakes, and illnesses591; Villani held heresy responsible for fires in Florence592; Trapp
blamed heresy and blasphemy for all kinds of disasters593; and Malagrida saw atheism as one

*
When, shortly after the death of Joshua, “the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord,” it was because
“they forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashtaroth” (Judges 2:11, 13). Years later, after they intermarried
with non-Israelites – “Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites” (Judges 3:5-
6) – God again thought they “did evil,” because they “forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the
groves” (Judges 3:7). In both cases, God responded by ‘selling’ the Israelites “into the hands” of foreign powers
(Judges 2:14, 3:8). The third, fourth, and fifth time they “did evil”, it is unclear what exactly, but it was apparently
serious enough to cause God to punish them by having them oppressed by rival nations. The sixth time they did
evil in God’s sight, again it was because they served the wrong gods (Baalim, Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria,
Zidon, Moab, Ammon, and the Philistines). The seventh time the Israelites did evil (Judges 13:1), once more no
information is given about the nature of their crime nor about its consequence.
†
Following the separation of the Israelites into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah, God caused the latter to defeat
Israel and kill half a million of its soldiers (2 Chronicles 13:17). Why did God prefer Judah over Israel? Judah’s
King Abijah had his priests “burn unto the Lord every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet
incense” (2 Chronicles 13:11) – in short, proper worship – while Israel’s King Jeroboam allegedly made “golden
calves […] for gods” (2 Chronicles 13:8) – in a word, sacrilege!
None of Israel’s subsequent kings would do right in God’s eyes, with the partial exception of King
Jehu, who “wiped out Baal from Israel” (2 Kings 10:25-28). In other words, he banned God’s competition. What
the kings of Israel did wrong is unclear in most cases, but with regard to the last one, King Hoshea, there is a
long list, encompassing a staggering eleven Bible verses, of things he had done that were “evil in the sight of the
Lord” (2 Kings 17:2): Hoshea had “feared other gods,” “served idols,” “walked in the statutes of the heathen,”
“made them molten images,” “served Baal,” and so on (2 Kings 17:7-17). And then, as a form of CDP, the entire
population of the kingdom of Israel was captured by the Assyrians and taken away as slaves (2 Kings 17:23).
Importantly, there is no word on any internal oppression, or social injustice during Hoshea’s rule. For all we
know, Hoshea’s Israel may have been a religiously inclusive country, respectful of the private faiths of its people:
a happy kingdom where social care, justice, and fairness were not restrained by any of the binding motivations
identified by Haidt and his colleagues.
Of the eighteen kings of Judah and one queen, eleven of them did ‘evil’, provoking God to respond
with punishment through internal violence or attacks by foreign powers. It is not always clear what evil exactly
pushed God over the line, but when it is, heresy and sacrilege are always included. When, by rare exception, King
Asa of Judah did “that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord,” it was because he outlawed the worship
of other gods (1 Kings 15:12; 2 Chronicles 14:2-3).

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of the causes of the Lisbon earthquake.594 God’s punishment of the French people during
their Revolution, according to De Maistre, was prompted by “the solemn apostasy of priests,
the profanation of objects of worship, the inauguration of the goddess of Reason”; in short,
its “Satanic character.”595
Explaining the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Reverend Falwell blamed
the people and organizations, “which have attempted to secularize America, [and] have
removed our nation from its relationship with Christ on which it was founded […].” Once,
Falwell continued, there was a “veil of protection which has allowed no one to attack
America on our soil since 1812,” but this secularization has “created an environment which
possibly has caused God to lift [that] veil.”* His colleague Robertson thought swearing a pact
with the devil – the clearest rejection imaginable of God and true religion – had invited all
kinds of misfortune for the people of Haiti for centuries thenceforth.596 Wagner suggested
God was angry with the Haitians because of their practice of voodoo, and for this God had
brought them misery.597 Reverend Cho thought that “idol worship, atheism, and
materialism” were the reasons for God to punish the Japanese with the 2011 earthquake.598
A Christian fundamentalist in the United States noticed protesters carrying signs reading
“God, get out of California” just before this State experienced devastating forest fires in
2020. He asked: “Does anyone else see a possible connection?”599 He did, apparently.
Wiles pointed at “the hatred of God” and “the hatred of the Bible” as some of the
reasons for the coronavirus.600 Pastor De Jong vaguely attributed the Covid pandemic to
“godlessness” and “God-lessness,” meaning the disregard of God’s presence altogether.601
Auxiliary Bishop Schneider, writer Millette, and historian De Mattei claimed that God had
been insulted by the respect shown by the pope to an Amazonian statuette, and that this
could well have caused Covid in response.602
Since clerics have established a pattern of heresy and sacrilege followed by tragedy, a
popular theme in sermons has been a warning to remain reverential at all times towards
God, his human representatives, and all things sacred. Because “you have blasphemed,”
Saint Bernardino told his fellow-townspeople, and because they continue to do so daily,
“[y]our land will be laid waste and fire will light upon this your city, Siena, and your country
will fall under the rule of the enemy and will be sacked [...].”603 An anonymous Englishman,
only known by his initials ‘H.L.’, warned his countrymen in 1693 for the “prodigious
Prophaneness, Contempt of God, his Authority, Power, Laws and Institutions,” which he
saw all around and which, he feared, might cause a similar earthquake as the one that
destroyed Port-Royal on Jamaica.604 To this list of sins he added abounding “Sabbath
breaking” in lower Germany.605 According to the 19th-century Anglican theologian Palmer,
“a false religion, a heresy, or a schism [...] is [...] calculated to bring evil on the people amongst

*
Falwell has earlier said on television, “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists,
and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For
the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you
helped this happen’.” Falwell has made special mention of abortionists who “have got to bear some burden for
this because God will not be mocked” (CNN, 2001).

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whom it prevails.”606 Numerous decrees issued by European authorities in the 16th and 17th
centuries that outlawed blasphemy, cursing, and swearing, idolatry, witchcraft, magic and
fortune telling, wizardry, and not honoring the sabbath (or rather Sunday), were justified by
one reason only: preventing divine punishment.607 The same reason was never invoked to
argue for better care of the poor or the sick. Why not? Because policies of compassion and
fairness the Bible does not show to have the same benefit of warding off crises and disasters.
Morris Cohen proposed that having and expressing the wrong beliefs stand out
among other taboos as being most dangerous in view of the threat of CDP. He noted that
“sacrilege or ceremonial defilement, witchcraft and heresy” were once considered “the most
heinous crimes,” because those were the crimes that were believed to bring down Heavenly
wrath.608 The point Cohen implicitly made is that those “most heinous crimes” do not
include theft, rape, and murder – or, in the terminology of moral foundations theory,
concerns about harm or fairness – but behavior in contravention of the three conservative
types of values. It was for good reason that Bodin argued that “the Witches deserve a
thousand time more tortures for having renounced God and adored Satan than if they had
effectively murdered their fathers and mothers with their own hands [...].”609 Naturally,
Calvin observed that it is “much more grievous […] to profane the sacred worship of God,
than to inflict injury on man.”610

A recent example that shows the potency of the fear of CDP for heresy and sacrilege is the
seemingly trivial case of Samoa’s Sunday business opening hours. As we have seen, many
Samoans attributed the occurrence of the deadly tsunami in 2009 that killed 146 people to
‘Sabbath breaking’. There is no other reason to “remember the sabbath” – as one of the Ten
Commandments requires – than the fact that the Judeo-Christian God wants us to. And he
wants it dearly, because he ordained that “whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he
shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 31:15).
But if working is not allowed, than relaxing on a Samoan beach is surely the opposite
of work, and should thus be fine in the eyes of God. Unfortunately, that is not how Jews or
Christians have tended to interpret the commandment. They came to understand it to mean
that we ought not only abstain from work on Sundays, we should also abstain from having
fun. In the 4th century, Roman Emperor Theodosius I declared that on the ‘Lord’s day’, “in
all cities,” “the pleasures of the theaters and games are to be kept from the people.” In
addition, “all the thoughts of Christians and believers are to be occupied with the worship
of God.”611 A 16th-century English homily explains that on a Sunday, “the day of holy rest,”
we “ought to resort together, and […] to celebrate and sanctify the sabbath day.” And such
rest does not mean, the homily clarified, enjoying ourselves “in excess and superfluity, in
gluttony and drunkenness like rats and swine.”612 The homily warns us of the consequences
of ignoring this commandment: if we do, God will send plagues. “O ye people of God, lay
your hands upon your hearts, repent and amend this grievous and dangerous wickedness,”
the homily advised, continuing:

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Fear the displeasure and just plagues of Almighty God, if ye be negligent and
forbear not labouring and travailing on the sabbaoth day or Sunday and do
not resort together to celebrate and magnify God’s blessed name in quiet
holiness and godly reverence.613

We have to take the theologians’ word for it that having fun on a Sunday on a beach in
Samoa is morally wrong. Apart from Scripture and theology, there is no system of morality
that would otherwise generate a condemnation of harmless behavior on that particular day
of the week. And so, the only moral foundations at play here are the ‘binding’ ones regarding
respect for authority and concern for sanctity. But in the wake of a deadly tsunami, Samoans
are justified in thinking that breaking the sabbath is a ‘most heinous’ crime, in the words of
Cohen, for ‘individualizing’ reasons also: breaking the sabbath endangers the lives of
countless others.
The state of Samoa has some clear theocratic elements,* perhaps because of a
combination of being “highly vulnerable to natural disasters,” as one United Nations
organization declared, including cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, and tsunamis,614 and
having a population that is devoutly Christian. Apparently, Christian piety is one of the
striking aspects of Samoan culture. “Christian ritual is widely observed throughout Samoan
society,” wrote a Samoan law professor recently. At dusk, he noticed, all public life halts “to
ensure evening prayers are said in homes,” both in the villages and the capital Apia.615 And
on Sundays, according to another recent account, tradition prescribes hardly any commercial
activity takes place,616 while, in some of the villages at least, it is customary on that day also
to abstain from drinking alcohol or swimming.617 One observer wrote that on a Sunday in
2019, only one café was open in Apia, and everything else firmly shut.

Every weekend, Apia starts to shut down on a Saturday afternoon. The town
is bustling in the morning, but the first shops start to close around midday
with everything bar a few supermarkets being shut by 3 p.m. Nothing opens
again until Monday.618

*
States are more or less formally theocratic depending on whether a particular religion has been declared
constitutionally ‘official’, whether state functions are dominated by clerics and whether this has been formalized,
and whether the behavioral dictates of religion set firm limitations on laws, rules and regulations. On the one
hand, there are highly theocratic states, like Vatican City and Iran, where, in a roundabout way, the head of state
decides who is to be the head of state. The highest leader – respectively the pope or the Supreme Leader –
appoints members of a council – respectively the College of Cardinals or the Assembly of Experts – who in turn
appoint the highest leader. On the other hand, there are democratic countries, such as Iceland, where the
constitution (still) declares there is a State Church, but also demands a high degree of freedom of religion. So,
this is not a binary matter: there is quite a lot of variation among states with more or less theocratic qualities. But
for countries at the high end of the spectrum there would naturally be a lot of top-down enforcement involved
in maintaining these theocratic elements, which would make theocracies and democracies seem to be ideological
opposites. However, Samoa (like Ghana) demonstrates that it is quite possible for a genuine democracy to also
have rather pronounced theocratic aspects.

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But in Samoa religiosity is more than just a cultural affair: keeping the faith is also a matter
of state. In 2006, the government had banned the movie ‘The Da Vinci Code’, on advice
from the Catholic Archbishop Alapati Mataeliga and leaders from the protestant
Congregational churches. The archbishop defended the banning on the grounds that it
“would affect those of weak faith, causing confusion.”619 However, the state generally refrains
from interfering in the personal lives of individual Samoans. For instance, before the Covid
pandemic inspired stricter regulations, the Samoan government had not firmly decreed that
all businesses must be closed on Sundays. There was simply no need to. While most
businesses were prohibited from opening on Sundays, some Chinese-run businesses, gas
stations, and supermarkets were exempt from that requirement for at least some of the time.
So there was a law regulating opening hours, but it was not watertight. Even though social
pressure to attend church service on Sunday morning must be almost impossible to
withstand, after church, Samoans were mostly free to decide how to spend their leisure time.
And so, on the Sunday before the 2009 tsunami, the rules – customary or formal –
did not prevent some Samoans from relaxing on a beach. So when the tsunami struck, to
the most literally god-fearing islanders it became crystal clear that stricter regulations and
more enforcement would be needed to prevent other instances of CDP. Shortly after the
tsunami, the leader of the largest protestant church organization called on the government
to extend the prohibition of doing business on Sunday to all commercial activity. But the
Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, refused. Supported by the Samoan Chamber
of Commerce, he resisted the call by the church leader, arguing, in 2010, that he would then
have to do the same for Saturdays to please the Seventh Day Adventists.620
In the following years, though the fearful memory of the tsunami began to wane, the
matter of Sunday closing hours remained an issue of political debate. In 2014, then
opposition leader, Afemata Palusalue, stressed that “Sunday is a day of worship” when
people “should be going to church,” and criticized the government for “allowing contractors
to work on Sundays, disrespecting Samoans and our Christian beliefs.” Next, Palusalue
made this autocratic demand: “The government should enforce such legislation and push
our people to go to church.” Again, Tuilaepa held off on the grounds that he could not
prevent Chinese companies from working on Sundays.621
While they disagreed on the practical side, ideologically the Samoan government and
its opposition were in full agreement. In June 2017, the parliament of Samoa amended the
country’s constitution, with an overwhelming majority, to include the declaration (in its very
first Article 1) that “Samoa is a Christian nation founded on God the Father, the Son and
the Holy Spirit.” The unofficial reason behind this move was to pull up a defense against
foreign pressure to legalize same-sex marriage.622 One member of parliament explained the
rationale behind declaring Samoa to be a Christian nation:

If we make laws and bills, we need to make decisions that will reflect that we
are a Christian country, so if other countries push us to make laws such as to

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allow same sex marriage, then we have to say no because that will not show
that we are a Christian country. That will never happen in Samoa.623

And why was this issue so important as to justify a change to the constitution? There are
likely more than one reason for people to detest homosexuality, as I will discuss in the next
section, but the fear of divine punishment was certainly one justification for codifying
hostility towards it. Tuilaepa was adamant there would never be same sex marriage in Samoa,
which he described as an abomination, and – calling to mind the risk of CDP – a “Sodom
and Gomorrah practice.”624 In Samoa, ‘sodomy’ is punishable with a maximum of five years
imprisonment.625
The constitutional change was more than a symbolical gesture. According to the
preamble of the constitution, Samoa was already formally “based on Christian principles.”626
But thanks to the new article in the textual body of the constitution, those Christian
principles would now be more enforceable. At the start of the Covid pandemic, three years
after the amendment was codified, it became clear how. In March 2020, the government
issued the order that “A national period of fasting and prayer is to be observed by every family
in Samoa from Sunday 22 March 2020 until Sunday 29 March 2020 from 6.00am –
12.00pm daily.”627 For every day of that particular week, Samoans were ordered by their
government to fast and pray from sunrise to midnight. Why? I contend that the order was
based on the general belief of Samoans that it is their government’s duty to appease God
and to avert divine punishment that will affect the entire Samoan society.
The government also declared a state of emergency. And somehow the emergency
was supposedly more severe on Sundays than on the other days of the week. Activities that
were restricted on Sundays included swimming at the beach, eating at a restaurant, or taking
public transport. It soon became clear that Covid had very little to do with these new rules.
In April, Tuilaepa said he hoped to make the emergency measures permanent, adding that
Sundays should be left for attending church.628 In June, he ordered the drafting of a law to
do just that. Referring in June 2020 to the threat of the history of Sodom and Gomorrah
repeating in the South Pacific, Prime Minister Tuilaepa ordered the drafting of a law, not
only aimed at prohibiting business activities on Sundays, but also at banning beach
excursions, and swimming in rivers and in public swimming pools. 629 “Let us go back to
keeping the commandments from God,” Tuilaepa said, quite likely referring especially to
the one about keeping the sabbath.630 A few weeks later, he ordered further restrictions on
Sunday opening hours, adding “so they [Samoans] can go to church.”631 Reportedly, the ban
on Sunday swimming was hard to enforce, despite the 2,000 Samoan dollar fine (some 700
USD).632
One Samoan observer commented that this policy of restricting Sunday activities had
little to do with stopping the spread of Covid: “I think this is more about the return to
Christian values and staying home and reading the bible and praying on Sunday.”633 But
why would that goal be a matter of state? With Tuilaepa’s references to Christian

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commandments and Sodom and Gomorrah, the reason is clear: to prevent the occurrence
of CDP.* In summary, Samoa shows that the threat of CDP – whether in the form of the
fire and brimstone that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, a tsunami, or a deadly viral disease
– has been a hidden motivation for forcing people into observing quaint religious rituals.

Essentially, what we need to keep in mind is that the hostility observed against deviations
from religious norms may be driven, not by a desire to strengthen social ties and unite all
members of society – which would lend that hostility some non-religious legitimacy – but by
a hidden fear of divine punishment. Even in a vibrant democratic society like Samoa, if the
threat of disasters is ever-present, and there is a tendency to interpret these disasters from
the viewpoint of God’s judgment, religious intolerance becomes reasonable and acceptable.
So how may we prevent disasters from the perspective of CDP? In theory, the best
prevention would be the establishment of a theocracy, with a centralized priesthood or – as
in Samoa – a unified religious government dictating correct beliefs and behaviors. Truly
theocratic governments may be unlikely to come about in most parts of the world. However,
theocratic policies based on the fear of God’s temporal interference can also be
democratically legitimized, as the case of Samoa demonstrates.

The wrong kind of sex

Secondly, we have seen that a major reason for CDP has been believed to be promiscuous
behavior of various sorts. Or allegedly promiscuous because that word denotes negative
judgment. Causes of crises and disasters in this category include gay pride parades and
homosexual behavior in general (Andrew,634 Falwell,635 Wagner,636 Hagee,637 Mazuz,638
Robertson,639 Shuttlesworth640), the institution of same-sex marriage or civil union (al-
Sadr,641 Cavalcoli,642 Filaret,643 Folau,644 Leiter,645 Silvester,646 Stone647), adultery (Seddiqi648),
sex before marriage (Baxter649), and partner swapping (Jewish legend650). They also include
conduct supposedly indirectly leading up to the disapproved sexual behavior itself, like
‘whoring and drinking’, and ‘cursing and swearing’ (according to two anonymous writers651),
going to theaters and ‘obscene comedies’, and performing ‘immodest dances’ (according to
Malagrida652). A certain ‘H.L.’ warned in 1693 that “Drunkenness” in Germany, and
“abounding Profligacy” in England provoked God to such anger that earthquakes should be
expected.653
Some of these latter behaviors seem trivial, if not for the supposedly more serious
sins they would give occasion to. But from early on, Christian authorities have regarded all
kinds of entertainment with suspicion, especially when enjoyed with alcohol. Why? No other

*
One downside of the measures against Sunday activities, apart from the religious intolerance restricting
individual liberty, was economic loss to the tourist industry. Perhaps for that reason, almost as soon as a new
government replaced the one led by Tuilaepa in July 2021, it relaxed the rules and allowed retail stores to open
from 12pm on Sundays, and Sunday swimming on public beaches (“FAST Extends Sunday Shopping”).

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reason seems to be in play than that frivolous behavior would lead to the wrong kind of sex.
As with almost every enduring Christian belief, this one has its source in the Bible. When
the Israelites danced around the golden calf, the Bible reports, “the Lord plagued the people”
(Exodus 32:35) with some unspecified sickness that may well have been deadly.
Contemporary Texan theologian Robert L. Deffinbaugh condemned these dancing Israelites
for what, to him, seemed “to have included wild dancing and unrestrained passions,” and
“unruly behavior […] without self-control and restraints.”654 In other words, it would lead to
extramarital sex. Men and women, the Second Council of Nicaea decreed in 787 CE,
“should avoid certain theatrical entertainments, diabolical songs, the strumming of lyres and
the dancing fit for harlots,” because a prophet – probably Isaiah – would have said, “Woe
on those who drink their wine to the sound of lyre and harp.”655 Woe on these lovers of
wine and music, Isaiah warned, because this combination of enjoyments will “inflame”
people, meaning, according to Bible commentator Matthew Henry, “inflame their lusts.”
Henry explained that “chambering and wantonness follow upon rioting and
drunkenness.”656 What is chambering? The current Louisiana-based minister Shawn
Brasseaux defined it as “shacking up,” “bed-hopping,” “living together,” “sleeping around,”
in other words, having the wrong kind of sex.657
Signaling disapproval of bad taste and bad manners – acting, dancing, singing, and
drinking to the sound of lyres and harps – that may somehow open the door to promiscuity,
appears now to have moved somewhat further behind the moralizing front lines. Apart from
the occasional calls for ‘modesty’ and condescending remarks about pornography,
conservative theologians and religious leaders are now concentrating their energy mostly at
curbing the dreaded deed itself: sexual intimacy other than strictly between a husband and
a wife, and for any other purpose than procreation. And among these forms of private
behavior, it is homosexual conduct that stands out as their favorite condemnable practice to
associate with disaster on a national scale. Saint Bernardino addressed gay men thus: “O my
lads, if you want to exterminate your city and motherland, I tell you, keep on being
sodomites.”658 So you must be caring for nobody but yourself if you were to come out as gay.
It would be factually incorrect to include in this category of sins the accordance of
transgender rights, because these do not necessarily relate to non-heterosexual relationships
outside of marriage. Transgender rights include the rights not to be discriminated against,
to be recognized legally as having the gender of one’s choice, and to “live in the acquired
gender,” as the United Kingdom’s Gender Recognition Act (2004) specifies. However, these
rights do involve an individual’s sexuality and the freedom to act upon personal preferences,
and it is perhaps for this reason that a fair number of priests (Burke,659 Castro,660 Wiles661)
have blamed transgender behavior and transgender rights advocacy for divinely inflicted
crises and disasters.
The basis for these accusations is rather dubious, however. The closest Christians get
to finding a basis in Scripture is Genesis 1, which describes God creating several binaries:
Heaven and Earth, day and night, land and water, and man and woman. The U.S.-based

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Human Rights Campaign organization, which advocates for LGBTQ+ rights, brilliantly
replies that “No one would argue that a penguin is an abomination for not fitting the
categories of Genesis 1.”662 Why can a penguin not make up its mind whether it is a bird or
a fish? It does not have to, and neither should any human individual who at birth was
assigned to be a boy or a girl. The Evangelical organization ‘Focus on the Family’ makes the
interesting point that allowing individuals to choose their gender “distorts His [God’s] image
and His plan for sexuality, marriage, family and the just and proper ordering of society.”663
It is not clear what makes this an absolute certainty, but it is obvious that transgender rights
do complicate traditional views on gender-based roles, and do upset the cliché that sex is
only acceptable between a man and a woman within the confines of their marriage. A
homosexual couple could simply circumvent this proscription by having one of them declare
himself or herself to be a member of the opposite sex. This is why South African Baptist
pastor Doug Van Meter updated the conventional rule by declaring that “sexual intimacy is
only allowed between a natural male and a natural female in the bonds of the marriage
relationship.”664 Transgender rights threaten the cherished traditional “ordering of society,”
and this is perhaps a major underlying reason why Abrahamic believers are so vehemently
opposed to it.
But why are non-heterosexual orientations considered so bad in the first place?
Conservative theologians and religious leaders really have no idea, except that God
supposedly says it is, and that they find it personally abhorrent. They declare it to be self-
evident that God is wronged by this very wrong kind of sex for the simple reason that the
Bible clearly states that it makes him angry. According to the Bible, he demanded that
‘sodomy’ (Deuteronomy 23:17; Leviticus 18:22, 20:13), apart from sex outside of marriage
(Deuteronomy 22:13-24; Leviticus 20:10-12), be punishable by death. In addition, there is
some vague suggestion in the short but tragical story of Onan and Tamar, that the biblical
god also frowns upon sexual conduct for personal enjoyment and not procreation (Genesis
38:8-10). That would necessarily include homosexual behavior.
Religious hostility towards homosexuality and sex without marital obligations is part
of the wider enmity towards, and embarrassment about, sexuality as such. The German
sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) made an attempt at explaining that hostility from the
belief that sexuality is essentially antithetical to the ideals of mysticism and asceticism. From
the viewpoint of mysticism, he wrote, sexuality is “the drive that most firmly binds man to
the animal level, [and] furnishes the most powerful temptations to withdrawal from the
mystical quest.” And from the position of asceticism, sexuality forms a serious hindrance,
Weber argued, to “[r]ational ascetic alertness, self-control, and methodical planning of
life.”665 This explains some of the aversion towards sexuality by mystics and ascetics, but not
enough to justify the trauma caused to the millions of people who do not aspire to taking
that particular – and doubtful – road to enlightenment. Why force non-mystics and non-
ascetics to comply to the same standard of chastity? There must be more to it. In the end,

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the only logically valid justification for violent repression in the name of sexual morality is
the prevention of CDP.
Take the following examples of attempts by three high-ranking Catholic clergymen
to explain their opposition to same-sex unions in other terms than the risk of divine
punishment. Avoiding any reference to God’s anger, these three religious leaders appear
incapable of explaining the moral wrongness of non-heterosexual behavior on any other
ground than the authority of their office and that of their reading of Holy Scripture.
“Why cannot two people of the same sex get married in a church?” asked Latvian
Cardinal Jānis Pujats in 2019. The prelate and theologian had two answers, and
disappointingly neither explained anything. Firstly, God punished the people of Sodom for
it, ergo he disapproves. Secondly, according to Pujats, gays “seek sexual gratification in a
perverse way.”666 That is all. There are infinite ways of saying gay sex is bad, just because God
and I say it is. Pujats has a broad vocabulary; he also called it an “unequivocally reprehensible
vice,” a “sexual perversion,”667 and a “tendency that is inherently contrary to the moral
order.”668 But this is nothing but the same unsubstantiated judgment repeated with different
words. The cardinal must have been aware of how unconvincing his shallow reasoning was,
because at one point he found it necessary to add this dumbfounding argument to condemn
homosexuality: “Suppose everyone in the world becomes homosexual. What will happen?
Extinction in one generation!”669 The hypothesis is ridiculous, and the effect, frankly, not
really so bad at all.
Pujats’ colleague Cardinal Carlo Caffarra (1938-2017), also adamantly opposed to
same-sex unions, called it “profoundly unjust,” and, somehow, “a grave injustice committed
against the children.”670 How would children be harmed by allowing civil unions for gay
couples? You might expect him to list the perceived risks of adoption, but no. Children
would be harmed, the archbishop of Bologna argued, because gay marriage would mean a
return to “paganism, where the child had no right,” and was “a disposable object.”671
Exaggerations, associations, insinuations: not a real argument in sight.
When the state of Rhode Island allowed for same-sex civil unions in 2011,
Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, an admirer and advocate of Archbishop Viganó,
objected with an avalanche of condemnatory statements, none supported by any rational
basis in facts and logic.672 “The concept of civil unions,” Tobin declared, “promotes an
immoral lifestyle, is a mockery of the institution of marriage as designed by God, undermines
the well-being of our families, [...] poses a threat to religious liberty, [...] undermine[s] the
faith of the church on holy matrimony, and cause[s] scandal and confusion.” None of these
declarations is even remotely true. The mere occurrence of two people declaring their
commitment to each other promotes an “immoral lifestyle,” mocks anything, threatens
religious freedom, risks the well-being of families, causes scandal, and leads to confusion? If
he had anything to back up these allegations, Tobin would have used it. But he had not.
What Tobin actually irked was homosexual behavior itself – not whether it takes place in or
outside of marriage – and its normalization through legislation. He added that “homosexual

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activity is contrary to the natural law and the will of God and, therefore, is objectively sinful,”
thereby in fact requiring gays and lesbians to live the celibate live of a Catholic monk or
nun.673
The unsophisticated nature of the opposition to homosexuality seems not to
diminish the tenaciousness of the clerical homophobes. The roots of their revulsion go far
deeper than their intellect. Reverend Ian Brown from Belfast thinks homosexuality is so bad
that it is itself a punishment from God. “What army is on the march?” he asked. “It’s the
sodomites,” he answered.674 They are “closing in on us” from one side, while the Islamic
terrorists of ISIS are closing in on the other. ‘Sodomites on the march’, like hordes of
wandering zombies, would spread sodomy and infect others to become sodomites a well, as
part of God’s plan of “shaking the nations.”
The belief that homosexuality itself is a sign of God’s anger is based on a claim by
Saint Paul that some people “worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator,”
and that for this reason “God gave them up unto vile affections,” more specifically
homosexuality (Romans 1:25-26). In other words, according to a present-day Christian
writer, “homosexuality is not the reason God’s wrath is poured out; rather, it is the very
evidence that God has already rejected a society [...].”675 So homosexuality as such is a sign
of an earlier, different kind of sin that caused God to be angry. If physical “affections”
between members of the same sex are evidence that God has already rejected them, then it
would be ungodly not to reject them also.
In the end, beyond assertions about common decency, associations with venereal
diseases, suggestions of sliding scales towards necrophilia and bestiality, and supposed
evidence that it is all contrary to nature or what God intended, there is only one substantial
argument why any collective body should take an interest in the private sexual behavior of
individuals: the expected wrath of God expressed as CDP. Bishop Tobin admitted as much
when at the end of his diatribe against same-sex civil unions, he warned:

Can there be any doubt that Almighty God will, in his own time and way,
pass judgment upon our state, its leaders and citizens, for abandoning his
commands and embracing public immorality?676

The behavior of LGBT individuals endangers everybody, allegedly, and so does any
advancement of their rights, because they attract the kind of divine punishment that
destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. This is the only rational* driving force behind the push
against LGBT rights that can stand the test of scrutiny. All other arguments can easily be
refuted. It helps to appeal to national or prevailing cultural values, and primitive emotions
of disgust and fear regarding what is different or unusual, but those actors who are
professionally hostile to LGBT rights know only the fear of a wrathful God gets people

*
Rational only in the sense that it follows logically from the notion of a god who punishes collectively.

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sufficiently and consistently interested in curbing the private behavior of individuals.* If you
believe in CDP as an actual phenomenon, then acknowledging LGBT rights would endanger
the rights and wellbeing of non-LGBT people.
When in the United States the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy was repealed at the
end of 2010, thereby allowing openly homosexual individuals in the military, to one
Christian commenter this meant “our military now officially embracing sodomy,” and for
this reason, he wrote, “the divine favor our Heavenly Father has bestowed on our forces in
times past will very likely be removed entirely, because God will not be mocked.”677 It would
even be worse than the loss of God’s favor, according to another Christian writer. Because
with gays in the military, he warned, “we will soon see our nation suffer an attack that will
make […] 9/11/2001 look like a walk in the park,” and “Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like
a child’s game.”678
The steady roll-out of same-sex marriage rights since 2000 around the world caused
an avalanche of such doomsday predictions. Hurricanes, floods, and the Covid pandemic
have been attributed to it, as we have seen above. James Dobson, a renowned conservative
theologian, feared that gay marriages would turn the world “as it was in the days of Noah,”
thereby suggesting that he believed another flood or comparable calamity could happen as a
result.679 When, in 2015, the Italian parliament legalized same-sex unions, Cardinal Caffarra
warned this would be the end of civilization: “no civilization has ever survived the
glorification of homosexuality,” he declared.680 What was the evidence for this bold claim?
Unlike Jews and Christians, who condemned homosexuality, the Assyrians and Babylonians
did not and now their civilizations no longer exist. The only thing this argument proves is
that intelligence is not a requirement for becoming a cardinal.

As we have seen with regard to Europe’s historical criminal laws, this belief that disasters,
crises, and the collapsing of civilizations are God’s response to non-heterosexual orientations
still results in institutional persecution. It is at least one of the main reasons for the popular
support for a draconian legal bill that was proposed by opposition parties in Ghana in 2021.
It is worth taking a closer look at the origins of this bill, as Ghana appears to be in the
vanguard of African countries currently looking for new ways to terrorize their LGBT
citizens. Ghana has been a functional democracy for almost 30 years now, and is perceived
to be the fifth least corrupt country on the African continent;681 in short, a state that tends
to respect the rule of law. And while homosexual relationships have been illegal in Ghana

*
There is another psychology at play, I believe. The lure of ganging up on LGBT individuals is similar to what
makes an insecure person want to be a bully’s buddy: at least the bully won’t pick on me, if I join him in picking
on another. By sneering at LGBT people you show yourself belonging to the safe majority: safe from getting
singled out for the abuse you would otherwise fear you would be subjected to. But this is possibly more often
than not an unconscious motivation.

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since the colonial era,* hardly ever has anybody been prosecuted for having one.682 That is
why the deterioration of LGBT rights in this country is so disappointing.
The draft law, titled “Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian
Family Values Bill,” declares that a person commits a “felony,” punishable with a prison
sentence between three and five years, if he or she engages in “sexual intercourse between or
among persons of the same sex.” So it criminalizes gay and lesbian sex, or at least further
criminalizes it because it is now a “misdemeanour” only. The fact that enforcement of the
current anti-LGBT law is rare in Ghana does not mean the illegality itself is not without
consequences: it gives license and impunity to ordinary citizens – in fact invites them – to
discriminate and harass their LGBT neighbors, and makes it nearly impossible for the latter
to report being the victim of discrimination or violence. Ghanaian artist and trans woman
Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi said LGBT individuals are at risk of blackmail and rape because they
are unable to tell the police about it.683 But the situation appears to be worsening in the wake
of the new legislation.
It should also be noted that criminalization of homosexuality is not uncommon on
the continent: as of this writing, 32 of the 54 countries of Africa are still doing so, and some
of these inflict far more severe penalties. Tanzania, for instance, prescribes a minimum of
30 years imprisonment for having consensual “carnal knowledge of any person against the
order of nature.” Muslim men in Mauritania face death by public stoning for committing
“an indecent act or an act against nature.” In Sudan, a judge may order death, life
imprisonment, or flogging for ‘sodomy’.684
The criminalization is also not the worst part of the Ghanaian bill. Far more
remarkable is the fact that the same penalty of three to five years imprisonment is prescribed
for anybody who “holds out as […] a lesbian, a gay, a transgender,” and so on.685 This means
that even if you were to simply identify yourself as a member of the LGBT community, this
would make you a felon. But even that is not the worst. In addition, anybody who is found
to engage in any activity perceived to be in support of “sympathy” for homosexual behavior,
or to advocate “a change of public opinion” towards it, could go to prison for up to ten
years.686 So, if the bill were to pass – which seems very likely since it enjoys unanimous
support among Ghana’s 275 parliamentarians687 – the law itself would prohibit even the act
of trying to change it.
The new legislation is the culmination of anti-LGBT sentiments that have been
intensifying for at least a decade, fueled in large part by the drummed-up fear of an angry
god. While everywhere around the world the movement to legalize same-sex unions was
gaining momentum – in 2006, South Africa became the first African state to legalize same-
sex marriage, and so far (2023) the only one – a countermovement was also gaining steam.
Ghana’s religious conservatives braced themselves for the expected pressure to relax the

*
According to Ghana’s 1960 Criminal Code, “whoever has unnatural carnal knowledge,” which is defined vaguely
as “sexual intercourse with a person in an unnatural manner,” “of any person of sixteen years or over with his
consent is guilty of a misdemeanour” (Chapter 6, Section 104).

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country’s position vis-à-vis its LGBT citizens, but took strength from the conservative
resistance elsewhere. Stressing that Ghana is “a God-fearing nation” with “a God-fearing
people,” David Tetteh Assumeng, a Presbyterian member of Parliament, said in 2011 that
he was “sending a sign” to LGBT individuals “that they will not have it easy in this country,”
and threatened they were “treading on dangerous grounds” and “could face lynching in the
future.” Instead of condemning such murderous behavior, Assumeng called on Ghana’s
police to start raiding suspected homosexual hideouts to prevent citizens from taking the law
into their own hands.688 Also that year, another member of Parliament, the Catholic Paul
Evans Aidoo, urged Ghanaians to report gays and lesbians to the authorities for prosecution,
adding, “All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in society.”689 So, when, at the
end of 2011, the United Kingdom made delivery of bilateral aid dependent on the
recognition of LGBT rights, Ghana’s President John Atta Mills was under strong pressure
from Ghanaian politicians not to add one iota to the country’s lack of gay-hospitality. In
response to that aid condition, Mills declared solemnly, “I, as President of this nation will
never initiate or support any attempt to legalize homosexuality in Ghana.”690
Pressure to improve the situation for LGBT Ghanaians increased again when, in
June 2015, the United States Supreme Court ruled (in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges) that
same-sex marriage was a fundamental right of citizens, enforceable throughout the land,
overruling several state laws. This decision reverberated beyond the United States as it
marked an irrevocable change in perception of LGBT rights. In response, the Ghanaian
reverend Vanderpuye declared in a letter to his country’s then-president, John D. Mahama,
that same-sex marriage is “unbiblical, unchristian and the worse of all, an affront to African
culture,” while homosexuality itself “is an act against Ghanaian culture and norms.”
Arguably, even if that were all true – while apparently unbiblical, it is not necessarily
unchristian or un-African – that reasoning would not by itself warrant formal discrimination
of LGBT individuals and criminalization of homosexuality. But Vanderpuye mixed these
arguments with the more rational consideration that “gay and lesbian practices [...] can result
in the type of destruction that befell Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible.” So, to prevent a
similar fate, Ghana needed to ban the same God-angering behavior. If same-sex marriage
were to become law in Ghana, according to Vanderpuye, this would “bring the wrath of God
upon the nation, and the consequences would be horrendous.”691
Another apparently influential reverend named Isaac Owusu Bempah, leader of
‘Glorious Word Ministry International’, also issued a warning to President Mahama. He too
said that if the country decriminalized homosexual activities, let alone introduced same-sex
marriage, it would risk the wrath of God.692 Incurring that wrath would even be the objective
of gays and lesbians, argued the head of Ghana’s Presbyterian Church, Emmanuel Martey.
He accused them of being a willing part of “Satan’s deadly agenda” and of plotting to destroy
the country.693 Yet another high-ranking cleric, the “Most Reverend” Titus K. Awotwi Pratt,
the presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church in Ghana, declared during a sermon that

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gayism and lesbianism are not our culture and it shall never be the culture of
Ghanaians ... it’s evil, ungodly and abomination that caused God to destroy
Sodom and Gomorrah and accepting it is as asking God to unleash terror on
us.694

Also from Islamic circles came calls to step up attacks on LGBT individuals. A purportedly
prominent Muslim cleric named Mallam Abass Mahmud said in May 2016, “we are very
happy to chase away such idiots,” meaning gay men. “Allah gets annoyed when males engage
in sexual encounter and such disgusting encounter causes earthquake [sic].”695 So, amidst
increasing acceptance of LGBT rights worldwide, Ghanaian religious leaders began to add
fuel to the fear of CDP as a result of any relaxation of Ghana’s homophobic and transphobic
climate.
Aware of the risk of unlawful violence and other disorderly conduct by citizens
against their fellow-Ghanaians, President Mahama, however, preferred not to talk extensively
about the issue.696 Neither did his successor, the current president of Ghana, Nana Akufo-
Adda. But then the fundamentalist Christian, Illinois-based ‘International Organization for
the Family’ decided to hold its annual conference in Ghana’s capital Accra. The event, called
the ‘World Congress of Families’ (WCF), took place in October 2019. Human Rights Watch
feared that this WCF would undo some of the gains Ghana had made in recent years in the
protection of LGBT rights.697 The human rights organization would be proven right.698 The
Southern Poverty Law Center states that one of the legacies of the WCF “has been legislation
or cultural rhetoric aimed at the political and social marginalization of LGBT people […].”699
The WCF has been characterized as “an incubator for bad ideas,” where religious extremists
from different countries with different expertise come together to develop practical means
to promote the anti-LGBT agenda at a national level.700 So it did for Ghana. Immediately
following the WCF in October 2019, a relentless push began to defame gays, lesbians, and
trans individuals. And the major argument advanced by religious leaders against
homosexuality was the fear of CDP.
The chief imam of Ghana, Sheikh Usman Nuhu Sharubutu underlined the relevancy
of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah for discriminating against LGBT individuals. Speaking
on March 16, 2020, while perhaps having the emerging Covid pandemic on his mind,
Sharubutu asserted that homosexuality “has been the reason [...] a whole nation was capsized
and was destroyed by God.” Referring to Sodom and Gomorrah, he warned his government
not to allow an LGBT conference to take place in Ghana, because:

What was done to those people in those times because of their sinfulness can
also visit us when we reduce ourselves to this kind of immoral sinful act that
shows our ungratefulness to God.701

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This religious kind of reasoning has found a way into the mindset of secular Ghanaians. In
2021, a Ghanaian gospel singer, Harriet Akua Agyeiwaa, also known as AkuBless, warned
of the risk of allowing advocacy of LGBT rights, referring to the “extreme punishment” cast
on Sodom and Gomorrah. “So it’s very dangerous,” she said, “and if we don’t take care of
ourselves, God’s wrath will be severely visited.” This would be all the more dangerous, she
explained, as “the end of the world is near and very soon the second coming of Christ will
manifest.”702 The same year, a female politician, Akua Donkor, who leads the opposition
Ghana Freedom Party, accused the LGBT community and their allies of actually wanting to
provoke God’s anger: “Like the way God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, they want Him
to destroy us today too. We will not let God destroy this country.” 703 Also in 2021, a
Ghanaian Islamic numerologist, dream interpreter, and reportedly “popular” social media
personality, named Mallam Sham Una, noticed that ‘Gayism’ and ‘Lesbianism’ are “the only
sin God cursed and [is] angry with, not only with the doers but [also] with the land on which
they stand to operate.”704 Notice he said “the only sin” that would cause CDP is homosexual
behavior; not exploitation of the poor, not abuse of power, not slavery, but the love expressed
between two people of the same sex.
Like his predecessor, the current President Nana Akufo-Adda knows he has nothing
to win by stoking up internal tensions, while invoking international condemnation and
scaring off foreign investors. It appears his government has not been overly enthusiastic
about the legislation, and has tried to delay a final vote on the bill to pass it into law.705 But
trans woman and artist Fiatsi claims the mere publication and defense of the extreme
proposal has caused hostility towards LGBT Ghanaians to “triple,” as it has licensed
homophobic citizens to “do the cleansing themselves,” to “take the laws into their own
hands,” and cleanse the country from LGBT individuals perceived as evil.706

Observe again that none of the supposed sins in this category are deemed bad because they
intend to cause harm or create an unfair situation. “It is very noteworthy that in every listing
of wickedness you will find, first, sexual wickedness,” wrote the 20th-century American pastor
Ray Stedman.707 “The sins which cause most souls to go to Hell are the sins of the flesh,”
declares the ultra-conservative Catholic movement TFP.708 God has never destroyed a city,
the already mentioned present-day preacher Ron Graham noted, “because of lying, cheating,
stealing, even murdering,” but he has destroyed “whole nations […] because of their flagrant
sinful lifestyle of homosexuality […].”709 “People most often become lost because of sexual
sins,” observed Cardinal Pujats,710 and so apparently do entire cities and countries when they
condone such sins to take place on their territory.
Indeed, lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering belong to the individualizing type of
values, which the Abrahamic God allegedly cares less about, while homosexuality and other
“sexual wickedness” are considered sinful only on account of ‘binding motivations’ for which
God supposedly cares a lot. And how do we know God prefers the latter values over the
former? Because only infractions against the latter type have reportedly led to disasters

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throughout the centuries. Essentially, what we need to keep in mind is that the hostility
against alternative forms of sexuality may be driven, not by considerations of health or the
sanctity of the family, but by a hidden fear of divine punishment.
So how may we prevent disasters, apart from establishing a theocracy? By
criminalizing and medicalizing sexual ‘deviancy’, by promoting gay-conversion therapy, by
refusing blessings and legal protections to same-sex couples, by severely restricting sex
education, by heaping shame and guilt on the entire topic of sexuality and especially on the
kind of sexuality that is somehow different from the norm, by stereotyping what is ‘male’
and what is ‘female’, by sneering at suggestive clothing and sensual music, and so on and so
on.

Abortions

Thirdly, God would also be mightily angered by the practice of abortion. Enough for him to
inflict collective punishment. “How can our nation expect God’s blessing on us as long as it
does not outlaw abortion?” asked Reverend Morecraft, referring to the United States. 711 As
we have seen above, Falwell and Robertson blamed abortions for 9/11;712 Wagner associated
abortion clinics in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina;713 Folau believed abortions
contributed to Australia’s bushfires;714 and Castro,715 Shuttlesworth,716 and Stone717 saw it as
a reason for the emergence of the coronavirus.
While the other supposedly sinful behaviors prompting CDP all have in common
that most people would agree they involve only the interests of those who voluntarily
participate in it, with the issue of abortion it is precisely the question of whose interests are
at stake that divides proponents of it as an individual’s right to choose whether to give birth
to a child, and subsequently to have to nurture and support it for the next 18 years at least,
from its opponents who condemn it as outright murder. Abortion is the one moral issue
that is characterized by a debate about whether it is a private or a social matter: does it involve
only the rights of the pregnant person, or does it also concern another individual that is yet
to materialize completely but would already be fully endowed with all human rights and
freedoms?
The official catechism of the Catholic Church proclaims the “inalienable right to life
of every human individual from the first moment of conception,” confirming the notion
that a ‘human individual’ emerges at the very moment two gametes combine, and that any
willful act that undoes the further development of that one merged cell amounts to
homicide.718 This is why Canon Law punishes the person acquiring abortion with instant
(‘latae sententiae’) excommunication,719 and why Pope Francis called abortion “a crime,”
and “absolutely evil.”720 A state law adopted in Alabama in 2019 declared “an unborn child
in utero at any stage of development,” so even a single-cell zygote, a “person.”721

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If it is indeed ‘murder’, abortion is the odd one out among sins that draw God’s ire.
Most other god-angering sins do not violate other people’s rights, and would not be an
“injustice against humanity” as, for instance, ‘pro-life’ Texan pastor Juan Sanchez has labeled
abortions,722 or a “crime against humanity,” comparable to the Holocaust, as the 2019
Alabama law determined abortions to be.723
Another reason abortions stand out among sins that cause disasters is that there is
no clear reference to it either in the Bible or in the Quran, unlike the other ‘evils’. Some
pro-life religious advocates admit that, tentatively. “Our beliefs about the sanctity of life,”
said American evangelist Franklin Graham, “are wrapped up in the entirety of Scripture.”
In other words, not in any specific unambiguous Bible verse. Mark Tooley, the president of
the conservative Methodist Institute on Religion and Democracy, offered that “Christian
pro-life teaching is organic to the whole of Scripture and was refined across millennia.” 724
Indeed. To reach the conclusion that God regards the removal of a zygote as outright
murder, you need to take the Bible as a whole, take an organic approach, process for two
thousand years, and then, with that particular end in mind, distill from that blurry mess a
concrete dogma that had never existed before.
The key question in the abortion debate is at what point in the development of a
fetus it becomes a person, and there is nothing in the Bible that answers it. There are the
obviously self-serving statements by King David that God had “covered me in my mother’s
womb” (Psalm 139:13), and by the prophet Jeremiah that God told him he had already
sanctified him, and made him a prophet “before thou camest forth out of the womb”
(Jeremiah 1:5). But these prove at most that God foresaw the births of a future king and a
future prophet, not that the latter were persons with fully endowed human rights before
their birth, let alone that they were so already at the moment of their conception.
The anti-abortion stance of conservative Christians is quite extreme in comparison
to representatives of most other religions. In Islam, for instance, the prohibition of abortion
is not clearcut. There is no mention of abortion in the Quran, just like the Bible. However,
a number of hadiths helpfully clarify at what time during the development of a fetus it
obtains a soul. According to several sources, the Prophet would have said that after three
periods of forty days, making 120 days in total, God will send an angel to breathe a soul into
what at that time is still only “a piece of flesh.”725 A logical implication is that before that
time abortion should be allowed. However, not all Islamic experts are in agreement about
that. According to the Chief Mufti of New Delhi, before 120 days, abortion is a “smaller
sin” compared to the “great sin” abortion becomes after 120 days. Are ‘smaller sins’ to be
avoided, but excusable? Are ‘great sins’ prohibited, come what may? The hadiths are not
clear on this point, and their interpreters are not in agreement. Apart from the theology,
women in the Middle East have been noticed to consider pregnancy only ‘real’ when they
feel a movement in their womb, suggesting that they do not consider it immoral to have an
abortion before that time.726 Jews, as we shall see, also tend to be far less strict in this matter.

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There is just one passage in the Bible (Exodus 21:22) that may shed light on whether
a fetus has the same rights as a child who is born, but pro-life and pro-choice Jews and
Christians fight tooth and nail over the correct translation. In the “Jewish Study Bible,” God
is quoted as saying that, “[w]hen men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and
a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues,” the man who is responsible shall be
“fined,” to the satisfaction of the woman’s husband.* However, when the grieving woman is
hurt apart from the fetus, lex talionis will be applied: the law that demands “life for life, eye
for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound,
bruise for bruise” (Exodus 21:23-25).727 In other words, if you kill a fetus accidentally, you
will have to pay up ‘civil damages’ to the presumed father. But if you kill a fetus accidentally,
and also hurt the mother, you are guilty of a felony, and may suffer the death penalty. So
much for the sanctity of life.†
The important point is that this Bible passage suggests that the killing of a fetus is an
infraction, while hurting the mother may be a felony. Then the writer of this particular piece
of the Bible appears to believe that a fetus does not yet amount to a person, meaning
abortion does not amount to a violation of the sixth commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”
This is also how Jewish religious experts tend to read Exodus 21:22. Sheila Katz, who leads
the United States National Council of Jewish Women, and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg are
convinced that in the Torah “the fetus is not regarded as a person,” and have declared that
“the Rabbis of the Talmud are clear on the plain meaning of the Hebrew.”728 Part-time Rabbi
Danny Horwitz argued that, while “Judaism teaches that potential life is sacred,” it “also
teaches that potential life is not the same as actual life, that a fetus is not a human being.”729
How can pro-life Christians be so confident that abortion, even from the moment of
conception, equals murder? When the conservative Christian interest group ‘Focus on the
Family’ quotes Exodus 21:22, the pro-life organization uses the 1978 New International
Version of the Bible, which swaps the line “a miscarriage results, but no other damage
ensues” for “she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury.” Then, with that
translation, all of a sudden, the word ‘injury’ appears to refer to the baby, who is now no
longer miscarried, as well as its mother. So when the Bible states that lex talionis is to be
applied in case of “serious injury,” then an accidental abortion becomes a death sentence for
the accidental abortionist. Why should we believe Katz, Ruttenberg, and Horwitz and not
Graham, Tooley, or Focus on the Family? Because, in the Bible, God has never punished
anybody for an abortion.
Do anti-abortionists shed real tears for the supposed harm done to these millions of
living beings? That is highly doubtful. If they were terribly troubled about their suffering they
*
In the King James Version of the Bible, the text of this verse is a bit more obscure: “If men strive, and hurt a
woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished,
according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.”
†
Another point: how is lex talionis to work out in practice? Since this law misogynistically supposes the only wrong
done in case of a miscarriage is to the husband, it makes sense to hurt the latter’s wife in the exact same way as
the woman who had just miscarried, and if that man’s wife is pregnant, so much the better: life for life, eye for
eye, tooth for tooth, and abortion for abortion.

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would do all they could to avoid unwanted pregnancies, to improve healthcare and make it
affordable to decrease child mortality, to extend parental leave, and to help mothers raise
their children. Conservative Catholics and Protestants would promote the use of
contraceptives. Conservative Catholics and Protestants would be open to having their
children educated about both conception and contraception. Until that is not the case, they
are insincere about their claim that abortion equals murder and that such murder is as bad
as that of a born human being. When fertility and other factors are held constant, a review
of data from seven countries found that “a rise in contraceptive use or effectiveness invariably
leads to a decline in induced abortion – and vice versa.”730 So you either have genuine
concern for the ‘unborn life’, or you try to prohibit and discourage the use of anticonception,
but you cannot in good conscience do both. Also, the conservative Christians’ sorrow for
aborted fetuses appears not to match their attitude to child poverty for instance, or their
safety from getting shot with a firearm. Why is there an inverse correlation between the
difficulty to obtain an abortion and the difficulty to obtain a gun?731 Again, because anti-
abortionists are not interested in saving the lives of unborn babies. The ‘abortion equals
murder’ line is a ruse.
So what is really going on? Anti-abortionists are not concerned about suffering
fetuses. They are concerned about so-called ‘abortion on demand’: abortion for the simple
reason that giving birth is inconvenient. They fear that abortion makes it easier for people
to have sex outside of marriage (‘fornication’), or sex within marriage for any other reason
than reproduction. “Is it not a practical method of birth control?,” asked a fundamentalist
Christian, opposed to abortions at any stage of gestation.732 One of TFP’s representatives
declared that the objective of sex – prudishly referred to as “the marital act” – should be
procreation, or otherwise we would “not restrain our sexual behavior,” and this would
inevitably lead to “fornication, adultery and pornography.” Revealingly, he added that the
“prospect of an illegitimate child is significantly reduced when contraception is practiced.” 733
In other words, the risk of having a child is a welcome deterrent to sex for any other reason
than procreation. The opposition to contraception goes hand in hand with opposition to
abortion, because they both serve the same purpose: decreasing the potential costs of having
a sexual relationship outside of marriage. Anti-abortionists like this TFP member are not
interested in preventing, as he put it, “the willful murder of an unborn child”734 for the sake
of that child – otherwise they would be handing out contraceptives – but in preventing
people from having sex for the sake of enjoyment. The concern of pro-life activists for the
rights of fetuses is fully contingent on their disgust of sexuality, and their veneration of
chastity. And they like being able to throw back the accusation of cruelty to their liberal
accusers.* But their compassion for the “millions of unborn babies” who are “murdered”
(e.g. Baxter735) is utterly fake.

*
What else should we make of an over-the-top, evidence-free claim by the Southern Baptist Convention that
“[s]ocial acceptance of abortion has begun to dull society’s respect for all human life, leading to growing
occurrences of infanticide, child abuse, and active euthanasia” (“Resolution On Abortion And Infanticide”).

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Such disingenuousness is also on display in the revelations of an American Catholic

woman named Victoria L. Spalding, who tries to step into the tradition of devout women,
like Mariana de Jesus Torres, Lúcia dos Santos, Faustina Kowalska, and Agnes Sasagawa, by
presuming to receive messages of divine cruelty through tacky statues of the Madonna. On
March 3, 2020, the Virgin Mary would have told Spalding:

The spread of the Corona virus is only the beginning of what will befall man
unless they repent of their misdeeds and come home to God’s love and God’s
mercy.736

Notice: “only the beginning,” so worse would be to come, also in punishment of ‘misdeeds’.
And what misdeeds was she talking about? Abortion, and nothing but abortion, also
described by the Virgin, falsely, as “infanticide,” or the murder of children. The “little ones”
– the Virgin meant fetuses – “are being martyred more and more every day inside the wombs
of their own salvation.”737 Whatever that means. But would the punishment the Virgin is
threatening us with, such as Covid-19, not also hurt the ‘little ones’ themselves? When God
inflicts collective punishment, he strikes at everybody without distinction: men, women,
children, and fetuses. If God cares so much about the unborn, why would he kill so many
of them deliberately?
There is more reason to doubt the sincerity of Victoria Spalding’s or the imagined
Virgin Mary’s compassion for fetuses. After alleging the coronavirus is punishment for
abortions, the very next day, the Virgin spoke again in Spalding’s head, allegedly, but now
she had another type of sin on her mind. Again she warned people of

the great calamities that will befall them in the future, if they do not start
to recognize their great errors in using their own judgment to live the lives
of sin the way they want […].738

What “lives of sin” did Spalding mean? The answer: “living with one another out of wedlock,
or cohabiting with one another of the same sex.”739 Supposing the Virgin did not refer to
‘living’ with a roommate in a students’ dormitory, what she meant was premarital or
extramarital sex and gay sex. So, from one day to the next, the absolute worst behavior the
Virgin Mary could think of – the sin that brings the whole of humanity to a standstill because
of a potentially lethal virus – changed from ‘murder’ to people having sex without being
married as a man and a woman. The only logical explanation for this sudden change of
interpretation of the Covid pandemic is that, to Spalding and/or the Virgin Mary, abortion
– characterized as murder – and unconsecrated sex are both equally bad. So when a person

Could it be that the extreme position – extreme in a historical and a cultural sense – of equating the death of
two merged gametes to murder was designed for the express purpose of preventing any form of compromise?
Radicalization draws people close to their leaders whose power is thereby increased.

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decides to have sex with her fiancé before the day of her marriage, then this is just as grievous
to God as when she decides to kill her neighbor. If this is absurd, then the gravity of abortion
is simply not the same as that of murder.
Maybe abortion should be avoided, and it is clearly unconscionable after a certain
later stage during pregnancy when there is no heightened health risk to the mother, but
‘infanticide’ it certainly is not in the vast majority of cases, and extreme anti-abortionists
actually know it. Their position should not be characterized as ‘pro-life’ but as ‘pro-forced
childbirth’. For them, unwanted pregnancy should not exist. All pregnancies should be
wanted. For them, a pregnancy that is unwanted equals an admission of having had the
wrong kind of sex, namely, sex not intended for procreation. When they advocate sexual
abstinence to prevent unwanted pregnancies, their objective is not to relieve the possible
suffering of fetuses; sexual abstinence before marriage is the objective.* The threat of
pregnancy to them is the best way to scare unmarried girls and women into chastity. This is
why they argue against abortion at the earliest stage and against making contraception
available, or for conservative Catholics even the legality of birth control other than the quite
ineffectual ‘natural family planning’ method. Abortion, according to TFP, “deprives sexual
acts of their consequences.”740 If that consequence is pregnancy, you will have to suffer it
until childbirth. Compassion for fetuses is totally absent from the minds of the pro-life lobby,
and therefore irrelevant for understanding their position.
When people who take a ‘pro-choice’ position are branded as ‘baby killers’, then this
is not what the accusers actually mean. Put simply: they are lying. But this vile name-calling
is not simply a tasteless use of a rhetorical device to give extra weight to one’s opposition to
abortions; it gives permission and occasion for hatred. Once you adopt that kind of extremist
terminology – ‘baby killing’, ‘infanticide’, ‘child sacrifice’ – you cannot possibly continue to
have a normal respectful, let alone warm and loving, relationship with somebody condoning,
abetting, or committing that kind of supposedly evil behavior. Also, you are not expressing
a matter of opinion, you are committing a hateful act of slander, breaking up family ties and
other social bonds, making it impossible to come together on a compromise, and doing
society an enormous amount of harm. The pro-life movement has become a conduit for
hatred, and I propose this hatred should be addressed directly with a frontal
counterargument. Pro-choice advocates should stop avoiding the topic of the personhood of
fetuses by continually making the issue one of ‘women’s rights’ only. However you put it,
that right to choose can never trump the human right to life, from any respectable ethical
viewpoint. So dare say it: a fetus is not a person. Abortion is not murder. Abortions do not

*
The American historian of religion, R. Marie Griffith, might agree. She said (Riess, “For Christian Conservatives,
It's All about Sex”):

There’s an unspoken but real attitude in some conservative quarters that people should pay the
consequences for their sins, and so if you have sex outside of marriage or before marriage, and you get
pregnant, you have to accept that consequence. That’s part of the reasoning against birth control as well
as abortion, the idea that women shouldn’t escape punishments for their sin.

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kill human beings. Only after making these points can you make the absolutely valid claim
that the choice to have an abortion is the right of every pregnant person.
In conclusion, the condemnation of abortion is derived from binding, not
individualizing motivations, and in particular from ‘purity’ considerations. When an anti-
abortionist preacher contorts his face into a horrified grimace as if the suffering of aborted
‘babies’ torments him terribly, then he is cynically performing an act of make-belief to show
his conservative Christian credentials.* The opposition to abortion for whatever reason, at
any stage of development, has nothing to do with considerations of care and fairness. To the
contrary, it is an assault on true care and actual fairness, because it harms the most vulnerable
people in society most. This does not explain why religious conservatives are so worked up
about human sexuality, and are so awed by chastity, but that is another matter. Essentially,
what we need to keep in mind is that the hostility aroused by the topic of abortion may be
driven, not by compassion for anybody, but by a hidden fear of divine punishment – here
in this material world, or in the afterlife – for engaging in, allowing, and insufficiently
punishing the uninhibited expression of sexuality. When lawmakers force women to endure
their pregnancy until birth by making abortions impossible, then this is for them a way of
punishing those women† for their sexual sin, and of staying in God’s good graces themselves.
Members of the pro-life movement are not concerned about life. They are concerned about
sex, and about doing it wrong in the all-seeing eye of God.
So how may we further prevent disasters, apart from establishing a puritanical,
heterosexual-only theocracy? By preventing women from having easy access to affordable
healthcare, by authorizing husbands to control their wives, and fathers to control their
daughters, by spreading the lie that abstinence is the only reliable way of avoiding
pregnancies, by criminalizing sexual behavior outside of marriage, and if that behavior results
in pregnancy then by forcing those sinners – or at least just the unlucky pregnant ones – to
live with the ultimate consequence of pregnancy for the rest of their lives.

*
And when the ultra-Catholic reporters of the media outlet ‘Church Militant’ express outrage at the “bloodthirsty”
‘radical left’ for their “agenda of death” to give free reign to “pre-born child killing” (Nadia Hazimeh), and show
an animation of a writhing baby surrounded by flames on “the altar of Baal” (Aidan O’Connor), they are trying
to tell a compelling story to keep their audience engaged, but they are not losing any sleep over it (Church Militant
Evening News, May 6, 2022; https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/even-2022-05-06).
†
Or trans men.

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7. The nefarious politics of collective divine punishment

The fear is still real, and is still consequential

“Worried your city is becoming Sodom and Gomorrah?” In March 2022, an ad appeared on
a right-wing Catholic website, featuring this line above a multi-colored map of the United
States that recalled the LGBT rainbow flag. Clicking on the ad led to the website of a
national group of “Faith-based” and “Christ-centered” real estate agents
(realestateforlife.org), apparently offering the service of guiding house owners away from
overly gay-friendly neighborhoods.* Did the Christian realtors try to appeal to potential
clients who were just repulsed by the liberal lifestyle of their fellow townspeople? Or to those
who were afraid that their sinning neighbors would bring down the judgment of God on
the entire community?
The fear of running the risk of God’s judgment for living in a Sodom, or a
Gomorrah, does not need to be said in so many words for it to still drive people’s decisions.
It may be hidden behind other concerns that prevent its expression, like the dreadful
thought of being seen as weird, outmoded, judgmental, or presumptuous for knowing the
will of God. We can be certain, however, that the ‘real estate for life’ agents were turning to
a small commercial niche they thought was worth addressing. But quite how small is unclear.
We know that in the Western world that niche used to be no niche at all. According
to the Finnish historian Hanska, it may have occurred in the early 1830s that for the first
time in history a majority of people in Europe and North-America discarded the notion that
a disaster was God’s response to people sinning.741 The calamity in question was a devastating
cholera pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world, prompting
preachers once again to castigate their sinful flock.742 But by then, on average, the belief that
religion both explained and protected against disasters had finally become less convincing
than the secular realization that there is simply no need for the notion of an intervening
God to understand disasters and to reduce the risks that they pose. From then on, in
Western countries, more people were inclined to consider a disaster a natural event rather
than a show of divine temper, than there were people inclined to prefer the latter
explanation over the former. Hanska concluded his study with the observation that the old
way of thinking about disasters had become a distinguishing characteristic only of “the
decreasing ranks of fundamentalist Christians,” and added, “this continues to be the
situation today.”743 While that may be so, this does not mean that the fear of an angry god
has truly become insignificant the world over.

*
The ad appeared on the website of Church Militant (churchmilitant.com) in March 2022.

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The little we know

We know statistics bear out Hanska’s observation, even though data about a belief in the
possibility of CDP is scarce, scattered, and not always particularly informative. The studies
that have seen the light of day investigating the depths of a fear of divine wrath expressed
through temporal mishaps are rare, and they are often also too specific to a particular place,
time, and type of event, illness, crisis, or disaster, to allow for the distinguishing of overall
patterns. Nevertheless, what appears to be certain is that nowadays, in Western industrialized
nations, the belief that any particular disaster is the expression of God’s discontent is held
by a minority of people, as Hanska noted. Unfortunately, again, it is quite unclear how
substantial, consistent, or influential that minority is.
Probably at the low end of the scale, for instance, are the highly secularized people
of the Netherlands. In May 2020, 2.5 percent of Dutch adults were found to believe it was
credible that the coronavirus was a punishment from God, and another 6.3 percent thought
this was at least possible, leaving a large majority of more than nine in ten ruling it out
completely.744 Another study, based on a less representative sample of “socially committed”
adults, found that the number of Christians in the Netherlands interpreting the coronavirus
as “God’s punishment” was “negligible.” Interestingly, among churchgoing Christians it was
four times as likely they considered the pandemic a sign of the End of Times (12 percent),
than a form of divine retribution (3 percent).745 Although these percentages tell us little
about Dutch beliefs in the possibility of CDP in general, it is safe to say they would be held
by a small minority, and that Dutch pastor De Jong’s viewpoint – the coronavirus is a sign
that God is angry with us humans at being ignored – is not representative for people in the
Netherlands.746
Higher percentages might be expected in the much more religious United States,
where, in 2017, it was reported that 71 percent of all adults – Christian and non-Christian
alike – took the Bible to be the literal or at least the inspired word of God.747 The belief in
a biblical or, more precisely, an Old Testament kind of god – one who is active, observant,
and possibly vengeful – is a necessary condition for the idea that a deity might be causing
disasters deliberately. Therefore, the widespread belief in the inerrancy of the Bible among
Americans may indicate that the United States harbors a much higher percentage of
believers in divine punishment than countries in western Europe where the belief in the
literal correctness of the Bible is presumably much smaller. However, it is hard to make such
a general claim. In 2005, a poll found that 23 percent of a sample of Americans thought
hurricanes were a “deliberate act of God,”748 which is not much considering the possibility
that these same Americans may also have supposed that God used these hurricanes with
some other intention than punishment. Had hurricanes become too familiar to be perceived
as signs of God’s involvement in the world, let alone as a form of deliberate retribution for
the country’s sins? Made it a difference for Christian Americans that, at that time, their
country had President George W. Bush – a born-again Evangelical Christian – at the helm?

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In 2010, when President Obama had taken over, a more substantial number of Americans
– 29 percent – stated their general belief that God sometimes punishes nations for the sins
of some of its citizens.749
That last percentage matches the 31 percent of Americans that sociologists Paul
Froese and Christopher Bader have found believe in a God who is both engaged in world
affairs, and judgmental, in the sense that he can get “quite wrathful” about human sins.750
Froese and Bader termed that type of deity ‘the Authoritative God.’ However, not everybody
who has that ‘Authoritative’ image of God, according to the two American sociologists,
would accord divine responsibility for any and all disasters.751 One who does, is the current
American Anglican Bishop Ray R. Sutton, who stated that “there is no such thing as a
natural disaster,” adding that, even if “we may not know the exact sin being judged, what
occurs results from God.”752 But how much of a relic is he?
Still, it was somewhat surprising that a study conducted around the beginning of
May 2020 showed that only 11 percent of the 1,002 Americans who were polled thought
“human sinfulness” was “a cause of the current coronavirus situation in the United States.”
It is unclear whether this 11 percent assumed “human sinfulness” to refer to the sins of the
victims themselves, the sins of the country as such, or humanity in general. Since 37 percent
of the first sample stated their belief that the “U.S. government’s actions or policies” was a
cause of the pandemic,753 some of them may still have believed Covid-19 was divine
punishment for the country allowing abortions and gay marriages. It is quite possible that it
mattered that the United States was then still run by a Republican administration, and that
the number of Americans considering Covid-19 to be a punishment from God for the sins
of the nation would have been higher had it occurred under a President Hillary Clinton, or
had the same question been posed a year later, under President Biden. In other words, it is
unclear how many Americans would agree with any interpretation of the pandemic by any
of the religious leaders featured in chapter 2 who have pointed at some particular sin as
having made God so angry that he decided to unleash the coronavirus.
It is also likely that other, rivaling interpretations of disasters have recently been
eating away at the notion of divine punishment, without these competing ideas denying
God’s active involvement in the affairs of the world. As we have seen, one such competitor
is the idea that disasters are God’s way of signaling to humanity that it should prepare for
the Second Coming. Another, related theory is that disasters are the visible result of a
diabolical conspiracy that God allows to unfold as part of his bigger plan. To see how these
three different viewpoints compete – even though they may also overlap – a look inside an
English-language Christian chatroom might be revealing. One of its members declared in
July 2020 that the “Coronavirus is a plague sent by the Lord” (i.e. divine punishment).
Another member quickly expressed his disagreement, arguing that it was not God’s work,
but that of the devil operating through wicked humans to destroy the economy and prepare
the way for a communist, totalitarian government (i.e. evil conspiracy). A third member
joined the conversation stating that the coronavirus is “a wake up call” reminding humanity

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of “what is coming,” namely, “corpses all over the place in such abundance that people don’t
bother trying to clear them from roads or anything” (i.e. End of Times).754 Were it not for
the prevalence in mainly Christian circles of conspiracy theories * and predictions of the
Second Coming, the percentage of present-day European and American believers
subscribing to the notion of disasters as divine punishment might be more considerable.†
While in Western countries divine punishment may inspire less fear now than in the
more uncertain past, its mirror-image – divine blessing – may have faded to a much lesser
extent. The withdrawal of collective divine blessing (CDB) opens a nation up to other
mishaps than pure CDP, that is, punishment immediately caused by God himself. With
God no longer extending his hand of protection, any disaster may happen caused by any
agent, other than God, including natural ones. The belief in CDB may therefore be less
vulnerable to progress in scientific understanding than the belief in CDP, or to the
advancement of a more loving and less-judgmental god-image, while still being a potent force
in shaping attitudes and political decision-making. God may not punish us directly for
tolerating a gay-pride parade, but he may turn his back on us, and no longer hold us in his
favor, and then, whatever horrors we have been spared from until now, may be unleashed
on us, not intentionally by God, but purely as a consequence of our sins. I have not been
able to ascertain whether the erosion of the fear of CDP has paralleled an equally strong
erosion of the belief in CDB, but it would be reasonable to assume that the two are separate,
though related, phenomena.
Elsewhere in the world, the percentage of people fearing God’s punishment through
disasters may be higher than in Europe or North America. Of a sample of Nigerians living
near the capital Lagos, most of whom were Christian (94 percent) with the remainder being
Muslim, 16.3 percent agreed with the statement that the coronavirus is “a punishment from
God,” and an overlapping – partly or totally is unclear – 16.6 percent that it “came as a result
of sin.”755 But if some of the remaining Nigerians in the sample discarded the idea that they
were being punished, would that be because they preferred to regard Covid as a warning of
the imminent end of the world? An in-depth study into the religious response to Covid-19
in Nigeria gave its findings in this frustratingly confusing summary: “Most Christians regard
it as one of the signs that the coming of Jesus Christ is at hand. They also regard it as a divine
punishment for ungodliness.”756 So which is it? The one, the other, or both at the same time?
Meanwhile, a few years before, a majority of a sample of Christian students in Nigeria was
found to believe that HIV/AIDS was God punishing gays and lesbians.757 Perhaps there is a
tendency to attribute a tragedy to divine punishment if it befalls another person, but to see
it as a portent of the end of times, if you yourself are among the victims.
*
A survey among Polish adults found that a higher score on religious fundamentalism predicted belief in
conspiracy theories regarding Covid-19. Poles who adhered to conspiracy beliefs were also found to be more
inclined to disregard safety and self-isolation guidelines (Łowicki et al., “Does Religion Predict Coronavirus
Conspiracy Beliefs?”).
†
According to a survey conducted in June 2020, 25 percent of United States adults thought Covid-19 was
definitely or probably “intentionally planned by powerful people,” with the rest disagreeing (36 percent), or not
knowing or declining the answer (39 percent) (Schaeffer, “A Look At the Americans”).

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Again, these studies do not show the prevalence of a belief in CDP in Nigeria, but
they hint at a higher percentage than in Europe or the United States. A little more
substantial 22 percent of a large sample of people from Mbujimayi, the second largest city in
the mostly Christian Democratic Republic of the Congo, interpreted Covid as a form of
divine punishment.758 But much higher percentages have also been found. In the mostly
Islamic country of Bangladesh, a study found that more than 50 percent of respondents
believed Covid-19 was a punishment from God.759 In the deeply traditional town of Gondar
in Ethiopia, a staggering 86.8 percent of a sample of Christian Orthodox and Muslim clerics
and traditional healers believed Covid-19 was a form of divine punishment.760 Again, like
with most other studies, it remains unclear whether the answers given by respondents refer
to sins or to punishment of the victims themselves, or to sins or punishment of the country or
humanity as a whole.
Notice how scarce and scattered these snapshots are of disasters through a religious
lens, despite – I dare say – my ardent efforts to present a more comprehensive view. Also,
admittedly, these percentages do not tell us much about the way disasters like hurricanes
and epidemics influence people’s attitudes towards issues that are portrayed as causing God
to be angry. If any of a number of supposed sins were to be tolerated, could we expect God
to cause disasters in response? How many people would fear catastrophic consequences if
any religious taboo were broken? How much would they fear the manifestation of any
physical or material risk to themselves, or to others, even if they perhaps feel themselves
shielded by their own righteousness? Are religious taboos maintained by the expectation of
divinely caused disasters and concern for national welfare, or are believers more concerned
about their own personal moral record and eternal salvation? To what extent are disasters
believed to be avoidable cases of divine punishment instead of the inevitable portents of the
approaching Apocalypse? Is the latter interpretation replacing the former?

We may also have to take into account that some people in more secular countries are hiding
their fear of divine punishment to avoid derision. Recently, Dutch pastor De Jong deplored
the fact that the “thought that God is angry […] is almost nowhere to be found,” at least in
the context of Covid-19. And, indeed, the few relevant statistical studies bear this out. Still,
he suspected that Christians do feel themselves to be punished by God, but that they keep
that thought hidden, as the fear of an angry God is drowned out, De Jong explained, by the
“common sentiment in the churches of today” that “God loves us, unconditionally, through
thick and thin.” That pleasant picture of God, according to De Jong, is “one-sided, and
therefore not true,”761 which gives pause for thought. But putting that aside, De Jong may
be right that there is a gap between a private, secret fear of God in certain sections of the
religious community and the outward looking, happy face put up by the church publicly.
Such a gap may also be assumed to exist between believers and researchers. And not just in
Westernized countries. French researchers Morin and Lavigne thought the 15% of Muslims
they interviewed on the Comoro Islands who presented a volcanic eruption as “a deistic

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punishment due to bad human behavior” to be “certainly an underestimate.” Why? Because,

Morin and Lavigne assumed, they had “reserve concerning religion” and because this was
considered “self-evident,” and therefore did “not require further elaboration.” Indeed, why
spell out your private religious fears in front of detached scientists who are unlikely to
sympathize with you?762 Theologians Baden and Moss claimed that “this religious world view
is more pedestrian and more deeply entrenched in contemporary culture than is usually
admitted.”763 Even the notoriously wrong Archbishop Viganò may have had a point when
he declared that “the idea of a God offended by the sins of men, […] who punishes them
with scourges,” is a concept that “the creative hand of God has imprinted on the soul of
every man […]” (or woman).764
Moreover, even though they generally meet with ridicule nowadays, many of the
current spreaders of the fear of God as the ultimate cause of disasters to punish people
collectively for alleged sin amassed collectively, are often quite prominent and influential public
figures who may be giving voice to a wider belief than both non-believers and less
conservative believers would like to acknowledge. These leaders cannot be dismissed as
merely marginal characters, or as isolated from their followers. At their heydays, protestant
preachers who promote the fear of CDP, like Bakker, Criswell, Falwell, Hagee, and
Robertson, reached millions of believers. The late South Korean reverend David Cho, who
attributed the 2011 Japanese earthquake to God’s anger, preached in the world’s largest
megachurch – Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul – which attracts on average 480,000
attendees.765 Whether they believe everything they say or not, these men are likely to know
their audiences, and likely to be right in expecting that the fear of God’s anger resonates
with them. The fear of an angry, punishing God may have gone underground, or below the
level of conscious thought, under the influence of modern beliefs, but as some researchers
have argued with regard to people living below volcanoes, the “religious character of disaster
responses has been maintained,” up to the 21st century, as a “parallel practice” next to more
rational measures.766 A rational, scientific understanding of disasters does not foreclose the
‘parallel belief’ that they are, apart from a natural phenomenon, also a form of divine
retribution.
While that parallel belief appears to have been trending downward, it may regain
some of its former popularity when crises accumulate. Since disasters are often followed by
an increase in religiosity,767 with some delay, believers may warm up again to the idea of
divine punishment. In urbanized, secularized, and more educated parts of the world, they
are not likely to become a majority. However, a small minority can still make a big difference.
Even if we can assume that indeed only 11 percent of Americans once attributed Covid-19
to sin, this is quite sufficiently substantial to have, say, an atheist, pro-choice, gender-neutral
representative lose their seat, a gay couple needing to jump over more hurdles to adopt a
child, or an anti-abortion bill be more restrictive. Consider this in light of the many quotes
linking homosexuality and Covid-19 in Africa: would it be a good time to advocate for gay
rights in Tanzania, Burundi, or Uganda at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, or would

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it be more prudent to wait until the fear of God’s anger has subsided somewhat together
with the fear of the virus itself?

In summary, the idea that disasters are evidence that God is angry with a group of people in
general, or with mankind as a whole, is still widespread, even among individuals who do not
discard a scientific explanation. It may be held by a negligible percentage of the population
in some highly secularized West-European countries, but is probably quite substantial in the
Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and other Islamic parts of Asia. Even in places where it
may never convince a majority of people, it could still be powerful enough to sway public
policy, as it has done, I have tried to show, with regard to widely different issues like Sunday
business opening hours, same-sex marriage, and abortion.

The problem of what we do know

This fear of an angry god capable of inflicting collective punishment is lamentable for four
reasons.

1. It misdirects public policy efforts to prevent and mitigate disasters.

2. It puts people who are held responsible in direct and indirect physical and
psychological danger.
3. It invites acts of religious terrorism.
4. It promotes a repressive and autocratic style of government.

Impeding policy measures

Hammering hurricanes, out-of-control fires, scorching heatwaves, dried-up rivers: in the
minds of most Abrahamic CDP-believers, none of these natural phenomena are the result
of the humanmade climate crisis. Humanity, indeed, is ultimately responsible for these
events, but not because they are abusing the environment, but because of their failure to
satisfy God. What prompts God to anger and his subsequent will to punish humanity
collectively, those fearful of CDP almost never suppose is the behavior that is actually
responsible for causing and aggravating the climate crisis. They almost always declare God
to be angry because of a limited list of private ‘sins’: heresy and sacrilege, the wrong kind of
sex, abortions, and – mostly among Evangelical Christians – criticism of Israel. What I
haven’t come across among Jews, Christians, and Muslims is an explanation of God’s wrath
by reference to pollution, deforestation, or the maltreatment and exploitation of animals.
So what should governments do to prevent natural disasters? Surely not restrict the
emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, or synthetic greenhouse gases. Surely not promote a
vegan lifestyle. Surely not taxation of commercial flying. What good would that do? How
would that pacify the angry god? These methods are quite illogical to the CDP-fearing

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faithful. A much better approach, according to them, would be to stamp out the expression
of homosexuality, to deny transgender individuals their chosen identity, to force girls and
women to give birth once they are pregnant, and to embrace Israeli leaders least willing to
make concessions to the Palestinians.
What would be the right policy with regard to a pandemic? Surely not vaccination,
quarantines, distancing, or mask-wearing. What good would that do? How would that
placate the angry god? Again, such policy measures would have no effect if the cause is a god
being angry for supposedly sinful private behavior. Better results should be expected from
days of fasting and praying, calls for repentance, and stepped-up attempts at making lives
miserable for those who are involuntarily pregnant, gender-misidentified, or
unconventionally wired sexually.
Governmental policy measures to prevent disasters and mitigate their effects have an
increased chance to fail when they rely on the support and cooperation of citizens who
believe in CDP. The likelihood of failure is even greater when trust in the beneficence of
government officials is low or absent, and the latter are held responsible for angering God
and indirectly causing the disasters in the first place. Then, CDP-fearers will not merely
withhold support and cooperation; they may actively sabotage government policy efforts in
order to please God.

Bottom-up aggression: bullying minorities

Secondly, blaming disasters on sin is a reason to regard the supposedly sinful with suspicion
and even hostility, and justifies their neglect and mistreatment. It also puts often already
vulnerable people in physical and psychological danger because blaming sinners religiously
sanctions group bullying at a societal level.
Currently, people most at risk of being singled out as the cause of God’s wrath are
individuals who are not strictly heterosexual, or who do not identify themselves with the
gender they were assigned at birth. Madrigal-Borloz, the UN-appointed Independent Expert,
concluded from reports around the world that the Covid pandemic is having “a
disproportionate impact on LGBT and gender-diverse persons,” as it “reproduces and
exacerbates […] social exclusion and violence.”768 One of the reasons, Madrigal-Borloz
identified for these adverse effects of the crisis, is “religious and political leaders blaming the
pandemic on the very existence of LGBT persons […].”769 While new pandemics are likely to
spread as quickly as Covid-19 did, and climate change causes increasingly destructive weather
events around the world, sexual, and perhaps also religious minorities are increasingly at risk
of being demonized and punished for being the enemy from within.
Any search for the ‘Achans’ in our midst could quickly become deadly. To take a
recent example, a Christian preacher from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jacques
Ambila of ‘Worshippers’ Family Ministries’, asked his unmasked audience, in November
2020:

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Is there an Achan among us in the family? How many human lives are lost
because of an Achan in the family, in society, in the church and in the nation?
[...] Don’t be afraid to expose an Achan, otherwise it’s the loss of several lives.
[...] Achan must be exposed and the forbidden must also be exposed and
removed so that chaos does not occur in a family and in a nation.770

It is unclear what kind of ‘Achan’ Ambila had in mind, but the label may stick on any
individual member of a supposedly sinful minority.
Blaming anybody from a position of authority on religious grounds for a crisis or a
disaster that endangers everybody should be considered a hate crime. Imagine getting
identified as an ‘Achan’ in a social environment trembling with the fear of a deadly divine
punishment that you are responsible for attracting. That environment might make sure you
won’t escape that same punishment, or – more justly – suffer worse. The danger of being
branded an ‘Achan’ comes on top of being worse off as a direct victim of a crisis, disaster, or
disease already. Who would want to bring relief to victims who are believed to have brought
their misfortune on themselves, and those around them, through sin? As has been observed,
for instance, with regard to people living with HIV/AIDS, or those who are at high risk of
getting infected with HIV, the belief that they have caused God to be angry, proof of which
would be their need for help, is a serious obstacle to providing them with aid. 771 LGBT
individuals would be at a similar risk with regard to protection and treatment of Covid.772
By falsely making a certain group of people responsible for tragedies that are fully
outside their control – something that is impossible to prove or disprove – CDP accusers
trample on the legal maxim of the presumption of innocence, which has been firmly codified
in human rights law. This tenet of law is not a modern invention; as law professor Kenneth
Pennington showed, it was upheld by a series of popes (Paul II, Sixtus IV, and Paul III) after
a 12th-century Italian jurist named Paucapalea made the case that it was based on the Bible.
The Almighty must have known of Adam’s guilt, but the omniscient God still asked him, as
if he at least formally presumed him to be innocent, “Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I
commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?” (Genesis 3:11).
Why is the presumption of innocence so important? Because there is an extreme
asymmetry between the ease of accusing a person of a crime, and the difficulty of defending
oneself against it. While the accusation of provoking God’s wrath will not be upheld in a
court of law, unopposed slander may be just as damaging to the accused as a formal verdict.
To stigmatize a person as an ‘Achan’ is a hateful act of defamation that invites people to take
the law into their own hands, and mimic the biblical opposite of an ‘Achan’: a ‘Phinehas’. I
will return to the topic of ‘Phinehas’ or ‘Phineas’ below.
The risk of stigmatization has rightly prompted mainstream clergy to correct those
among them who are using disasters as evidence for the wrongness of an assortment of sins.
I have tried to show that their attempts could be a lot more effective, but only if they abandon
the notion that God is both a personal being who directs human lives in a tangible, physical

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way, based on his particular personal interests, and one who is capable of getting violently
angry. Their often forceful statements to counter the notion of divine punishment are
welcome and well-intended, but also in need of much firmer theological foundations. If God
does not punish by means of disasters, then why is he portrayed as having done so numerous
times in the Bible? Responsible theologians and clergy cannot go on making commonly
vague and superficial statements that they cannot imagine the real God to be the same as
the biblical one. They have to come up with a more substantiated response. If theology has
any relevance, then this is it.
A related issue is that of interreligious strife. Given that for three centuries pagan
and Christian Romans accused each other of committing sacrilege and thereby inviting
disasters, the question comes up whether the fear of CDP is still driving religious hostility
within societies. To what degree might animosity between adherents of different religions
be explained by the fear that the other side is provoking God’s wrath and consequently CDP?
Think of the decades-long troubles between Muslims and Hindus in India, between
Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Christians and Muslims in Azerbaijan,
Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Sudan, between Shia and Sunni Muslims in Yemen, between
Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar, and between Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka, to
name just a few. Such conflicts might be exacerbated by the threat of disasters. Under such
volatile circumstances, religious minorities may feel obliged to walk a tightrope between
maintaining their identity and fulfilling ritual obligations on the one hand, and not
provoking the fear of CDP among their neighbors, who are maintaining a different faith, on
the other. When the forces of nature are at rest, mustering tolerance of a minority religion
may not be so difficult. A sudden disaster might then disturb that balancing act, and uncover
hidden fears among the majority that the community is harboring God-provoking ‘Achans’.

Bottom-up aggression: justifying terrorism

The third possible negative consequence of the doctrine of CDP is perhaps better categorized
as a more radical form of bottom-up aggression. Apart from causing social friction that lends
occasion to bullying behavior towards minorities, which happens more or less out in the
open, the fear of CDP may also prompt hateful believers to take covert violent action against
their fellow-citizens.
This may happen in two ways. First, the belief in CDP offers a practical justification
that violence-prone individuals may adopt in order to find the permission to engage in acts
of terrorism if they take the view that God’s anger is being provoked, and that efforts taken
by other people or institutions to prevent that anger are insufficient. This kind of
justification is consequentialist, meaning it is dependent on the justified behavior’s
consequences: the costs of the disaster that may befall the entire country outweigh the costs
of killing a God-angering individual.
The second way in which the belief in CDP may cause individuals to feel emboldened
to commit violence, is when they feel vindicated by the occurrence of a catastrophe. By

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showing his anger, God has proven them right, and now they may feel justified in trying to
cut in on the action, and get personally involved with the infliction of God’s punishment.
In effect, they may feel authorized to help God carry out his vengeance, and thereby self-
servingly show off their religious credentials in the process. This is a so-called deontological
justification, meaning it is based on a supposed right or duty. By causing a disaster, God is
showing the way, and anybody trying to worsen that disaster is following God’s lead, and
doing his will.
In short, I propose that the belief in CDP increases the risk of terrorism both with
the intention to prevent, and to exacerbate the manifestation of God’s anger. Jewish and
Christian terrorists of either type may model their behavior each on a different biblical
figure: respectively Phineas (or Phinehas), and the prophet Samuel.

Phineas-type terrorism
An authoritative ground for the preventative ‘Phineas-type’ of CDP-induced terrorism is an
Old Testament tale of a deadly plague, which God inflicted on the Israelites. The reason for
this divine punishment was the fact that Israelite men were socializing with their female
heathen neighbors, and thereby committing a grave violation of the law. Like many of his
sinning fellow-Israelites, Zimri was having an intimate relationship with a heathen woman.
While the plague was claiming the deaths of thousands of Israelites in the camp, a fanatic
member of the priestly caste named Phinehas went into the tent of the amorous couple, and
murdered them both with one thrust of his spear (Numbers 25:8). Thereupon, God stopped
the plague immediately, telling Moses that “Phinehas […] hath turned my wrath away from
the children of Israel.” It was because of that double murder, God said, “that I consumed
not the children of Israel in my jealousy” (Numbers 25:11).
In 1990, this sordid ancient story of a zealot imposing his bigotry on a mixed
relationship inspired a book with the unabashed invitation to follow Phinehas in his
footsteps. It was titled Vigilantes of Christendom and written by Richard Kelly Hoskins (1928-
2022) from Virginia, a Nazi sympathizer, and a racist in the very literal sense of the word,*
who took strict guidance from the antiquated laws of the Old Testament.† According to
Hoskins, “God absolutely forbids racial intermarriage.”773 And to take another example of

*
All heroes in the Bible are White, according to Hoskins. The evidence he presents for this claim is astounding.
‘Adam’ would mean “He who blushes red.” All ‘sons of man’ in the Bible blush red as well, like Jesus. Non-white
people would not be able to blush red: “Most strangers cannot blush red,” Hoskins noticed (Vigilantes of
Christendom, 31n).
†
Hoskins was also quite an original conspiracy theorist. On of his conspiracy beliefs centered on a magical cloak
that God had specially made for Adam (God had also made one – a coat of skin – for Eve by the way, as told in
Genesis 3:21). The person owning that cloak would have the superpower to “capture” the minds of other people.
From Adam, via Noah and Ham, the cloak passed on to Nimrod who would have used it to subdue numerous
nations, until it was stolen from him by Esau, the son of Isaac and the brother of Jacob. According to Hoskins,
Esau’s descendants have been using the cloak ever since to manipulate people, including the White or “Saxon”
people of the United States. For instance, the Esau “Cartel” would have used the cloak to install Abraham
Lincoln as president and bring about the American Civil War (Hoskins Report 1988, 13-15). The word ‘Saxon’
would come from ‘Isaac’s son’. (Esau was also a son of Isaac, but never mind.) Esau’s descendants would be
today’s Arabs and Turks (Hoskins Report #278, 2001).

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his racist views: ‘adultery’ in Hoskins’ terminology meant closing a marriage or business
contract of “your race with another.”774
The subtitle of the book – The Story of the Phineas Priesthood – refers to a supposed
lineage from the ancient Hebrews until now, legitimizing the killing of ‘race-mixers’ by those
who wish to prove themselves worthy of the title of a ‘Phineas Priest’. “There are two kinds
of people,” Hoskins explained. “The Lawful and the Lawless. The Lawful obey the Law. The
Lawless are marked for punishment.”775 An elite group among the ‘Lawful’ are those who
impose the Law on others: the heroic members of the highly exclusive Phineas Priesthood,
the ‘vigilantes of Christendom’. According to Hoskins, “Phineas Priests enforce the Law,
and God rewards them with a covenant of an everlasting priesthood.”776 They enforce the
Law by inflicting extrajudicial punishment, and this is a divine imperative: “The
punishments are specified by God and are to be carried out exactly.”777 Moreover, Hoskins
stressed, “To refuse to execute judgment on those whom God has passed judgment and
sentenced is also a capital crime.”778
Hoskins described a number of assassinations that he suggested were the work of
Phineas Priests. For instance, the thousands of extra-judicial killings after the Civil War by
the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) among others, Hoskins defended as the enforcement of “God’s
Law.”

By the 1930s the extra-legal executions done by Phineas priests and vigilante
committees all over the country, the ‘neighborhood watch’ of the time, had
virtually exterminated known murderers and rapists. The thousands of
interracial couples who flaunted themselves in carriages and on the streets in
every city in the 1860s and early 1870s were dispatched almost overnight
[…].779

Notice that the word ‘rapist’ refers to a Black man having an intimate relationship with a
White woman. To add weight to his assertion that these lynchings had taken place in the
spirit of the story of Phinehas, Hoskins noted that “[t]he symbol ‘#25,’ signifying Numbers:
Chapter 25 in the Bible, appeared on walls and sidewalks.”780
But what provides Christian terrorists of the Phineas type with the best possible
justification is not that they are following a biblical decree – thankfully most Bible
commentaries do not commend imitating Phinehas – but that they are actually doing society
a favor by preventing CDP. When “God’s Law” is enforced, and the punishment as handed
down by God for violating his law is carried out, according to Hoskins, “all is well and the
land prospers.” But if not, “God punishes the land with sword, pestilence and plague.”781
Hoskins made scant mention of disasters he believed had been caused by God to punish
lawbreakers, but these would mostly be the consequence of mingling with “strangers.”
“Plague-type diseases in the West have ALWAYS started with strangers,” Hoskins
emphasized.782 When the Spanish conquistadores plundered Mesoamerica, and

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encountered heathen “strangers,” they contracted syphilis. “Contact with New World
strangers,” Hoskins deduced, “gave the syphilis plague to Europe where millions died from
it.”783
And so, Hoskins stressed, “[f]ailure to enforce God’s Law” – like the prohibition of
mixing with non-Christian ‘strangers’ – “is the most serious thing that can befall God’s
people. It is a national catastrophe.” Therefore, “[t]he choice is simply to either enforce the
Law,” Hoskins argued, “or the plague and pestilence engulfs the nation.”784 The heroic lone
truly Christian vigilantes, who put their lives on the line for trying to prevent a national
catastrophe, are entitled to carry the divine honorific of ‘Phineas Priest’. Hoskins explained
that the exclusive ‘Priesthood of Phineas’ is a special order of priests created by God to
“honor” the “mighty men who through the ages stood ready to give their lives to uphold
God’s Law and ward off the plague which would otherwise destroy the land and its
people.”785
Hoskins’ book immediately attracted would-be Phineas Priests. KKK-member Byron
de la Beckwith, nicknamed ‘Delay’, stated proudly after he had read the book that he too
was a Phineas Priest.786 This claim would help him get convicted in 1994 for the murder
more than thirty years earlier of Black civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Only a year after the
publication of Vigilantes of Christendom, in 1991, four men from Idaho – Charles Barbee,
Robert Berry, Brian Ratigan, and Verne Jay Merrell – formed a conspiratorial bond, which
they gave the name ‘Phineas Priesthood’. In 1996, these ‘priests’ bombed a Planned
Parenthood clinic and robbed a bank, and took responsibility in a letter signed off with the
symbol of the Phineas Priesthood: a letter ‘P’ crossed by a horizontal line.787 A white
supremacist named Buford O. Furrow Jr. opened fire in 1999 on a Jewish community center
in Los Angeles, wounding five people, including four Jewish children, and killing a sixth
person because of his race. Furrow owned the book by Hoskins and appeared to consider
himself a member of the Phineas Priesthood.788 In 2014, Larry Steven McQuilliams took
aim at a police station, a federal courthouse, and a Mexican consulate. He was killed by
police who were firing back. Vigilantes of Christendom was in McQuilliams’ possession.789 And
so it goes on.
Anytime an ‘Achan’ or ‘Zimri’ is publicly identified, an alerted ‘Phineas’ may hear
the Heavenly call of duty to turn God’s wrath away with an act of violence. Or, the other
way around, a more active self-styled ‘Phineas’ may be on the lookout for an ‘Achan’ or
‘Zimri’ whenever a disaster signals God’s anger, and he can construct the act of violence as
the only way to prevent worse divine punishment from happening.
In 2023, an 81-year old Dutch former school teacher and protestant missionary took
the two-and-a-half hour journey by train and bus from her house in the eastern part of the
Netherlands to the ‘Biblical Museum’ located in the middle. She had just one specific goal
in mind: appease the wrath of God. Intending to offer different perspectives on biblical
themes, the museum had put on display several statuettes of the ancient Semitic fertility
goddess Asherah. Determined to put a stop to this form of open “blasphemy,” as she called

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it, the woman trampled and destroyed several of the small statues. To the stunned onlookers
she declared, “There is only one God, who is Yahweh.” She later explained her motivation
to a journalist by reading to him Judges 3:7-8 (NKJV): “So the children of Israel did evil in
the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God, and served the Baals and Asherahs.
Therefore the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel.” According to her, the Dutch Biblical
Museum, by spreading around Asherah statuettes, was contributing to “idol worship.” “With
the public Asherah worship, we bring a curse upon our land,” she said.790 So, by destroying
property, she was saving the Netherlands from the punishment God was likely to inflict
upon it. This incident, relatively unimpressive though it was as an act of terrorism, shows
that the calling of the Phineas Priesthood is not limited to gender, age, or nationality.

Samuel-type terrorism
The reactive ‘Samuel-type’ of CDP-induced terrorism occurs, I propose, when zealous
individuals want to be instrumental in the infliction and aggravation of a catastrophe. Their
justifying line of reasoning may run as follows. The interpretation of disasters as a divine
response to other people sinning, implies that their harmful effects are justified. This in turn
implies that similar harmful effects caused by human actors on similarly sinful people are
also justified. When the expected divine punishment is less immediate than they suppose
certain sinful people deserve, activist believers, inclined to use violent means, may grow
impatient. If they feel sufficiently secure about their own salvation, they may then feel drawn
to participate in divine punishment, and thereby add to their religious merits.
Doing God’s will justifies anything, including causing or exacerbating a catastrophe
if that is what God’s will is imagined to be. They may then feel it to be their duty, as pastor
Morecraft exclaimed, “To bring down the wrath of God to bear on all those who practice
evil!”791 And mimic the Biblical prophet Samuel, who “called unto the LORD; and the
LORD sent thunder and rain that day: and all the people greatly feared the LORD and
Samuel” (1 Samuel 12:18). Once you have identified those who practice evil, you may feel
fully justified to represent God by being the conduit for his wrath and in so doing saving the
innocent. In the 14th century, the Würzburg chronicler Michael de Leone framed the
repeated mass murder of Jews as “divine justice.” The murderers of Jews are simply God’s
executioners, who are doing God’s work to prevent the undue suffering of the righteous.
Using this type of justification for violence becomes easier when a serious disaster is
happening that can be construed as divine punishment of an already identified enemy within
or without. Then this disaster is evidence that God is definitely on your side, and definitely
not on the other, which can be used in propaganda for your own extremist case. As one
counterterrorism expert put it, “a pandemic act of God” is, for faith-based terrorists, “a
golden opportunity to double down on the belief that their cruelty is sanctioned by a higher
power.”792 The satisfaction that a calamity may bring to believers, who have long been
awaiting divine justice, sanctimoniously warning against it, while secretly hoping for it,
longing for vindication, comes along with the justification that may move them to exacerbate

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its effects on those who supposedly deserve to be the victims, not extend a helping hand, or
worse, engage them with hostility and acts of violence.
The European law enforcement agency Europol observed that in 2020, “Jihadist
terrorists tried to portray the pandemic as a punishment from God to weaken Islam’s
enemies and encourage their followers to take advantage of the situation to perpetrate attacks
[…].”793 Not quite content with the effects of God’s punishment on their own, terrorist
organization IS, according to Europol, “incited its followers to perpetrate attacks to
exacerbate the current climate of fear linked to the pandemic.”*794
In summary, the fear of CDP produces an insurmountable justification for any act
of cruelty, by anybody, providing that such an act is declared to prevent greater harm from
happening. The fear of CDP is the ultimate moral enabler.

Top-down repression: promoting authoritarianism

Fourthly, the notion that disasters are caused by sinful individuals may give impetus to
repressive public policies, may intensify popular criticism on governments for not being
repressive enough, and increase authoritarian tendencies among the powers that be. How
strong that influence of CDP on governments and politicians may have been throughout
history, and may still be, is a matter of further study by historians and political scientists.
Researchers could look into a possible relationship between changes in public policy and
recent catastrophes, and into the reasons stated by policy makers for taking repressive
actions. While it is not uncommon for historians to see a causal connection between, for
instance, the plague and witch-hunts, they seem to be inclined to find causes in other factors,
than the quite reasonable desire – from a particular religious viewpoint – to prevent disasters.
For instance, explanations of this correlation between crises and the persecution of
witches given by historians include the proposal that social upheaval gave priests and
magistrates a pretense to assume extra powers to deal with sinful individuals795; the idea that
psychological trauma prompted scared individuals to transform their sorrow into anger
directed at envied or feared minorities (Jews, heretics) whom they already found hard to
tolerate – a process referred to as ‘scapegoating’†796; and the economic argument that killing
witches relieved communities from their responsibility to care for poor, elderly women who
had become widows.797 Overlooked, I believe, is the quite simple logic that minimizing sin

*
The same is possibly true for extreme anti-abortionists or homophobic bigots thinking about attacking their targets
of hatred in light of a disaster imagined to be caused by the sins of their respective enemies. So far, however, I
have not come across instances of ‘Samuel’-type CDP-motivated terrorism in Christian or Jewish circles.
†
The use of the word ‘scapegoat’ in referring, for instance, to women accused of witchcraft, or to Jews accused of
poisoning wells to spread the plague is inaccurate. The original scapegoat of Leviticus 16:8, 10, 20-22 was
intended to confer ritually the sins of the Israelites onto a goat that would then be sent away into the wilderness.
This was a great way of removing the threat of divine punishment from the midst of the community. In other
words, it was a means of disaster prevention. What is meant with the word ‘scapegoating’ in relationship to witch-
hunts and persecution of Jews is not the removal of sins from the people by means of some ritual retraction, but
the removal of supposedly sinful people who might draw in the wrath of God. Importantly, the original biblical
scapegoat was not sacrificially killed. It was banished. Women accused of witchcraft or Jews accused of causing
the plague were not banished, and they were therefore neither sacrificial goats, nor scapegoats. I propose they
were hunted and killed because they were believed to be magnets of divine anger.

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minimizes risk: of plagues, earthquakes, invading barbarians, and so on. “Historians of

politics rarely permit allusions to the workings of God’s providence to detain them,”
observed Blair Worden, Professor of History at Oxford University.798 Worden thinks this is
a mistake, and so do I. How many historical wars and other acts of violence might be better
understood (and future ones prevented) if interpreted as a means to fend off God’s anger
and secure his blessing? An exception to this pattern perhaps is Professor of Religious Studies
at the University of North Carolina, Bart Ehrman, who explained why Roman Emperor
Decius issued the first empire-wide decree in 249 CE establishing a mandatory standard for
religious worship of the traditional pagan gods, much to the detriment of the Christians.
This intended repression of religious behavior outside of the norm, according to Ehrman,
“was almost certainly designed to show a commitment to the gods throughout the entire
empire in a time of imperial crisis.” Several crises – economic malaise, political violence,
invasions by barbarians – indicated that the “proper worship of the gods was called for as
never before,” as Ehrman put it.799 State-sanctioned repression and intolerance may have
had many different causes, but let us not rule out the possibility that magistrates also,
sometimes, genuinely have had the best interest of the common good in mind when they
tried to adjust the human-divine relationship.
But much more interesting than a reinterpretation of historical events, is a new
understanding of the politics of those who believe in a wrathful god: a topic of study for
political scientists. The politics of Sunday business opening hours in Samoa is a case in point,
but a relatively innocuous one. Or so it seems. There is no telling where the promotion of
one brand of religion over another ends up. History shows that sometimes those who insult
the Heavens may get thrown to the lions. In the comparable state of Fiji, a group of
Australian and Fijian researchers found that native Christian nationalists tended to accuse
their government of having “provoked God to unleash His wrath, disciplining His chosen
people” – meaning native Fijians, not Jews – the evidence of which was the 2016 Cyclone
Winston.800 How had the government provoked God? By the astounding move to
constitutionally declare that “Religion and the State are separate.” In April 2016, a Facebook
contributor wrote about the storm that a month before had ravaged the country,

This very action [of adopting a new constitution] desecrates the traditional
leadership of this country and denied God His sovereignty over it, just like
what the Israelites did. Fiji has begun to have a taste of the wrath of God and
it will continue until we repent our sins.801

It is perhaps impossible to assess the real influence of such sentiments on public policy, but
it would be naïve to think that politicians would be completely immune to them.
Another political conflict affected by the fear of CDP is the serious issue of LGBT
rights in Ghana. In that West-African country, there is a certain Charismatic minister,
named Isaac Owusu Bempah, whom I already quoted above. Bempah is said to be

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nicknamed ‘the Nation’s Prophet’. He earned that epithet, according to one media outlet,
“due to the accuracy of the prophetic utterances” he tends to make.802 That is a matter of
opinion. With regard to the Covid pandemic, Bempah’s prophesies have not been
particularly accurate. At the beginning of March 2020, Bempah claimed he had prophesied
earlier that some type of virus would “kill a lot of people in 2020 if we do not pray
fervently.”803 Apparently, they had not prayed fervently enough. Three weeks later, he stated
optimistically that “God will surely bring the devastation caused by this disease to an end,”
and prophesied more specifically that “this coronavirus will vanish from the earth in three
weeks’ time.”804 One month later, Bempah changed his mind again. Because we had just
entered “the period of end times,” now, according to Bempah, “[n]o amount of prayer can
stop either coronavirus or any other plague from happening to the human race.”805
Apart from his presumption of being a prophet, Bempah believes himself to be a
kingmaker in Ghanaian politics, anointed by God himself. He claimed in 2021 that
sometime recently in South Africa “someone began to prophesy that God has anointed a
great prophet for Africa and that the said prophet is from Ghana,” and this impromptu
South-African oracle “heard the name, Reverend Isaac Owusu Bempah.” He would not be
“bragging,” Bempah declared, adding: “I swear by God, nobody can lead this country
without connecting himself to me.”806
All this would be just ridiculous, and irrelevant for understanding Ghanaian politics,
if not for the fact that Bempah is in fact being taken seriously. In January 2022, Bempah
claimed that an angel had taken the “key” to winning the 2024 elections from the ruling
New Patriotic Party (NPP). Why? Because the NPP had angered God just like the biblical
King Saul had done. Bempah advised the NPP leaders to humble themselves and pray. He
added, “We should also find out what Saul did before he was stripped [of his crown].” Here,
Bempah pretended not to know, falsely. Because we know exactly what Saul did wrong in
God’s eyes from the words of the prophet Samuel: Saul failed to exterminate all the
Amalekite people (1 Samuel 28:18), one of the peoples that God had earmarked for genocide
in the Old Testament. So who could Bempah have in mind? It would not be hard to find
modern-day Amalekites in the horrendously LGBT-hostile environment that is Ghana today.
The point is that in certain countries the fear of God’s wrath continues to play an essential
part in political decision-making.807
My more general assertion is that the fear of CDP tends to produce repressive policies
and to strengthen autocratic governments. Above I have shown that CDP has always been
feared as the consequence of human behavior of a kind that, by itself, has little or no effect
on the common good. My tentative answer to the question why that is so, is that the fear of
CDP matches only with the kind of deity that prefers repressive and intrusive measures from
an autocratic and absolutist ‘do-as-I-tell-you’ standpoint that allows for very little personal
freedom; a god who requires an autocratic government to enforce the repressive policies that
are needed to placate his anger. Argued the other way around, it disagrees with the belief in
a benevolent god, whose love is either unconditional, or who takes care to discriminate

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between individuals in how he treats them (if he or she interferes with them at all). A people
frightened by the threat of CDP, however, favors a government that does what it takes to
pacify the godhead and so prevent disasters. Such a government would be willing and able
to intrude in the private lives of individuals to quell any god-angering expression of their
private sinfulness.
Autocratic, repressive governments profit from the belief in an autocratic, repressive
god, whose threat of CDP legitimizes their power and policies. While the prevention of CDP
adds to the responsibilities of secular officials, the attribution of godly anger to the private
behavior of citizens also relieves them from some accountability, and could be a means of
mobilizing citizens in policing their neighbors, a practice referred to as ‘altruistic
punishment’. Results from psychological research suggest that those who believe in a god
who is all-powerful and engaged in earthly affairs are less inclined to engage in altruistic
punishment, possibly because they reason that if God punishes, they won’t have to. 808
However, it is likely they would come to the opposite conclusion if they will be punished
alongside their sinning neighbors. And so, for the purposes of justifying one’s position of
power, of shielding oneself from accountability, and of promoting ‘altruistic punishment’
among the citizenry, it makes sense to assume there has been a determined, concerted effort
by clerical and temporal authorities to foster the fear of CDP.
While I do not claim to have definitive proof that the fear of divine punishment has
generated, and is generating, more repressive governments than would otherwise be the case,
I believe it would be naïve to argue that the fear of CDP has had no worsening effect on the
recognition of civil right and liberties, taking into account the many examples given above
of religious and political leaders, from the ancient past to the 21st century, calling for
crackdowns on sinfulness to prevent disasters and crises and gain God’s blessing. Essential to
my argument that the fear of divine punishment has steered governments in a repressive
direction is the kind of sinfulness that has been supposed to make God angry. I think it is
abundantly clear that none of the types of ‘sin’ that have been alleged to stir God to punish
people in this world by causing disasters, with the possible, although dubious, exception of
abortion, are truly hurting the interests of other people at the individual level. If these sins
have ever done any damage to anybody against their will, it is to the fragile feelings of the
god imagined by religious conservatives. If that god were moved to anger only (or even a
little) by abuse of human rights and social injustice, I believe mankind would be so much
the better for it. But alas, throughout the centuries, governments have felt compelled to give
priority to prosecute offenses to God over murder, rape, robbery, and corruption, to the
detriment of solving social wrongs, like child poverty, homelessness, or paying people less
than a living wage, and at the expense of the personal freedom, health, and happiness of
incalculable ‘sinners’: those who were punished for doubting dogmas, for expressing a
different viewpoint, for feeling physical attraction to a person they were not supposed to,
and even at some point in time for dancing at a wedding. In short, for fully expressing their
fundamental human selves.

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Significance

What does this all mean going forward? First, we need to be suspicious of the arguments
used to defend a host of freedom-restricting policies advanced by religious conservatives that
at first glance appear to make no sense (for instance, that same-sex marriage is a slippery
slope to pedophilia or bestiality). If they are unwilling to engage in a debate with you based
on underlying facts or logic, don’t try to find those facts or logic. They know and don’t care
that neither their facts nor their logic add up. But we should also not discard the proponents
of such policies as simply deluded or cynical. Quite possibly, what is really driving them is a
thirst for divine approval and a deep-down fear of divine punishment, which they find, for
various reasons, difficult to acknowledge in front of a secular or more mildly religious
audience.
When public figures express a fear of punishment from the Heavens above, they may
be warning against something horrific they are truly expecting. But they may also simply be
using a rhetorical device, and nothing more. There is good reason to be cynical. It is easier
to sell their message to a fearful public, as well as an assortment of price-inflated products to
survive God’s punishment, like Jim Bakker’s gigantic “emergency food buckets,” when
disasters appear at people’s doorsteps.809 When, even in the late summer of 2022, at a time
that Covid-19 appeared to be quite well under control, a deeply Christian U.S. politician
warned that the pandemic was sent by God and still an enormous threat to the lives of
ordinary Americans, we should suspect that he only did so because then no more impressive
calamity was available to him. Had there been one, he would likely have used that threat
instead to make the point, in his own horrifying words, that “homosexuals must be tried,
convicted and executed.”*
In 2017, a particularly hateful ‘street preacher’, named Ruben Israel (d. 2023), led a
small gang of belligerent Christian demonstrators in New Orleans in screaming horrific
homophobic insults through a megaphone to the participants of the ‘Southern Decadence
Festival’. The day after, he was asked to what extent he thought his action had been
“successful.” Israel answered that he thought it had been “very successful,” because “God
didn’t destroy the city.”810 Did he truly believe he had saved New Orleans from disaster?
Probably not. His answer was too flippant to be taken literally, and he was clearly motivated
not by the desire to save anybody, but by being in the spotlights and having the enjoyment
of calling festivalgoers ‘trash’ and ‘faggots’ in their faces. But the justification of staving off
God’s wrath was sufficiently acceptable for it to be a usable argument in defense of his
obnoxious behavior.

*
Heerak Christian Kim, a South-Korea-born congressional candidate from Virginia for the U.S. Republican Party,
declared: “Many Christians believe that Covid-19 is punishment of God for homosexuality in America, and that’s
why God killed one million plus Americans through Covid. [...] Christians are saying until homosexuality is
illegalized [sic] in the United States of America, Americans can expect God to punish America, send plague after
plague. And Covid-19 is only, like, the first plague. And there are more plagues coming, you know” (Kim, Twitter
Post, August 30, 2022).

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In December 2022, a virtually unknown Member of the U.S. House of

Representatives named Mike Johnson shared his fear with an online audience that the
United States was on the verge of receiving severe punishment. The country, Johnson said,
was “hanging by a thread.” In October 2023, the same politician again addressed the topic
of divine judgment. “God is about to do something,” he warned. Asked to explain the
reasons for God’s displeasure, Johnson pointed out, first, that “church attendance in
America dropped below 50% for the first time in our history.” Perhaps alluding to the Bible's
literal truth, he added a second argument: “the number of people who do not believe in
absolute truth is now above the majority for the first time.” Furthermore, Johnson said, “one
in three teen girls contemplated suicide last year.” It was unclear whether he thought
‘contemplating suicide’ is itself a sin worthy of punishment, or the fact that society allows
such contemplation at all. But most worrying was Johnson’s fourth reason for divine
punishment. “One in four high school students identifies as something other than straight,”
Johnson observed, immediately adding, as if wanting to underline the serious sinfulness of
non-straight sexuality, “We’re losing the country.” In short, Johnson, like a modern-day
Bernardino, believes homosexual youths endanger the entire American people by adding to
the country’s collective sins and inviting God’s collective punishment. Unless we all meekly
kneel down in prayer, Johnson said, God might “allow our nation to enter a time of
judgment for our collective sins.”*811
This is vile. Johnson has a right to disapprove of people who engage in homosexual
behavior. But to blame them for a future disaster that endangers the entire country is
unconscionable.
Less than a month later, Johnson’s Republican fellow-members of Congress elected
him unanimously the 56th Speaker of the House. It is not likely that all those fellow-
Republican representatives share Johnson’s belief in the concept of CDP. According to
Johnson himself, “maybe 45, close to 50 people” in the House of Representatives would be
“truly committed Christ followers” like himself, and supposedly be believers who would also
fear God’s vengeance for the same reasons. But still, 45 to 50 people is not an insignificant
portion of the 435-member House of Representatives. These ‘true’ Christian lawmakers
might be politically motivated, not by what ensures the people's health, happiness and
prosperity, but by doing whatever averts God’s collective punishment. Tim Dickinson, the
reporter who unearthed Johnson’s fear of CDP, made a significant observation. Johnson’s
belief in a wrathful God, wrote Dickinson, “raises questions about whether the Republican,
who’s now second in line for the presidency, is leveraging his power […] to appease an angry
deity […].”812 The point is that we should seriously consider the possibility that some people
at the highest levels of government are driven to take otherwise irrational decisions, which

*
Johnson told a radio interviewer on the Evangelical ‘Don Kroah Show’ in 2008 that “objective” historians blame
the fall of the Roman Empire on “rampant homosexual behavior” (Zisman, “New House Speaker …”). Apart
from the question of which historians would make that claim, this raises the matter of whether Johnson believes
God punished the Romans for their sexuality and thinks the disaster at Sodom could be repeated.

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have absolutely dreadful far-reaching consequences, because they themselves, or the voters
they pander to, fear the punishment of a vindictive deity.
When politicians or politically engaged religious leaders warn against the wrath of
God, we should always ask ourselves, are they sincerely worried, or do they want others to
worry? This is important, because the answer could dispel people’s fear and impede their
manipulation. But whichever is the case, this is often difficult to tell from reports in the
media. When journalists report on priests and politicians who link any crisis to the ‘wrath
of God’ for the sins of their detractors, they should do more than quote, and implicitly
ridicule; they should try to lay bare the logic behind such claims of divine punishment, or
rather the lack thereof. Who, exactly, are causing God’s wrath, and why would he be harming
people who are not? Why can he not choose a more precise manner of punishment? Why is
this method of correction apparently so unsuccessful? Can’t this imagined god discern
between people with varying degrees of supposed sinfulness, or won’t he? Is he lacking in
omnipotence or ethics? The answers may well turn out to be disappointingly superficial, and
reveal that the threat of CDP is nothing but a scare tactic.
However, we should not close our eyes to the fear that is real. Because for a lot of
people, to some extent, we should assume, it is real. The fact that we know so little statistically
about the prevalence of this fear, is quite frustrating. When in 2014, the Pew Research
Center conducted a survey among American adults about their views on climate change, just
three options were offered: climate change wasn’t real (“There is no solid evidence that the
Earth is getting warmer”), it was nothing out of the ordinary (“The Earth is getting warmer
mostly because of natural patterns in the Earth’s environment”), or it was caused by human
behavior (“The Earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity such as burning
fossil fuels”).813 How would a person respond who did not deny climate change but believed
in a supernatural cause? Surveys like these keep fearers of CDP or prophesied end-time
disasters invisible. And yet, they definitely exist, as I have tried to show.
Because some people have a real fear of CDP, for progressive policy makers timing
may be essential. With a tsunami fresh on everybody’s minds in Samoa, allowing a fair to be
organized on a Sunday may not be prudent. Just as it might not be wise to have a gay pride
parade in the midst of the hurricane season. This is not a capitulation to bigotry, but a way
to allow people the time they need to adjust to the fact that divine collective punishment
does not immediately and necessarily follow private ‘sins’. For believers who are firmly set in
the mental framework of the Abrahamic faiths, the fear of God’s indiscriminate anger is not
at all irrational, and not necessarily selfish and bigoted either. You may have genuine
compassionate concerns about the wellbeing of your family when your country, let’s say,
legalizes same-sex marriage, if you believe that this may cause floods, plagues, and
earthquakes. But the same compassionate concerns should compel us to take very seriously
the repercussions that the fear of CDP has for those unfortunate ones, who happen to be
imagined as the mortal enemy within, because they invite Heavenly retribution. Their lives
are at stake.

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So, real work needs to be done within that mental framework of faith, and to bend
it to accommodate the idea that God would not be quite so primitive. This is why priests of
all denominations have a heavy responsibility for removing the fear of divine punishment in
this life and in this world. Unfortunately, they are at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the fearmongers
amongst them. Their adversaries have the Bible squarely on their side. But they could take
an example from an exceptional woman who lived six centuries ago: Julian, or Juliana, of
Norwich (1343-1416?).
In 1373, at the age of 30, Julian’s life was almost over. She had seen more than half
of the population of her native city Norwich in England die from the Black Death,814 and
had suffered many personal tragedies. It must have occurred to her that it was possible God
was angry with the world, and that he had caused the illness as a form of punishment. And
now she had become seriously ill herself. But she recovered, and she arose from her sickbed,
somehow, with a wealth of wisdom. Perhaps it was a kind of near-death experience that gave
her a series of revelations into the nature of God. One revelation addressed that ubiquitous
theme of whether the plague was God judging people for their bad behavior. The answer
she received was a resounding no.

I saw verily that our Lord was never wrath, he never shall: for he is God, he
is good, he is truth, he is love, and he is peace; and his might, his wisdom,
his charity, and his unity suffereth him not to be wrath: for I saw truly that it
is against the property of his might to be wrath; and against the property of
his wisdom, and against the property of his goodness.815

Indeed. How could a good god use extortion to convince by threatening the innocent? How
could a good god be anything else but the best version of ourselves: that is to say, truth, love,
and peace, anywhere, all the time?

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Index
1 Chronicles – see Bible Astrology
1 Kings – see Bible Atheism
1 Samuel – see Bible Athens, Athenians
2 Chronicles – see Bible Atrahasis
2 Kings; see Bible Attila
4Chan Augsburg
666 – see Mark of the Beast Augustine, Saint
9/11 Australia
Aaron Austria
Abijah, King of Judah Ayyadurai, Shiva
Abortion Azerbaijan
Abraham Baal
Achan Bacco, Pasquale
Actaeon Baden, Joel S.
Adam Baghdad, Ira
Adams, President John Bainimarama, Voreqe
Adeboye, Enoch Bajracharya, Kapil
Africa Bakker, Jim
Aids – see HIV/Aids Baligh, Randa
Akita Baltic states
Akua Agyeiwaa (AkuBless), Harriet Bamberg, Germany
Akufo-Addo, Nana Bannon, Steve
Alabama Baoan, China
Alaska Barbee, Charles
Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara Barcelona, Spain
Alfonso X, King of Castile Barsanuphius
Allah Bastet
Al-Qaeda Baxter, Irvin
Al-Quraishi, Abu Hamzah Becciu, Cardinal Angelo
Al-Sadr, Muqtada Beckwith, Byron de la
Alexandria, Egypt Beijing, China
Alternative für Deutschland Belfast, Northern Ireland
Alvarado, Pedro de Belgium
Amalekites Bempah, Isaac Owusu
Amazon region Benedict XV, Pope
Ambila, Jacques Benson, Robert H.
Ambrose, Saint Bergoglio, Jorge Mario – see Francis, Pope
American Family Association Berlin, Germany
Ammon Bern, Switzerland
Amnesty International Bernardino of Siena, Saint
Amorites Berry, Robert
Amsterdam, the Netherlands Bethlehem Declaration
Andrew, Steven Bible
Anglican Church Biden, Joseph R.
Antichrist Black Death – see Plague
Antioch Black Lives Matter
Apia (Samoa) Blasphemy
Apocalypse – see eschatology Bodin, Jean
Apollo Böhm, Hans
Apophenia Bologna, Italy
Apep Bolsonaro, Jair
Appeal for the Church and the World Bommarito, Luigi
Armageddon Borowicz, Stephanie
Arnobius Brasseaux, Shawn
Asa, King of Judah Brazil
Asclepius Brentner, Jonathan
Ashtar Brighton, England
Ashtaroth Brown, Ian
Assyrians Brueggemann, Walter
Astana Bubonic plague – see Plague

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Buddhism Cremona, Italy

Bujumbura (Burundi) Criswell, Wallie
Burke, Cardinal Raymond Cronos – see Zeus
Burundi Crucifixion
Bush, George W. CSIRO
Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate – see Ukrainian Orthodox Cuernavaca
Greek-Catholic Church Cueva, Beatriz de la
Cabrera de Armida, Concepción Cumming, Georgia (United States)
Caffarra, Cardinal Carlo Cyclopes
California Cyprian, bishop of Carthage
Calvin, John Cyprus
Cameron, David Da Vinci Code (movie)
Canaanites Dallas Theological Seminary
Canada Daniel, Metropolitan of Kurgan and Belozersky
Canopus Daniel – see Bible
Care (moral foundation) Darby, John Nelson
Carinthia, Austria David, King of the Israelites
Carthaginians Davis, Kim
Castro Castro, Ramón Day of Doom – see End Times
Catania, Italy Death penalty
Cathers, Richard Decius, Emperor
Catholicism Deffinbaugh, Robert L.
Cavalcoli, Giovanni Dein, Simon
CDP – see collective divine punishment Delpini, Mario
Chalcedon Presbyterian Church Demetrianus
Chaldeans Democratic Party (United States)
Chambers, Joseph Demotic Chronicle
Charles I, King of England Den Bosch, the Netherlands
Charles V, Emperor Depuydt, Leo
Chicken pox Devil – see Satan
Chimienti, Michele Dickinson, Tim.
China Dieng plateau, Java
Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Dio, Lucius Cassius
Cho, David Yonggi Diodorus Siculus
Chow, Daniel Dionysius
Chrysostom, John DNA
Chur, Switzerland Dobson, James
Church Militant Donkor, Akua
Chwilczyński, Cezary Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Civitas Christiana Dwapar Yuga
Clarke, Adam Dyer, Alan D.
Clayton Tunnel accident Earthquakes
Clinton, Chelsea Ebolavirus
Clinton, Hillary R. Ecuador
Clinton, William Egypt
Cohen, Morris Ehrman, Bart D.
Cohn, Norman Eleganti, Marian
Colorado Springs Elisabeth I, Queen of England
Communion, Holy Elvin, Mark
Comoros End of Time – see End Times
Congo, Democratic Republic of the Enheduana
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith England
Constable, Thomas L. Enki
Constantine the Great, Emperor Enlil
Constantinople Epicureans
Copenhagen, Denmark Erbaş, Ali
Corff, Oliver Erwin, Hank
Coronavirus – see Covid-19 Esau
Corruption Eschatology – see End Times
Cortusi, Guglielmo Esculapius – see Asclepius
Cosa Nostra Ethiopia
Sens, Council of Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity
Covid-19 Etna, Mount
Craig, William Lane Eucherius

186
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European Union Glorious Word Ministry International

Europol Gluttony
Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea Gomorrah – see Sodom and Gomorrah
Euthanasia Gracida, Rene Henry
Evangelicalism Graham, Franklin
Eve Graham, Jesse
Everest, Mount Graham, Ron
Evers, Medgar Grant, Ulysses S.
Ezekiel – see Bible Gratian, Emperor
Facebook Great Reset
Faggioli, Massimo Great Tribulation
Fairness (moral foundation) Greece
Falwell, Jerry Gregory I, Pope
Famine Guatemala
Fasting Guinea
Fatima Haas, Volker
Felsenburgh, Julian Hades
Ferdinand, King of Aragon Hagee, John
Ferrara, Italy Haidt, Jonathan
Fiji Hail
Filaret, Patriarch Haiti
Finland Hakh, Samuel
Fire Hamburg
Flag burning Hanska, Jussi
Flagellation Harris, Kamala
Flood, the Harvey, Hurricane
Floods Hasan, Syed Tufail
Florence, Italy Hathor
Florida Hawaii
Flurry, Gerald Hazimeh, Nadia
Flurry, Stephen Hell
Flynn, Joseph Henkin, Eitam
Flynn, Michael Henkin, Na'ama
Focus on the Family Henley-on-Thames, England
Folau, Israel Henry, Matthew
Fornication – see sex before marriage Heresy
Fourth Geneva Convention Hermanto, Yanto
France Hesiod
Francis, John Hesse, Germany
Francis, Pope Hildesheim
Franklin, Alan Hinduism
Franklin, Percy Hippopotamus
Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster Hiroshima, Japan
Freemasonry Hittites
Freising, Germany HIV/Aids
French Revolution Hivites
Frenzel, Claudius Sebastian Holmgaard, Sanne Bech
Friuli, Italy Holocaust
Furrow Jr., Buford O. Holy Roman Empire
G5 mobile network Homosexuality – see LGBT
Gade, Anna Horn, Trent
Garside, Roger Horus
Gates, Bill Horwitz, Danny
Gay – see LGBT Hoshea, King of Israel
Gaza, Palestine Hoskins, Richard Kelly
Geme-Nanna Huailai
Genesis – see Bible Huguenots
Genoa, Italy Human Rights Watch
Genocide Huns
Germany Hurricanes
Ghana Hyppolitus
Ghana Freedom Party Iceland
Gilgamesh Idolatry
Giorgianni, Angelo Illinois

187
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Inana Kathmandu, Nepal

Inaros Katrina, hurricane
India Katz, Sheila
Indonesia Kazakhstan
Ionians Keller, Bill
Instrumentum Laboris Kennedy Jr., Robert F.
Iran Kennedy, President John F.
Iraq Kennedy, Robert F.
Ireland Kentucky
Irenaeus Khoiak (month)
Isaac King, Tim
Isaac, Hurricane Klaits, Joseph
Isabella, Queen of Castile Kohlberg, Lawrence
Isaiah (Bible book) Korte, Gerard de
Ishihara, Shintaro Kowalska, Faustina
Isidore of Seville Kraft, András
ISIS Kremlin
Islam K-TV
Israel Ku Klux Klan
Israel, Ruben Kug-Nanna
Israelites Kunneman, Hank
Italy Kyoto
iTaukei Labuhan
Jacob Lactantius
Jacobus de Varagine Laden, Osama bin
Jamaica Lagos, Nigeria
James, Terry LaHaye, Tim
Jamestown, Virginia Laun, Andreas
Japan Lebanon
Jebusites Legrain, Georges
Jefferson, Thomas Leiter, Noson
Jeremiah – see Bible Lenga, Jan Pawel
Jeroboam, King of Israel Leo XIII, Pope
Jesus Christ Leone, Michael de
Jewry Levin, Yehuda
Job Leviticus – see Bible
Johannes of Winterthur Liberia
John Paul II, Pope Licentiousness
John, Saint (Apostle) Life Site News
Johnson, Lewis Lindsey, Hal
Johnson, Mike Lisbon
Jonah Lithuania
Jonah (book) – see Bible Loew ben Bezalel, Judah – see Maharal
Jong, Henk de Lombards
Jorgenson, Brad Longyu, Empress Dowager
Joseph, Amgad Lord of Hosts Church
Joseph, Craig Lot
Joshua Low Countries
Joyce, Kathryn Loyalty (moral foundation)
Judah Lucarelli, Rita
Judaism Luther, Martin
Judges – see Bible Luzern, Switzerland
Judgment Day – see End Times Macedo, Edir
Julian of Norwich Madrigal-Borloz, Victor
Jupiter Magufuli, John
Juru Kunci Mahabharata
Justin Martyr Mahama, President John D.
Justinian, Emperor Maharal
Kali Maier, Franz
Kali Yuga Maine
Kalki, Krishna Maistre, Joseph de
Kangxi Emperor Makhlouf, Saint Charbel
Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein von Malagrida, Gabriel
Karnak, Egypt Malalas

188
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Mali Nepal
Malielegaoi, Tuilaepa Sailele Neptune
Manasseh Netherlands
Mandate of Heaven New Delhi, India
Mariette, Auguste New Orleans
Mark of the Beast New Patriotic Party (Ghana)
Markell, Jan New York
Martey, Emmanuel Newman, Cardinal John H.
Marto, Bishop Antonio dos Santos Nicaea, Second Council of
Marx, Cardinal Reinhard Nichiren
Marx, Karl Nicotra, Monsignor
Mary Magdalene, Saint Nigeria
Mary, Virgin Nike
Mas Asih Surakso Hargo Niklashausen
Masada, Judea Nineveh
Mascali, Italy Ninšubur
Mataeliga, Alapati Noah
Matsuzaki Kodo Northern Ireland
Mattei, Roberto De Norway
Matthew, Hurricane Norwich, United Kingdom
Mazuz, Meir Numbers – see Bible
Mbah Maridjan Nyabenda, Pascal
Mbujimayi, Democratic Republic of the Congo O’Connor, Aidan
McBreen, Kelen Obama, Barack H.
McQuilliams, Larry Steven Odo, Cardinal of Châteauroux
Mecca, Saudi Arabia Oldenburg, Paul-Wladimir, Herzog von
Medina, Saudi Arabia Oliveira, Plinio Corrêa de
Megiddo – see Armageddon Omaha, Nebraska
Merapi, mount Omella, Cardinal Juan José
Merrell, Verne Jay Onuris
Methodist Church Ghana Origen
Methodist Institute on Religion and Democracy Orthodox Christianity
Mexico Osiris
Milan, Italy Ostrogoths
Millette, Dan Oxford University
Mills, Maurice Pachamama
Mississippi Padua, Italy
Miyolangsangma Palestine
Moab Palmer, William P.
Monroe, Dylan Louis Palusalue, Afemata
Monrovia, Liberia Paradise, John
Montaigne, Michel de Parikshit, King
Moral foundations (theory) Paris, France
Morecraft, Joseph Paucapalea
Moses Paul II, Pope
Moss, Candida Paul III, Pope
Mount St Helens Paul, Saint
Muchinguri, Oppah Peabody, Andrew P.
Mueller, Gerhard Pemu
Muhammad, Prophet Pennington, Kenneth J.
Munich, Germany Pennsylvania
Murphy, Andrew Pentecostalism
Mut, Precinct of Perizzites
Mutsaerts, Robert Peru
Myanmar Pestilence
Nagasaki, Japan Peta, Thomas
Napolioni, Antonio Petesis, Prophecy of
NATO Pfeffer, Klaus
Nazareth Philadelphia Church of God
Ndayizeye, Joseph Philistines
Ndeeba, Uganda Phillips, Grant
Nebraska Phineas Priesthood
Nectanebo Phineas, or Phinehas
Negri, Luigi Piedmont-Sardinia

189
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Pirbright Institute Sanchez, Juan

Pius IX, Pope Sandhagen, Remberto
Pius V, Pope Sandy, Hurricane
Pius VI, Pope Sanhe-Pinggu earthquake
Plague Sant’Alfio
Plandemic Indoctornation Santiago de los Caballeros
Pliny the Younger (Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus) Santos, Lúcia dos
Plutarch Sapu Jagad
Poland Sasagawa, Agnes
Pombal, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, Marquis of Satan
Pompeii Satya Yuga
Pornography Saul, King of the Israelites
Porphyry Scandinavia
Port-Royal Schnabel-Schüle, Helga
Portugal Schneider, Athanasius
Prague Schönborn, Cardinal Christoph
Pratt, Titus K. Awotwi Scola, Cardinal Angelo
Prayer Scydrothermis, king of Sinope
Presbyterian Church of Ghana Sebennytos
Presence Ministries Second Coming – see End Times
Promiscuity Seddiqi, Hojatoleslam Kazem
Protestantism (mainstream) Sekhmet
Pu’udu Selva, T.
Pujats, Cardinal Jānis Senegal
Purity Seoul, South Korea
Purity and sanctity (moral foundation) September 11, 2001 – see 9/11
Putin, Vladimir Serwadda, Joseph
Qing dynasty Sex before marriage
Quiñones, Bernardo de Benavente Sexual sin
Quito, Ecuador Sharubutu, Usman Nuhu
Quran Shintoism
Qurban, Majdi Allawi Haqq Shukaletuda
Ra Shuttlesworth, Jonathan
Racism Sicily, Italy
Rapture Sierra Leone
Rapture Ready Siloam, tower of
Ratigan, Brian Silvester, David
Remnant, The Sixtus IV, Pope
Repentance Slavery
Republican Party (United States) Sodom and Gomorrah
Respect for authority (moral foundation) Solimeo, Luiz Sérgio
Ritchie, Robert E. Sopocko, Michael
Robertson, Pat Soros, George
Roe, Robert South Africa
Roman Empire South Korea
Rome, Italy Southern Decadence Festival
Romney, Mitt Spain
Rostock Spalding, Victoria
Rothschild family Spanish flu
Rousseau Spurgeon, Charles
Rugombo Pentecostal Church Sputnik
Russia Sri Lanka
Russian Orthodox Church Stampa, La
Ruttenberg, Danya Stedman, Ray
Ryholt, Kim Stone, Perry
Sabbath – see Sunday rest Stone, Roger
Saint Bartholomew massacre Storch, Beatrix von
Sako, Cardinal Raphaël Louis Strandberg, Todd
Salamias Strickland, Joseph
Salvian Sudan
Same-sex marriage Sueki, Fumihiko
Samoa Suetonius
Samuel (prophet) Sumer
San Pedro de los Pozos Sunday rest

190
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

Sutton, Bishop Ray R. Vanderpuye, Martin

Svensson, Jonas Vatican
Swank, J. Grant Vatican City
Sweating sickness Veluw, Bert van
Switzerland Vespasian, Emperor
Syria Vesta
Szczepanski, Kallie Vestal Virgins
Tacitus Vesuvius, mount
Tagaloa Victory (goddess)
Talmud Victory Church
Tampa (Florida) Vienna (Austria)
Tanzania Vietnam
Tartars Viganò, Carlo Maria
Tenbatsu Villani, Giovanni
Tenpo (era) Volcanic eruption
Tertullian Voltaire (François Marie Arouet)
TFP Voodoo
Theodicy Voris, Michael
Thonis-Heracleion Wagner, Gerhard Maria
Tiber (river) Walford, Stephen
Tiberius, Emperor Wallis Budge, E.A.
Titus War
Tobin, Bishop Thomas J. Wertamiunne
Tokyo Westen, John-Henry
Tooley, Mark WHO (World Health Organization)
Torah Wilczyński, Leonard
Torres, Mariana de Jesús Wildmon, Tim
Totila Wiles, Rick
Tradition, Family and Property, Society for the Defense of Wilmer, Heiner
– see TFP Wilson, Bill
Transgender – see LGBT Wimmer, Willy
Trapp, John Winston, Cyclone
Treta Yuga Worden, Blair
Truman, Harry R. World Eonomic Forum
Trump, Donald J. World War I
Tsunami World War II
Turkey Worshippers’ Family Ministries
Turks Wrocław
Twitter Wuhan
Uganda Würzburg
UKIP Xenophanes
Ukraine Xenophobia
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Xi Jinping
Ukrainian Orthodox Church Xuanhua
Ukrainian Orthodox Greek-Catholic Church Yemen
Ulm Yogyakarta
Una, Mallam Sham Yoido Full Gospel Church
UNAIDS Yongzheng Emperor
United States Zarum, Rabbi Raphael
United States National Council of Jewish Women Zechariah – see Bible
Universal Church of the Kingdom of God Zeigler, Lewis
Upolu, Samoa Zen Ze-kiun, Joseph
Ur Zeus
Urbinia Zhili
Uríbarri Bilbao, Gabino Zhou Dynasty
USA Christian Church Zidon
Utanapishtim Zimri
Vaccination Żórawina
Van Meter, Doug Zublick, David
Vandals

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192
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

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Notes

1
Noles, “Is America the Modern Sodom?”
2
Hall, Blanton, & Prentice, “Being Much Better and No Worse Than Others,” 214.
3
Pope Francis. Letter to the Faithful for the Month of May 2020.
4
Pope Francis. Prayer of the Rosary to Invoke an End to the Pandemic. May 1, 2021.
5
World Health Organization. “One Year Since the Emergence of COVID-19 Virus Variant Omicron.”
6
Ambrose, Selected Works and Letters, 52.
7
Bernardine, Sermons, 241.
8
Ossai, “‘It Is the Antichrist. Can’t You See?’”
9
Gowans, “Wrocław Priest Blames Coronavirus on Homosexuality and Abortion.”
10
Tyurenkov, “Metropolitan Daniel (Dorovskikh).”
11
Isiko, “Religious Construction of Disease,” 83.
12
“Chaldean Patriarch Sako.”
13
Rocchi, “Coronavirus Covid-19.”
14
Human Rights Watch, 47-49.
15
Baden & Moss. “Blaming Ebola on God’s Wrath Is Worse Than You Think.”
16
Cohen, “Moral Aspects of the Criminal Law,” 996. Emphasis added.
17
Palmer, Treatise on the Church of Christ, Volume II, 319.
18
Lebreux, William Palmer of Magdalen College: An Ecclesiastical Don Quixote.
19
Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary, 199.
20
Ibid.
21
Ata, “A Message From Our Lady.” Emphasis added.
22
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Vol. III, 44-45.
23
Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia, 30.
24
Rawlinson, History of Herodotus, 340.
25
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Vol. I, 279.
26
Ibid., Vol. I, 451.
27
Suetonius, The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, 391.
28
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Vol. V, 15.
29
Ibid., Vol. V, 47.
30
Ibid., Vol. V, 47-49.
31
Ibid., Vol. VI, 205.
32
“A hymn to Inana.” Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), c.4.07.3.
33
Clay tablet found at Ur. ETCSL 4.07.02, CDLI no. P346192.
34
“Inana and Shu-kale-tuda,” lines 168-169, 185-186, 214-215.
35
Ibid., 170-175.
36
Ibid., 188.
37
Ibid., 216-217.
38
“Lament for Sumer and Ur.” ETCSL 2.02.03, CDLI no. P469682.
39
Joseph, “Divine Wrath in Ancient Egypt,” 42.
40
Ibid., 43.
41
Ibid.
42
Spell 398 of the Coffin Texts. Joseph, “Divine Wrath in Ancient Egypt,” 42.
43
Joseph, “Divine Wrath in Ancient Egypt,” 57.
44
Guilhoe, “Myth of the Heavenly Cow.”
45
Joseph, “Divine Wrath in Ancient Egypt,” 53.
46
Ibid., 57.
47
Ibid., 30.
48
Lucarelli, “Illness as Divine Punishment,” 57.
49
Ibid., 60.
50
Ryholt, Narrative Literature from the Tebtunis Temple Library, 81.
51
Ibid., 79.
52
Matthey, “The Once and Future King of Egypt,” 51.
53
Ryholt, Narrative Literature from the Tebtunis Temple Library, 80.
54
Matthey, “The Once and Future King of Egypt,” 57.
55
Ryholt, Narrative Literature from the Tebtunis Temple Library, 80.
56
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Vol. II, 307.
57
Ibid., Vol. III, 75.
58
Ibid., Vol. III, 407.
59
Ibid., Vol. IV, 289.

211
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60
Plutarch, The Delay of the Divine Justice, 20, note 1.
61
Ibid., 34, note 1.
62
Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 238-247.
63
Chester & Duncan, “The Bible, Theodicy and Christian Responses,” 309.
64
Constable, Notes on Genesis, 150.
65
Dionysius, The Roman Antiquities, 74.
66
Ibid., 75.
67
Tacitus, The Histories, 199.
68 Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity, 86.
69
For an English translation of the two letters sent by Pliny to the historian Tacitus, see
https://igppweb.ucsd.edu/~gabi/sio15/lectures/volcanoes/pliny.html.
70
Dio, Roman History, 309.
71
Ibid., 405.
72
Ibid., 407.
73
Romans 5:9
74
1 Thessalonians 1:10
75
John 3:36
76
Lactantius, “The Divine Institutes,” 546-7.
77
Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity, 185.
78
Ibid., 201.
79
Tertullian, “Apology,” 93.
80
Ibid., 91.
81
Cyprian, “Treatise V: An Address to Demetrianus,” 1049.
82
Ibid., 1051.
83
Arnobius of Sicca, The Case Against the Pagans, 61.
84
Taylor, Arguments, 48.
85
Opsopaus, The Secret Texts of Hellenic Polytheism, 201.
86
Ambrose, Some of the Principal Works, 489.
87
Ibid., 943.
88
Ibid., 939.
89
Ibid., 416.
90
Ibid., 417.
91
Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei, 214. Emhasis added.
92
Augustine, City of God, 114.
93
Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, Encyclical, November 1885.
94
Rawlinson, History of Herodotus, 340.
95.
Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, at 1 Samuel 15:1-9.
96
Ibid., emphasis added.
97
Bernardine, Sermons, 50.
98
Spurgeon, Earthquake, But Not Heartquake, 7.
99
Malalas, Chronography, § 12.313.
100
Trapp at Numbers 16:32.
101
Hammerl, “The Earthquake of January 25th, 1348,” 234.
102
Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival, 115.
103
Phillips, “‘A Loving Rode of Threatening Wrath’.”
104
H.L., Truest and Largest Account, i.
105
Ibid., ii.
106
Anonymous. Verses on the Late Earthquakes, 3.
107
H.L., Truest and Largest Account, 9.
108
Pereira, Opportunity of a Disaster, 8.
109
Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought, 241.
110
Pereira, Opportunity of a Disaster, 8.
111
Malagrida, Juizo da Verdadeira Causa do Terremoto, 3-4. (In the original Portuguese: “Sabe pois, oh Lisboa, que os unicos
destruidores de tantas casas, e Palacios, os assoladores de tantos Templos, e Conventos, homicidas de tantos seus
habitadores, os incendios devoradores de tantos thesouros [...]; naõ saó Estrellas, naõ saó vapores, ou exhalaçoés, [...] mas
saó unicamente os nossos intoleraveis peccados.” Translated: “Know then, oh Lisbon, that the only destroyers of so many
houses, and Palaces, the ravagers of so many Temples, and Convents, murderers of so many of their inhabitants, the
burning fires that devour so many treasures [...]; they are not Stars, they are not vapors, or exhalations, [...] but only our
intolerable sins.”)
112
Ibid., 4.
113
Ibid., 7-8.
114
Ibid., 23.
115
Ibid., 12.
212
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116
Robertson, January 13, 2010, on ‘The 700 Club’, Christian Broadcasting Network.
117
United Nations Haiti, “Faces of Recovery.”
118
“Haiti: Wagner hält Voodoo als Ursache.” In the original German: “Aber es ist schon interessant, dass in Haiti 90 Prozent
Anhänger von Voodoo-Kulten sind.”
119
Westen, “New Orleans City Council President.”
120
“Iranian Cleric Blames Quakes on Promiscuous Women.”
121
Muhajir, “Going beyond religious explanations for Indonesia’s natural disasters.”
122
Ibid.
123
Schencking, The Great Kantō Earthquake, xvii.
124
Ibid.
125
Bressan, “Namazu the Earthshaker.”
126
Schencking, The Great Kantō Earthquake, 116-117.
127
Dwyer, “Divine Retribution?”
128
Jackson, “Tokyo Mayor.”
129
McLaughlin, “What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11?,” 295.
130
Jackson, “Tokyo Mayor.”
131
McLaughlin, “What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11?,” 296.
132
Dwyer, “Divine Retribution?”; McLaughlin, “What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11?,” 296.
133
McLaughlin, “What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11?,” 295.
134
Console, “Radio Maria, De Mattei del CNR.” In the original Italian: “Alla colpa del peccato originale si aggiungono le nostre
colpe personali e quelle collettive, e mentre Dio premia e castiga nell’eternità, è sulla terra che premia o castiga le nazioni.”
135
“Terremoto, il Vaticano Condanna Radio Maria.” In the original Italian: “Si può pensare che il terremoto possa essere un
richiamo, un castigo [...] Le unioni gay sono un peccato? Si capisce [...]. Un omosessuale è una persona che pecca contro
natura. Due uomini che stanno insieme cosa sono? Peccatori.”
136
De Mattei, Yes, Natural Disasters Can Be Divine Punishment for Human Iniquity.
137
Lavigne et al., “People’s Behaviour in the Face of Volcanic Hazards,” 278-9.
138
Ibid., 282.
139
Slatta, The Mythical West, 351.
140
Blong, Volcanic Hazards, 176.
141
Slatta, The Mythical West, 350.
142
Tyas et al., “Caring for Labuhan Merapi Tradition,” 70.
143
Ibid., 71.
144
Sabandar, “Labuhan Merapi”; Gade, “Mount Merapi, Prayer and Disaster.”
145
Gade, “Mount Merapi, Prayer and Disaster.”
146
Tyas et al., “Caring for Labuhan Merapi Tradition,” 70
147
Hodal, “Merapi Volcano’s ‘Spirit Keeper’ ….”
148
Muhajir, “Going beyond religious explanations for Indonesia’s natural disasters.”
149
“Pastor John Hagee on Christian Zionism.”
150
Duck, “A Fallen Civilization.”
151
Ungurean, “The Lonely Christian.”
152
Ungurean, “Dividing God’s Land and Swift Judgment.”
153
Ibid.
154
Knabb, Rhome, & Brown, Tropical Cyclone Report Hurricane Katrina, 11.
155
“Senator: Hurricanes are God’s Judgement on Sinful Nation.”
156
Ibid.
157
“‘Scarborough Country’ for Sept. 28th.”
158
Wagner, “Nachlese zum Hurrikan in New Orleans,” 10. In the original German: “um die Sünde zu zelebrieren.”
159
Broussard, “Fifty Years: Our Lady Weeps in New Orleans.”
160
Wagner, “Nachlese zum Hurrikan in New Orleans,” 10. In the original German: “nicht nur alle Nachtclubs und Bordelle
vernichtet, sondern auch alle fünf (!) Abtreibungskliniken.”
161
Duggan, Queering Conflict, 71.
162
“Pastor John Hagee on Christian Zionism.”
163
Schweitzer, “I Hear the Voice of God.”
164
“Rabbi Calls Hurricane Sandy ‘Divine Justice’.”
165
Dickter, “Rabbis Cause Furor.”
166
McTernan, “Urgent: Prayer Tonight.”
167
McTernan, “When God Judges a Nation For Homosexuality.”
168
Benari, “Muslim Clerics: Sandy is Divine Punishment.”
169
Ritchie, “Do you think the massive Illinois tornadoes.”
170
Huetlin, “Here’s who drives the anti-LGBTQ agenda in Poland elections.”
171
Lima, “The working document for the Amazon Synod.”
172
Galatolo, “What is the meaning of TFP's symbols?”
173
“10 Forgotten facts about Fatima.” America Needs Fatima. June 5, 2013. https://americaneedsfatima.org/blog/10-forgotten-
facts-about-fatima.
213
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174
Horvat, “Is the Coronavirus a punishment for our sins?”
175
“Roberto de Mattei.” No date. https://www.robertodemattei.it/en/biography.
176
Solimeo, “Same-sex ‘marriage’, reparation, exorcism, and divine punishment.”
177
Ibid.
178
Tashman, “Jim Bakker Blames Hurricane Matthew On Obama.”
179
Taylor, “Televangelist Jim Bakker on Hurricane Harvey.”
180
Jacobus de Varagine. The Golden Legend, Volume 5, 65.
181
Wicksteed, Villani’s Chronicle, 96.
182
Ibid., 108.
183
Villa-Flores, Dangerous Speech, 105.
184
Etwas von gelehrten Rostockschen Sachen.
185
Okal et al., “Field Survey of the Samoa Tsunami.”
186
Wyeth, “Samoa Officially Becomes a Christian State.”
187
Lavatai, The Ifoga Ritual in Samoa, 135n.
188
Tomlinson, God Is Samoan, 90-91.
189
Holmgaard, “The Role of Religion in Local Perceptions of Disasters.”
190
Wintour, “Ukip Suspends Councillor.”
191
Meredith, “UKIP Councillor David Silvester In Bizarre Homophobic Rant.”
192
Farquhar, “UKIP.”
193
CSIRO. “The 2019-20 Bushfires.”
194
Center for Disaster Philanthropy. “2019-2020 Australian Bushfires.”
195
Gramling, “Australian Fires in 2019–2020.”
196
“Israel Folau: Fire and droughts in Australia are God's punishment.”
197
Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei, 207.
198
Ibid., 205.
199
Ibid., 206.
200
Ibid., 210.
201
Isidore of Seville, “History of the Kings of the Goths,” 92-93.
202
Wicksteed, Villani’s Chronicle, 56.
203
Luther, “Enemies of the Cross of Christ,” p.350.
204
“Homilies Appointed to Be Read in Churches by Queen Elisabeth I,” Homily VIII.
205.
Criswell, “The Driving of Jehu.”
206
“Falwell Speaks about WTC Disaster.”
207
Cathers, “Sunday Evening Bible Study: 1 Samuel 4-6.”
208
Flurry, “9/11: One Year Later.” Emphasis in the original.
209
“Top General: Could It Be Satan?”
210
Mantyla, “Boykin: When Jesus Comes Back.”
211
Houston, “ISIS and homosexuality are God’s punishment on Europe.”
212
“Israeli Rabbi: Coronavirus Outbreak Is Divine Punishment.”
213
“‘Punishment for Disbelief in Allah’.”
214
Brown, Authority and the Sacred, 58.
215
Sahih al-Bukhari, 6974.
216
Marciniak, “Pandemia: Czas Leków, Modlitwy i Przeobrażen Społecznych,” 234.
217
Boccaccio, The Decameron, n.p.
218
“Decree of the council of Florence against the synod at Basel.” September 4, 1439.
219
Michaelis Herbipolensis, “Annotata Historica,” 475. In the original Latin: “[P]erfidi ludei in Gallicis et Theutonicis
partibus aquas [...] multimode intoxicasse seu preciosis venenis infecisse.”
220
Ibid., 475. In the original Latin: “Iudei in Germania hinc inde communiter mactati fuerant seu perempti.”
221
Ibid., 475. In the original Latin: “[P]er temporum ac astrorum revolucionem ex divino iudicio ad vindictam malicositatis
ipsorum iterari refertur.”
222
The Prague Golem, 43-44.
223
Strandberg, “Plague.”
224
Hassan, “Sex, Lies and HIV.”
225
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/hiv-aids.
226
Strandberg, “Plague.”
227
Kamorudeen, Adedokun, & Olarinmoye, “Ebola Outbreak in West Africa, 2014-2016.”
228
“‘God Is Angry With Liberia’.”
229
Hussain & Caspani, “Gay Community under Attack in Liberia over Ebola Outbreak.”
230
Cohen, “Pastor Warns Ebola Is God’s Punishment.”
231
Oster, “YouTube Permanently Bans TruNews Channel.”
232
Tashman, “Rick Wiles Links Obama to Ebola Outbreak.”
233
Tashman, “Rick Wiles: ‘Ebola Could Solve America’s Problems.”
234
Europol, European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2021, 61.
235
ECDC. “COVID-19 situation update worldwide."
214
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

236
Francis, Fratelli Tutti
237
“COVID-19 Can Cause Brain Shrinkage, Memory Loss.”
238
Sudo, “The positive and negative effects of the COVID-19.”
239
Wang, Nabi, Zhang, Wu, & Li, “Potential Neurochemical and Neuroendocrine Effects of Social Distancing.”
240
Ashish et al., “Positive Aspects of Covid 19 Pandemic”; Ghosh & Ghosh, “Air Quality during COVID-19 Lockdown”;
Muhammad, Long, & Salman, “COVID-19 Pandemic and Environmental Pollution”; Sarfraz, Mohsin, & Naseem, “A
Blessing in Disguise.”
241
Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti.
242
Brown, “Evangelical Pastor Claims Coronavirus Is God’s ‘Death Angel’.”
243
Anonymous, 4Chan, January 28, 2020, in: Koblentz-Stenzler, The Far-Right Leverages COVID-19 Pandemic.
244
Anonymous, 4Chan, March 15, 2020, in: ibid. To improve legibility, words that were put in all-caps in the original
message have been put in italics.
245
Anonymous, 4Chan, March 27, 2020, in: ibid.
246
Oster, “Conservative Pastor Says Coronavirus Spread in Synagogues Is Punishment from God.”
247
Mantyla, “Jonathan Shuttlesworth.”
248
Ibid.
249
Elflein, “Death Rates from Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the United States.”
250
Zhao, “Pastor Says God Will Protect U.S. from Coronavirus.”
251
“March is ‘Repent of LGBT Sin Month’.”
252
Duffy, “Preacher Claims Coronavirus Is God’s Punishment.”
253
“News Updates With Dr. Irvin Baxter.”
254
O’Neill, “Televangelist Who Blamed COVID-19 on Premarital Sex Dies from Virus.”
255
Reynolds, “Pat Robertson: Same-Sex Marriage ‘Plague’ Caused Coronavirus.”
256
The General Assembly of Pennsylvania. House Resolution No. 835, Session of 2020.
https://www.legis.state.pa.us/CFDOCS/Legis/PN/Public/btCheck.cfm?txtType=PDF&sessYr=2019&sessInd=0&billBod
y=H&billTyp=R&billNbr=0835&pn=3495.
257
Madrigal-Borloz, Report, 7.
258
Isiko, “Religious Construction of Disease,” 84.
259
Ibid., 83.
260
Østebø, Tronvoll, & Tolo Østebø, “God’s Wrath in the Era of the Digidemic,” 1351.
261
Ossai, “‘It Is the Antichrist. Can’t You See?’,” 54.
262
Onyulo, “Is COVID-19 God’s Punishment?”
263
Ibid.
264
Galil, “Rabbi Blames Corona.”
265
Bacchi & Georgieva, “LGBT+ Group Sues Ukraine Religious Figure.”
266
Villarreal, “Ukrainian Church Leader.”
267
Tyurenkov, “Metropolitan Daniel (Dorovskikh).”
268
MacDonald, “Coronavirus.”
269
Qureshi, “Under MCO, LGBT People Face Violence at Home.”
270
“Turkey’s Top Religious Official Once Again Targets LGBT Individuals.” Duvar English. April 25, 2020.
https://www.duvarenglish.com/domestic/2020/04/25/turkeys-top-religious-official-once-again-targets-lgbt-individuals.
271
Erdemir, Aykan, and Philip Kowalski. “Turkish Government Scapegoats LGBTI Community for Covid-19 Pandemic.”
Ekathimerini. May 11, 2020. https://www.ekathimerini.com/opinion/252534/turkish-government-scapegoats-lgbti-
community-for-covid-19-pandemic.
272
“Islamic State Calls COVID-19 God’s Punishment.”
273
Siddiqui, “Uttar Pradesh: Covid, Cyclones Sparked by Injustice to Muslims.”
274
De Jong, “Gods Toorn en de Coronacrisis.”
275
Cernuzio, “Delpini.”
276
Rodari, “Parla Angelo Scola.”
277
Möllers, “Kardinal Reinhard Marx: ‘Corona ist keine Strafe Gottes’.”
278
“Kardinal Schönborn: Ist Corona eine Strafe Gottes?”
279
“Chaldean Patriarch Sako: Pandemic Is Not a ‘Punishment from God’.”
280
De Korte, “God en Corona.”
281
Frank, “Wo ist nun der Herr?“ Die Corona-Krise erschüttert auch die Kirche.”
282
Vidal, “Cardenal Antonio Marto.”
283
Uríbarri, “Pandemia y Fe Christiana.”
284
Eleganti, Kirche & Corona. In the original German: “sehen wir auch einen Zusammenhang zwischen Gebet, Hingabe an
Gott, Glaube, Sünde und der richtigen Einstellung der Kirche Gott gegenüber der Menschheit der Völker Gott gegenüber
und den Plagen und Schicksalen die die Völker treffen Kriege und Krankheiten, und anderes mehr.” Translation: “a
connection between sin and the right attitude of the church towards God, of humanity [and] nations towards God, and the
plagues and fates that hit the nations [like] wars and sicknesses, and so on.”
285
Shine, “Two Church Leaders.”
286
Ibid.
287
Peiser, “A Conservative Cardinal.”
215
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

288
https://www.wral.com/news/local/politifactnc/image/18912248.
289
Infowars. “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation”; McBreen, “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”
290
https://www.facebook.com/va.shiva.ayyadurai/photos/a.214131415310051/2843411582382008/?type=3&theater.
291
https://sputnik.by/20200122/Ne-veryu-chto-eto-sluchayno-ekspert-o-proiskhozhdenii-koronavirusa-1043758449.html. In
the original Russia: “Я не верю в случайность происхождения коронавируса.”
292
https://euvsdisinfo.eu.
293
https://www.wral.com/news/local/politifactnc/image/18912242.
294
Kalki, “Pandemic: Coronavirus Is Bioweapon For Population Control.”
295
“Conspiratorial Virus.” EUvsDisinfo. January 30, 2020. https://euvsdisinfo.eu/conspiratorial-virus.
296
“Josh Bernstein: The Coronavirus Outbreak Is a Democratic and Chinese Conspiracy Against Trump.”
297
Mantyla, “Perry Stone: The Coronavirus Is Attacking Older People.”
298
Chambers, “Obama’s Healthcare Microchip: The Mark?”
299
Bronzatto, “Bispo Edir Macedo É Investigado Pelo MPF por Declaração sobre Coronavírus.” In the original Portuguese:
“Porque essa é [...] uma tática de Satanás.”
300
Fieldstadt. “Right-Wing Pastor Gets Covid After Saying Vaccines Were Part of ‘Mass Death Campaign’.”
301
Westen, “‘We will enter into the time of the Apocalypse’.”
302
Montagna, “Bishop Athanasius Schneider on Church’s Handling of Coronavirus.”
303
Burke & Schneider, A Crusade of Prayer and Fasting.
304
Ibid.
305
See https://panamazonsynodwatch.info/who-we-are.
306
Viganò, Carlo Maria. “Testimony.” August 22, 2018. (Translated by Diane Montagna.)
307
“Habemus Papam.”
308
“‘Sois um Povo com uma Grande Responsabilidade’.” In the original Portuguese: “Presidente da Confederação Russa que
certamente é Cristão.”
309
Letter dated November 9, 2019.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200616172205/https://www.contrarecentiasacrilegia.org.
310
Montagna, “Bishop Athanasius Schneider on Church’s Handling of Coronavirus.”
311
Millette, “In These Ominous Days, Benedict Must Speak.”
312
De Mattei, “The Judgement of God in History.”
313
Westen, “‘We will enter into the time of the Apocalypse’.”
314
“An Appeal For the Church and the World.”
315
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12745644.
316
“An Appeal For the Church and the World.” Emphasis in the original.
317
Ibid. Emphasis in the original.
318
Ibid.
319
Faggioli, “Viganò & the Virus.”
320
Pongratz-Lippitt, “German Bishops Reject Covid-19 ‘Conspiracy’.”
321
Maksan, “Müller.” In the original German: “Das müssen sie die Verfasser fragen.”
322
Zitser, “A Repentant Anti-Vax Activist Is Reportedly Urging People to Get Vaccinated.”
323
“Pasquale Bacco, da Negazionista del Covid a Medico Pentito.”
324
Lane, Into the Heart of the Mafia, 73-74.
325
Holmgaard, “The Role of Religion in Local Perceptions of Disasters.”
326
Holy See. Discorso del Santo Padre Benedetto XV ai Sacri Predicatori Quaresimalisti di Roma. (In the original Italian: “[L]e
private sventure sono meritati castighi, o almeno esercizio di virtù per gli individui, e che i pubblici flagelli sono espiazione
delle colpe onde le pubbliche autorità e le nazioni si sono allontanate da Dio.”)
327
Tertullian, “Apology,” 93.
328
De Mattei, “The Judgement of God in History.” Emphasis added.
329
Gomes, “Milan Prelate on Coronavirus: ‘Divine Punishment Does Not Exist’.”
330
Cramer, Ulysses S. Grant, 106.
331
Maistre, Considérations sur la France, 10. In the original French: “Il y a des innocents, sans doute, parmi les malheureux,
mais il y en a bien moins qu’on ne l’imagine communément.”
332
Houston, “ISIS and homosexuality are God’s punishment on Europe.”
333
Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, Article 33.
334
Tolmie & Venter, “Making Sense of the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
335
Clarke at Judges 9:45.
336
See for instance Adebajo, Bamgbala, & Oyediran. “Attitudes of Health Care Providers to Persons Living with HIV/AIDS
in Lagos State, Nigeria”; Nkansa-Kyeremateng & Attua, “Stigmatizing Attitudes towards People Living with HIV/AIDS”;
and Zou, Yamanaka, John, Watt, Ostermann, & Thielman. “Religion and HIV in Tanzania.”
337
UNAID, Unequal, Unprepared, Under Threat, 53.
338
Spurgeon, Sin of Unbelief, 7.
339
Johnson, “David and Abigail.”
340
“Gerhard Wagner wird nicht Weihbischof von Linz.”
341
Agnew, “Earthquakes in Italy ‘God’s Punishment’ for Same Sex Unions.”

216
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

342
“Terremoto, il Vaticano Condanna Radio Maria.” In the original Italian: “[I]nvito [...] a non ferirli con parole sventurate
che fanno più male delle pietre.”
343
Ibid. In the original Italian: “Ha letto la storia di Sodoma e Gomorra? […] Semplicemente, sono peccati che meritano il
castigo divino, non dico niente di nuovo. […] [I]o sono dottore in teologia da 30 anni. […] Questa è la Bibbia. Ripassino il
catechism.”
344
De Mattei, “The Judgement of God in History.”
345
Baden & Moss. “Blaming Ebola on God’s Wrath Is Worse Than You Think.”
346
Interpreting Scripture.
347
Horn, “Is Covid-19 a Punishment from God?”
348
“Kardinal Schönborn: Ist Corona eine Strafe Gottes?” In the original German: “Aber dass Gott durch Krisen bei uns
anklopft und uns zum Nachdenken einlädt, das glaube ich fest.”
349
“Kardinal Schönborn: Ist Corona eine Strafe Gottes?” In the original German: “Ich glaube nicht, dass Corona eine Strafe
Gottes ist. So kann ich mir Gott nicht vorstellen.”
350
Frank, “Wo ist nun der Herr?“ Die Corona-Krise erschüttert auch die Kirche.” In the original German: “Der Gedanke von
einem strafenden Gott, der der Menschheit die Quittung für Fehlverhalten präsentiere, sei aber fürchterlich und auch
vollkommen unchristlich. Die Corona-Krise ist keine Strafe Gottes.”
351
Pope Francis. Urbi et Orbi. March 27, 2020.
352
Pope Francis. Letter to the Faithful for the Month of May 2020.
353
“Iraqi Christians urged to undertake ‘Jonah’s fast’.”
354
“Towards the ‘Nineveh Fast’.”
355
Agasso, “La Pandemia ‘Non È un Castigo Divino’.”
356
Möllers, “Kardinal Reinhard Marx: ‘Corona ist keine Strafe Gottes’.” In the original German: “Wir haben letztlich keine
Antwort darauf, warum wir leiden.”
357
Walter Brueggemann, Virus as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief and Anxiety (Cascade Books,
Eugene, OR: 2020), 10. Quoted by Tolmie & Venter, “Making Sense of the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
358
Spurgeon, Sin of Unbelief, 6-7.
359
Spurgeon, Accidents Not Punishments. Emphasis in the original.
360
Spurgeon, Earthquake, But Not Heartquake, 6.
361
Spurgeon, Divine Interpositions, 3.
362
Augustine, City of God, 163.
363
Ibid., 30.
364
Sahih al-Bukhari, 5734.
365
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 562.
366
Ibid., 563.
367
Ibid., 566.
368
Zarum, “If Everything Comes from God.”
369
Hakh, “Covid-19 As Paideia,” 103.
370
Montaigne, Complete Works, 94.
371
Svensson, “God’s Rage,” 572.
372
Østebø, Tronvoll, & Tolo Østebø, “God’s Wrath in the Era of the Digidemic,” 1346.
373
Dein, “Covid-19 and the Apocalypse.”
374
Sahih Muslim, Bk 41, Ch. 15, Nr 6935.
375
Ibid., Bk 41, Ch. 13, Nr 6931, 6932.
376
Eucherius, De Contemptu Mundi. Translated by Henry Vaughan. London: 1654.
377
Dein, “Covid-19 and the Apocalypse.”
378
“News Updates With Dr. Irvin Baxter.”
379
Kettley, “Coronavirus: Fears Fourth Seal of Apocalypse Broken.”
380
Flurry, “Coronavirus and Other Modern Plagues in Prophecy.”
381
“Jesus Christ’s Return to Earth.”
382
Weissman, “America’s Religious Right.”
383
See https://www.raptureready.com/rapture-ready-index.
384
Potter, “Department of Divine Occurrences.”
385
Østebø, Tronvoll, & Tolo Østebø, “God’s Wrath in the Era of the Digidemic.” 1345-6.
386
Westen, “‘We will enter into the time of the Apocalypse’.”
387
Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival, 118.
388
Milne, Catalogue of Destructive Earthquakes, 20.
389
Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival, 114.
390
Kverndokk, “The End of the World,” 228, 230.
391
Baxter, “Is the Coronavirus the Judgment of God?”
392
Ibid., 117.
393
Kraft, “Natural Disasters in Medieval Greek Apocalypses.” 166.
394
Holmgaard, “The Role of Religion in Local Perceptions of Disasters.”
395
Hermanto, “True Response to Covid-19 Plague Reviewed from the Perspective of Christian Faith,” 35.
396
Phillips, “Permanency.”
217
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

397
Survey conducted September 20-26, 2021 among U.S. adults. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2021/11/23/republicans-more-likely-than-democrats-to-believe-in-heaven-say-only-their-faith-leads-there.
398
Crook & Rudiak-Gould (Eds.), Pacific Climate Cultures, 64.
399
James, “Inciting God’s Fury.”
400
Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 30.
401
Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come, 212.
402
Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 23-30.
403
Holy See. Christ’s Final Coming.
404
Walford, “Pope Francis: An Eschatological Overview.”
405
Holy See. Eucharistic Concelebration.
406
Reuters. “The Devil Is Punishing Mexico with Violence.”
407
Holy See. Eucharistic Concelebration.
408
Allen, “Apocalyptic Beliefs May Explain Why Francis Is a Pope in a Hurry.”
409
Benson, The Lord of the World.
410
“Letter from Kug-Nanna to the god Ninšubur.” ETCSL c.3.3.39.
411
“A hymn to Inana (Inana C).” ETCSL c.4.07.3.
412
Lucarelli, “Illness as Divine Punishment,” 58
413
Baligh, “Pestilences in Ancient Egypt,” 45.
414
Malagrida, Juizo da Verdadeira Causa do Terremoto, 12-14.
415
Spurgeon, Sin of Unbelief, 1.
416
Viganò, “Mons. Viganò: Punizione ed espiazione. Meditazione Quaresimale.”
417.
Craig, “Slaughter of the Canaanites.”
418
Constable, Notes on Genesis, 150.
419
Tyurenkov, “Metropolitan Daniel (Dorovskikh).”
420
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, Vol. III, 77.
421
Brown, Authority and the Sacred, 58.
422
Pius VI. Quod Aliquantum. In the original Italian: “Se non ci fossero le vergini religiose, nessuno di noi avrebbe potuto
sopravvivere per tanti anni in questo luogo tra le spade dei Longobardi.”
423
Wunderli, Peasant Fires, 12.
424
Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 227.
425
Pereira, Vida Admirable de la Revda. Madre Mariana de Jesus Torres, 67. In the original Spanish: “¡Ay del mundo si no hubieran
los Monasterios y Conventos! ... allí se encuentra el remedio de todo mal físico y moral.”
426
Ibid., 67. In the original Spanish: “Nadie se da cuenta en la faz de la tierra, de dónde viene la Salvación de las almas, la
conversión de grandes pecadores, la disipación de grandes flagelos, la producción y fertilidad de los campos, la cesación de
pestes, deguerras y la buena armonía entre las naciones. Todo esto viene de lasoraciones que se elevan de los Monasterios y
Conventos.”
427
Ibid., 32. In the original Spanish: “detendrían el brazo de la Justicia Divina.”
428
Pius VI. Quod Aliquantum. In the original Italian: “[G]ià da molti anni oppressa sotto tante disgrazie non avrebbe potuto
sussistere, se l’ira divina non fosse stata in parte placata dalle continue, fervorose orazioni delle nostre Religiose.”
429
Sabbatani, Fiorino, & Manfredi, “The Plague Which Hit the City of Bologna.”
430
Pius IX, Apostolicae Nostrae Caritatis. August 1, 1854.
431
Pius IX, Enciclica ‘Qui Nuper’, June 18, 1859.
432
Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, at Numbers 16:41-50.
433
Mukherjee, “Mount Bromo …”
434
“Thousands Flock to Mount Bromo Volcano.”
435
“Tengger Caldera.” Smithsonian Institution. Global Volcanism Program. https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=263310.
436
“Semeru.” Smithsonian Institution. Global Volcanism Program. https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=263300.
437
Larasati, “Legenda Gunung Semeru yang Melekat di Masyarakat.”
438
Daniels, J.M. “Police Arrest Religious Provocateur.” Bali Discovery. January 19, 2022. https://balidiscovery.com/police-
arrest-religious-provocateur.
439
Augustine, City of God, 161.
440
Duncan et al., “The 1928 Eruption of Mount Etna.”
441
See for instance Chester, Duncan, & Dibben, “The Importance of Religion in Shaping Volcanic Risk Perception.”
442
“Prayers as Etna Lava Slows.”
443
Pereira, Vida Admirable de la Revda. Madre Mariana de Jesus Torres, 7. In the original Spanish: “¡Ay de la Colonia en el Siglo
XX! En élserá culpable esta terra si no se encuentran almas que con su vidade inmolación y sacrificio aplaquen la Justicia
Divina, lloverá luego delcielo y consumiendo a sus habitantes, purificará el suelo de Quito.”
444
Pereira, Vida Admirable de la Revda. Madre Mariana de Jesus Torres, 6. In the original Spanish: “Castigaré la herejía,la
blasfemia y la impureza.”
445
Ibid., 6. In the original Spanish: “Este castigo será para el Siglo XX.”
446
“Our Lady of Good Success,” 5.
447
Duncan et al., “The 1928 Eruption of Mount Etna.”
448
Gomes, “Ex-Muslim Maronite Priest Flies with Blessed Sacrament over Lebanon.”
218
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

449
Moyski, “Priest Flies over Poland with Blessed Sacrament.”
450
“Amended State of Emergency Orders for Coronavirus (Covid-19).” Emphasis added.
451
World Health Organization. https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/ws.
452
Thornton, “In the aftermath,” 1535.
453
“Coronavirus: Ghana Observe National Fasting and Prayer Today as Covid-19 Cases Reach 53.” BBC News. March 22,
2020. https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/tori-51993919.
454
Soares, "Bolsonaro Convoca População a Participar de Campanha de Jejum."
455
“Coronavirus: John Magufuli.”
456
Onyulo, “Is COVID-19 God’s Punishment?”
457
Flurry, Why ‘Natural’ Disasters? 34. Emphasis in the original.
458
Ibid., 34. Emphasis in the original.
459
“March is ‘Repent of LGBT Sin Month’.”
460
Viganò, “Mons. Viganò: Punizione ed Espiazione. Meditazione Quaresimale.” In the original Italian: “la collera di Dio a
causa dei nostri peccati e dei nostri tradimenti può essere placata solo con la contrizione e la penitenza.”
461
Hochfürstlich-Bambergische Wöchentliche Frag- und Anzeige-Nachrichten, December 7, 1770. Quoted in Schneider, “Wo
der Getreidt-Mangel Tag für Tag Grösser, und Bedenklicher Werden Will,” 263. In the original German: “Gott ist noch
bereit Krieg, Hunger, Wassers Noth, die Pest von uns zu nehmen, Wann wir uns zur Buß mit allem Ernst bequemen.”
462
Frenzel, “Die Ordnung des Zorns,” 69.
463
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative no. P491222.
464
Constable, Notes on Genesis, 150.
465
Brentner, “Is America at the End of the Road?”
466
Smits, “Shaking Up Japan,” 1049.
467
King, “Living Under the Sword of Damocles.”
468
Strandberg, “God’s Lottery.”
469
Strandberg, “American Apocalypse Coming Soon.”
470
James, “Devil’s Dementia Goes Viral.”
471
Kselman, Thomas. ‘Religion and French Identity’. In Many are Chosen: Divine Election and Western Nationalism, ed.
W.R. Hutchison and H. Lehmann, 57–80. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity, 1994, 74-5, quoted by McLeod, “Christianity and
Nationalism,” 12.
472
Murphy, “‘One Nation under God,’ 25.
473
Ibid.
474
White, “How Novel Is the Secularism of Fiji’s 2013 Constitution?” 76.
475
Di Liberto, “Tropical Cyclone Winston.”
476
Cox et al., “Disaster Preparedness,” 126.
477
White, “How Novel Is the Secularism of Fiji’s 2013 Constitution?” 74.
478
Cox et al., “Disaster, Divine Judgment, and Original Sin,” 393.
479
Bodin, De la Démonomanie des Sorciers, 520. In the original French: “[…] une grande iniure á Dieu […].”)
480
Ibid., 474-5. In the original French: “[…] d'apaiser l'ire de Dieu, [et] d'obtenir sa benediction […] chastier á toute rigueur les
sorciers.”
481
Ibid., 521. In the original French: “Et le pays qui les endurera, sera battu des pestes, famines & guerres, & ceux qui en
feront la vengeance, seront beneits de Dieu, & feront cesser la fureur.”
482
Palmer, Treatise on the Church of Christ, Volume II, 319.
483
Eugene IV, “Monition of the council of Florence against the antipope Felix V,” March 23, 1440.
484
Vice, “Iconoclasm in Rothenburg ob der Tauber in 1525,” 56.
485
“News from Africa,” 10.
486
Vanderpuye, “Need for President to Declare Ghana’s Stand on Same Sex Marriage.”
487
Bernardine, Sermons, 64.
488
Palmer, Treatise on the Church of Christ, Vol. II, 321.
489
Ibid., 325.
490
Ibid., 323.
491
Clarkson, “Christian Reconstructionism.”
492
Maistre, Correspondance Diplomatique, 196.
493
Malagrida, Juizo da Verdadeira Causa do Terremoto, 10.
494
The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1646, Chapter XXX (“Of Church Censures”), Article 3.
495
Pereira, Vida Admirable de la Revda. Madre Mariana de Jesus Torres, 62. In the original Spanish: “Has desaber que la Justicia
Divina suele descargar terribles castigos anaciones enteras, no tanto por los pecados del pueblo, cuanto por los delos
Sacerdotes y personas Religiosas, porque éstos y éstas están llamados por la perfección de su estado, a ser […] los pararrayos
de la Ira Divina.”
496
Pelikan, Luther’s Works, III, 281. Emphasis added.
497
Luther, “Sincere Admonition,” 62.
498
Pelikan, Luther’s Works, III, 281.
499
Bodin, De la Démonomanie des Sorciers, 472. ("Mais ceux-là s'abusent bien fort, qui pensent que les peines ne sont establies
que pour chastier le forfaict. Ie tiens que cést le moindre fruict qui en reussit à la republique. Car le plus grand &
principal, est pour appaiser l'ire de Dieu, mesmement si le forfait est directement contre la majesté de Dieu [...].")
219
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

500
Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, at Numbers 25:6-15.
501
Palmer, Treatise on the Church of Christ, Volume II, 325.
502
Frenzel, “Die Ordnung des Zorns,” 47.
503
Rennefahrt, Die Rechtsquellen des Kantons Bern, 935. In the original German: “sich gegen ihrer von gott eingesetzten
oberkeit, die tag und nacht für die wolfahrt und erhaltung deß vatterlands wachet und dasselbe beschützet, gegen den
fürgesetzten im geistlichen stand, die uns den weg zur säligkeit weisen.”
504
Ibid., 935. In the original German: “der angehencten verheissung langen lebens, zeitlichen segens und glückseligkeit.”
505
Ibid., 935. In the original German: “flüch und zerrüttung.”
506
Scott, The Civil Law, Vol. XVI, 288.
507
Quoted by Alfonso Pozo Ruiz, personal website. https://personal.us.es/alporu/histsevilla/leyes_sodomia.htm.
508
Der Römischen Keyserlichen Maiestat Ordnung und Reformation, zü Augsburg, 1548. Meynz: Juonem Schöffer, 1549.
509
Frenzel, “Die Ordnung des Zorns,” 45.
510
Ibid.
511
Wanner, Die Rechtsquellen des Kantons Luzern, 209. In the original German: “dardurch gott der allmechtig so schwerlich
beleidiget unnd zü zorn, ouch sendung grosser schwärer straffen über die menschen bewegt württ.”
512
Rennefahrt, Die Rechtsquellen des Kantons Bern, 856-857.
513
Ibid.
514
Ibid.
515
Ibid., 864-866.
516
Ibid., 869-900.
517
Ibid., 869. In the original German: “gottes deß allmächtigen selbs von himmel herab, durch wunder und Zeichen,
erdbidmen, füwr, strahl und hagel, ungewitter, erschrockenliche lüfft und wind, tröuwung schwerdt und kriegs.”
518
Ibid., 921-922. In the original German: “das ungerymte ergerliche undermischen der knaben und töchteren, [...] hupfen
und springen uff der gassen [...] die gemeiner zucht und ehrbarkeit — zuwider — und allen gott- und tugendliebenden
gemüteren mißfellig.”
519
Ibid., 920. In the original German: “krieg, teüwre, pestilentz, ungewohnter witterung und dergleichen heimbsuochungen.”
520
Härter, “Security and ‘Gute Policey’,” 47. In the original German: “versönung gottes zorn,” “anrichtung und pflantzung
eines ehrlichen zuchtigen lebens,” “Christlicher eynyckeit und ordentlicher sidten,” and “furderung gemeynes nutzes.”
521
Haas, “Die Theozentrischen Wurzeln des Strafrechts,” 42. In the original German: “Ganz allgemein besaß die Strafe vom
späten Mittelalter bis in die Neuzeit – neben ihrer damals ganz elementaren Aufgabe abzuschrecken – die Funktion,
Gottes Zorn zu besänftigen, um die Menschen vor Seuchen, Ernteausfällen, Naturkatastrophen und anderen Plagen zu
verschonen.”
522
Ibid. In the original German: “[Der Richter] war Sachwalter der göttlichen Gerechtigkeit und vollzog sein Amt letztlich im
Auftrag Gottes.”
523
Frenzel, “Die Ordnung des Zorns,” 47. In the original German: “Triebfeder aller strafrechtlicher Regelungen.”
524
Ibid. 48. In the original German: “Folgt man diesem Befund, dann lässt sich die Bedeutung der Angst vorgöttlichen
Sanktionen nicht hoch genug einschätzen, um die normativen undsozialen Mechanismen der frühneuzeitlichen
Kirchenzucht und Strafverfolgungzu verstehen.”
525
Ibid., 57.
526
See the website of the Rechtsquellenstiftung des Schweizerischen Juristenverein: https://www.ssrq-sds-fds.ch/home.
527
Villa-Flores, Dangerous Speech, 53.
528
Jerome, Select Letters, Epistula ad Heliodorum, 305.
529
Jiang, The Great Ming Code, xxxix.
530
Szczepanski, “What Is China’s Mandate of Heaven?”; see also Drechsler, “Max Weber and the Mandate of Heaven,” 36.
531
Corff, “Disasters – Acts of Heaven?,” 42.
532
Chow, “China’s Defense of Its Human Rights Policies,” 10.
533
Ibid., 2n.
534
Anderlini, “Does the Plague of Wuhan …”; Stevens, “Is the CCP Losing its ‘Mandate of Heaven’?”
535
Garside, “Xi Jinping’s Grip on China ….”
536
Anderlini, “Does the Plague of Wuhan …”
537
Rhoades, Manchus and Han, 229.
538
Elvin, “Who Was Responsible for the Weather?,” 219.
539
Ibid., 226.
540
“FAQ: What was the Babylonian Captivity?”
541
Lovelace, “‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’.”
542
Graham, “Earth’s Final Days.”
543
Graham, “Surprise!”
544
Graham, “Complete Lack of Understanding.”
545
Graham, “America, Where’s Your Heart?”
546
Graham, “Carnally Minded.”
547
Keller, “The Biblical Truth About the Healthcare Debate.”
548
Harris, “One in Four Americans.”
549
Graham, “America, Where’s Your Heart?”
550
Graham, “Carnally Minded.”
220
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

551
Keller, “End Times Urgency.”
552
Keller, “The Biblical Truth About the Healthcare Debate.”
553
Chambers, “Obama’s Healthcare Microchip: The Mark?”
554
Graham, “A Prayer for Change.”
555
Markell, “Why Perilous Times Are Now in Overdrive.”
556
Chambers, “Beware, the War Is On!”
557
King, “Living Under the Sword of Damocles.”
558
Ibid.
559
Swank, “Offer Prayers For the President.”
560
Keller, “American Judgment and Islam.”
561
Graham, “America, Where’s Your Heart?”
562
Noles, “To Fear or Not to Fear.”
563
Graham, “Upholding the Universe.”
564
Keller, “The Biblical Truth About the Healthcare Debate.”
565
Franklin. “We’ve Been Spared President Jezebel!”
566
Ibid.
567
Peake, “Is President Trump God’s Reprieve on America?”
568
Towers, “It’s Getting Crazy Out There.”
569
Ungurean, “Dividing God’s Land and Swift Judgment.”
570
Haidt, Graham, & Joseph. “Above and below left–right.”
571
“A hymn to Inana” (Inana C), ETCSL c.2.5.5.2.
572
Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations.”
573
Haidt, The Righteous Mind, 154.
574
Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations.”
575
Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 48.
576
Onyulo, “Is COVID-19 God’s Punishment?”
577
Frenzel, “Die Ordnung des Zorns,” 69.
578
Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, 123.
579
Rennefahrt, Die Rechtsquellen des Kantons Bern, 897-8. In the original German: “mutwillige, lychtfertige und ergerliche
tantzen […] weder uff hochzyten vor, an, oder nach denselben […] niemand ußgenommen, noch zu einichen anderen zyten
inn oder usserthalb den stätten, weder offentlich noch heimlich, tags noch nachts […].”
580
Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations.”
581
Haidt, The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail, 818.
582.
Roe, “10th Plague.”
583.
“‘Why Believe in a God?’.”
584
Maistre, Considérations sur la France, 83. In the original French: “il n’y a plus de maître: l’esprit de chaque homme est à lui.”
585
Wilson, “Black Friday Going Dark.”
586
Butler, “All Nations Shall Be Blessed.”
587
Cohen, “Pastor Warns Ebola Is God’s Punishment.”
588
John Hagee, In Defense of Israel. Revised ed. (Lake Mary, FL: Frontline, 2011), 115. Quoted in Butler, “All Nations Shall Be
Blessed.”
589
Sylvester, “Your Priorities Are More Important Than You May Think.”
590
Wintour, “Ukip Suspends Councillor.”
591
Scott, The Civil Law, Vol. XVI, 288.
592
Wicksteed, Villani’s Chronicle, 96.
593
Trapp at Numbers 16:32.
594
Malagrida, Juizo da Verdadeira Causa do Terremoto, 12.
595
Maistre, Considérations sur la France, 71. In the original French: “l’apostasie solennelle des prêtres, la profanation des objets
du culte, l’inauguration de la déesse Raison” and “un caractère satanique.”
596
Robertson, January 13, 2010, on ‘The 700 Club’, Christian Broadcasting Network. Falwell Speaks about WTC Disaster.
597
“Haiti: Wagner hält Voodoo als Ursache.” In the original German: “Aber es ist schon interessant, dass in Haiti 90 Prozent
Anhänger von Voodoo-Kulten sind.”
598 Dwyer, “Divine Retribution?”
599
Huebshman, “In the Sweet By and By.”
600
Brown, “Evangelical Pastor Claims Coronavirus Is God’s ‘Death Angel’.”
601
De Jong, “Gods Toorn en de Coronacrisis.”
602
Montagna, “Bishop Athanasius Schneider on Church’s Handling of Coronavirus.”
603
Bernardine, Sermons, 163.
604
H.L., Truest and Largest Account, 22.
605
Ibid., 21.
606
Palmer, Treatise on the Church of Christ, Volume II, 323.
607
Frenzel, “Die Ordnung des Zorns,” 45; Rennefahrt, Die Rechtsquellen des Kantons Bern, 856; 869-900.
608
Cohen, “Moral aspects of the criminal law,” 996. Emphasis added.
609
Quote from Bodin’s Démonomanie des Sorciers, in: Monter, European Witchcraft, 54-55.
221
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

610
Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books, opus cit., Vol. III, at Exodus 32:27.
611
Codex Theodosianus XV.v.1.
612.
Homilies Appointed to Be Read in Churches by Queen Elisabeth I. Homily VIII (“Of the Time and Place of Prayer”).
613.
Ibid.
614
OCHA.
615
“Are We a ‘Christian Nation’?”
616
Bush, In Business with God, 98.
617
Mayron, “Permanent Sunday Restrictions Feared.”
618
Bush, In Business with God, 5.
619
“Are We a ‘Christian Nation’?”
620
“Samoa PM Wants to Ban Sunday Trading.”
621
“Has Tuilaepa Finally Heard the Secret Whisper?”
622
Wyeth, “Samoa Officially Becomes a Christian State.”
623
Ibid.
624
“Tuilaepa Says No to Same Sex Marriage in Samoa.”
625
https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/samoa.
626
Wyeth, “Samoa Officially Becomes a Christian State.”
627
“Amended State of Emergency Orders for Coronavirus (Covid-19).” Emphasis added.
628
Mayron, “Permanent Sunday Restrictions Feared.”
629
“Samoa PM Wants to Ban Sunday Trading.”
630
“Has Tuilaepa Finally Heard the Secret Whisper?”
631
Wilson, “Small Shops to Also Close on Sundays.”
632
Taumata, “Village Sunday Swimmers At Risk Of $2,000 Fines.”
633
Stünzner, “Sunday Swimming Banned under Samoa's State of Emergency Orders.”
634
“March is ‘Repent of LGBT Sin Month’.”
635
“Falwell Speaks about WTC Disaster.”
636
“Haiti: Wagner hält Voodoo als Ursache.” In the original German: “Aber es ist schon interessant, dass in Haiti 90 Prozent
Anhänger von Voodoo-Kulten sind.”
637
“Pastor John Hagee on Christian Zionism.”
638
Galil, “Rabbi Blames Corona”; “Israeli Rabbi: Coronavirus Outbreak Is Divine Punishment.”
639
Falwell & Robertson. “Falwell Speaks about WTC Disaster.”
640
Mantyla, “Jonathan Shuttlesworth.”
641
“Islamic State Calls COVID-19 God’s Punishment.”
642
“Terremoto, il Vaticano Condanna Radio Maria.”
643
Villarreal, “Ukrainian Church Leader.”
644
“Israel Folau: Fire and droughts in Australia are God's punishment.”
645
“Rabbi Calls Hurricane Sandy ‘Divine Justice’.”
646
Wintour, “Ukip Suspends Councillor.”
647
Duffy, “Preacher Claims Coronavirus Is God’s Punishment.”
648
“Iranian Cleric Blames Quakes on Promiscuous Women.”
649
“News Updates With Dr. Irvin Baxter.”
650
The Prague Golem, 43-44.
651
H.L., Truest and Largest Account, 9.
652
Malagrida, Juizo da Verdadeira Causa do Terremoto, 23.
653
H.L., Truest and Largest Account, 21-22.
654.
Deffinbaugh, “Israel and Aaron at the Hand of Moses.”
655
Second Council of Nicaea, 787, canon 22. The Bible verse in question is probably Isaiah 5:11-12.
656
Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, at Isaiah 5.
657
Brasseaux, “What Is ‘Chambering’?”
658
Mormando, The Preacher’s Demons, 130.
659
Shine, “Two Church Leaders.”
660
Ibid.
661
Brown, “Evangelical Pastor Claims Coronavirus Is God’s ‘Death Angel’.”
662
Human Rights Campaign. “What Does the Bible Say About Transgender People?”
663
Focus on the Family, “Transgenderism – Our Position.”
664
Van Meter, “Crime and Punishment.” Emphasis in the original.
665
Weber, The Sociology of Religion, 238.
666
Pujats, “Cardinal Pujats’s Message To the Participants Of the Rome Life Forum.”
667
Pujats, “Ģimenes vērtības aizstāvot.” In the original Latvian respectively: “viennozīmīgi nosodāma netikuma” and
“seksuālo perversiju.”
668
“Kardināls Pujats: Baznīca gatava palīdzēt!” In the original Latvian: “tieksme, kas pēc savas būtības ir pretrunā ar
morālisko kārtību.”
669
Ibid. In the original Latvian: “Pieņemsim, ka visi pasaulē kļūtu homoseksuāli. Kas notiks? Vienas paaudzes laikā –
izmiršana!”
222
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

670
Amicone, “È Morto il Cardinale Caffarra.” In the original Italian: “grave ingiustizia verso i bambini.”
671
Ibid. In the original Italian: “paganesimo, dove il bambino non aveva nessun diritto.” And: “un oggetto ‘a disposizione
di’.”
672
Lewis, “The Bishops and the Madman."
673
“RI bishops: No civil unions for Catholics.”
674
Houston, “ISIS and homosexuality are God’s punishment on Europe.”
675
Major, “Why ‘Gay Marriage’ is not Real Marriage.”
676
“RI bishops: No civil unions for Catholics.”
677
Carr, “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”
678
Lovelace, “‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’.”
679
See http://www.nogaymarriage.com/tenarguments.asp.
680
Amicone, “È Morto il Cardinale Caffarra.” In the original Italian: “non c’è stata civiltà che sia sopravvissuta alla
nobilitazione dell’omosessualità.”
681
See https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021.
682
“Ghana’s President in Tight Spot over Anti-LGBT Law.”
683
Hayden, “As Ghana’s Government Turns against Its LGBT+ Citizens, an Artists’ Residency Offers a Haven.”
684
See https://antigaylaws.org/regional/africa.
685
Articles 6.1.a.i and 6.1.e respectively of the draft bill titled “Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian
Family Values Bill.” See https://cdn.modernghana.com/files/722202192224-0h830n4ayt-lgbt-bill.pdf.
686
Ibid., article 12(2).
687
Murumba, “Ghana Parliament Unanimously Passes Extreme Anti-Gay Bill.”
688
“Homosexuals Could Soon Be Lynched in Ghana – MP warns.”
689
“Paul Evans Aidoo’s Ghana Gay Spy Call ‘Promotes Hatred’.”
690
Quartey, “Ghana: MPs Reject British PM’s Aid Conditions.”
691
Vanderpuye, “Need for President to Declare Ghana’s Stand on Same Sex Marriage.”
692
Bil-Jaruzelska et al., Forms of Discrimination of LGBT People in Ghana, Uganda, Russia and Norway, 19.
693
Ibid.
694
Ibid., 21.
695
Morgan, “Muslim Cleric Claims Gay Sex ‘Causes Earthquakes’.”
696
Stewart, “Ghana President: Anti-Gay Anger Blocks Even Talk of Change.”
697
Ghoshal, “Ghana Should Resist World Congress of Families’ Anti-LGBT Message.”
698
Attiah, “Ghana’s Tragic Turn toward Anti-LGBT Extremism.”
699
“World Congress of Families.” No date. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/world-congress-
families.
700
McKenzie & Princewill. “How a US Group.”
701
“Stop Gay Conference – Chief Imam to Government.”
702
“Ghana Will Be Doomed and Risk of Facing God’s Wrath and Curses over LGBTQ+.”
703
Annang, “God Will Punish Anyone Who Legalizes LGBTQI Activities in Ghana.”
704
“Mallam Sham Una Breaks Silence on LGBTQ Saga.”
705
“Ghana’s President in Tight Spot over Anti-LGBT Law.”
706
Hayden, “As Ghana’s Government Turns against Its LGBT+ Citizens, an Artists’ Residency Offers a Haven.”
707
Stedman, “Signs of Collapse.”
708
“10 Forgotten facts about Fatima.”
709
Graham, “Carnally Minded.”
710
Pujats, “Cardinal Pujats’s Message To the Participants Of the Rome Life Forum.”
711
Joe Morecraft at Carroll County ‘Tea Party’.
712
Falwell & Robertson. “Falwell Speaks about WTC Disaster.”
713
Wagner, “Nachlese zum Hurrikan in New Orleans,” 10.
714
“Israel Folau: Fire and droughts in Australia are God's punishment.”
715
Shine, “Two Church Leaders.”
716
Mantyla, “Jonathan Shuttlesworth.”
717
Duffy, “Preacher Claims Coronavirus Is God’s Punishment.”
718
Holy See, Compendium of the Catechism, at 472.
719
Holy See, Code of Canon Law, can. 1397 (before December 8, 2021: can. 1398).
720
Holy See. Apostolic Journey.
721
Gore, “Alabama Abortion Law Passes: Read the Bill.”
722
Sanchez, “The Sanctity of All Life.”
723
Gore, “Alabama Abortion Law Passes: Read the Bill.”
724
Rychcik, “Christian Leaders React to Story.”
725
Sahih al-Bukhari, 7454; Sahih Muslim 2643a, 2643b, 2644, and 2645a.
726
Bowen, “Abortion and the Ethics of Life,” 177.
727
The Jewish Study Bible.
728
Katz & Ruttenberg, “The Jewish Case for Abortion Rights.”
729
Horwitz, “Texas’ Abortion Ban Is Against My Religion.”
223
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

730
Marston & Cleland, “Relationships Between Contraception and Abortion.”
731
Loeffelholz & Turnbull, “What Abortion Bans and Easy Gun Access Have in Common.”
732
Lawley, “Four Eternal Truths Abortionists Should Know.”
733
Slobodnik, “Sinful acts have consequences that impact society.”
734
Ibid.
735
Baxter, “Is the Coronavirus the Judgment of God?”
736
“Our Lady of America.”
737
Ibid.
738
Ibid.
739
Ibid.
740
“Ten more good reasons to fight against abortion.”
741
Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival, 178.
742
Morris, Cholera 1832.
743
Hanska, Strategies of Sanity and Survival, 178.
744
“Een op de tien Nederlanders.” See also the website of Kieskompas, which performed the study from April till the start of
May, 2020 (https://www.kieskompas.nl/nl/resultaten).
745
Van Naem, Onderzoek Christenen en de Coronacrisis.
746
De Jong, “Gods Toorn en de Coronacrisis.”
747
Crone, “Gallup: Record Low 24% Believe Bible Is Literal Word of God.”
748
Sussman, “Poll: Most Say God Not a Factor in Hurricanes.”
749
Jones & Cox, “Few Americans See Natural Disasters a Sign from God.”
750
Froese & Bader, America’s Four Gods, 26-28.
751
Ibid., 28.
752
Clarkson, “Christian Reconstructionism,” 63.
753
UChicago Divinity School/AP-NORC Poll conducted April 30-May 4, 2020, with 1,002 adults nationwide. “How Faith
Shapes Feelings About the Coronavirus Outbreak.”
754
Messages by respectively ‘Blik’ (July 7, 2020), ‘MattforJesus’ (July 7, 2020), and ‘Blain’ (July 8, 2020). Christian Chat.
https://christianchat.com/bible-discussion-forum/we-the-elect-can-save-the-world-from-coronavirus.193361.
755
Olonade et al., “Coronavirus pandemic and spirituality in southwest Nigeria.”
756
Chukwuma, “The Impact of the COVID-19 Outbreak on Religious Practices of Churches in Nigeria,” n.p.
757
Olaore & Olaore, “Is HIV/AIDS a Consequence or Divine Judgment?”
758
Mbiya, Djeugoue, Lufuluabu, ... & Disashi, “Coronavirus-19 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
759
Bakebillah et al., “Community’s Misconception about COVID-19.”
760
Asmelash et al., “Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices.”
761
De Jong, “Gods Toorn en de Coronacrisis.”
762
Morin & Lavigne, “Institutional and Social Responses,” 62.
763
Baden & Moss. “Blaming Ebola on God’s Wrath Is Worse Than You Think.”
764
Viganò, “Mons. Viganò: Punizione ed Espiazione. Meditazione Quaresimale.” In the original Italian: “Il mondo
scristianizzato e la mentalità secolarizzata che ha contagiato anche i Cattolici non accettano l’idea di un Dio offeso dai
peccati degli uomini, e che li punisce con flagelli perché si pentano e chiedano perdono. Eppure questo concetto è tra
quelli che la mano creatrice di Dio ha impresso nell’anima di ogni uomo, ispirandole quel senso di giustizia che hanno
anche i pagani.”
765
Leadership Network, https://leadnet.org/world.
766
Chester, Duncan, & Dibben, “The Importance of Religion in Shaping Volcanic Risk Perception,” 225.
767
Marciniak, “Pandemia: Czas Leków, Modlitwy i Przeobrażen Społecznych,” 234.
768
Madrigal-Borloz, Report, 4.
769
Ibid., 7.
770
“‘Y A T’Il un Acan Parmi Nous dans la Famille?’.” In the original French: “Y a t’il un Acan parmi nous dans la famille?
Combien de pertes de vies humaines succombent à cause d’un Acan dans la famille, dans la société, dans l’église et dans la
nation? [...] N’aie pas peur d’exposer un Acan sinon, c’est la perte de plusieurs vies. [...] Acan doit être exposé et l’interdit
aussi doit être exposé et enlevé pour que le caho n’arrive pas dans une famille et dans une nation.”
771
Svensson, “God’s Rage,” 570.
772
Chatterjee, Biswas, & Guria, “LGBTQ Care at the Time of COVID-19.”
773
Hoskins, Vigilantes of Christendom, 26n.
774
Hoskins, Hoskins Report 1988, 47.
775
Hoskins, Vigilantes of Christendom, 328.
776
Ibid., 290.
777
Ibid., 328.
778
Ibid., 32n.
779
Ibid., 332.
780
Ibid., 332.
781
Ibid., 21.
782
Ibid., 30.
783
Ibid., 175.
224
 Disasters and the fear of an angry god

784
Ibid., 22.
785
Ibid., 22.
786
Radic, “For God’s Sake.”
787
Hensinger, “Extremist Event Analysis - Phineas Attacks.”
788
Rosin, “L.A. Shooting May Have Been Initiation Rite.”
789
ADL, “Terrorist Conspiracies.”
790
Noppen, Koos van. “Harriët (81) vertrapte de Asjerabeeldjes in het Bijbels Museum. ‘Hopelijk komt het tot een
rechtszaak’.” Nederlands Dagblad, September 29, 2023.
791
Clarkson, “Christian Reconstructionism,” 76.
792
Johnson, “How Terrorists Are Trying to Make Coronavirus More Friend Than Foe.”
793
Europol, How COVID-19-Related Crime Infected Europe During 2020, 19.
794
Europol, European Union Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2021, 61.
795
Shmakov & Petrov, “Economic Origins of Witch Hunting.”
796
Roy, “From Goats to Gays”; Reineke, Sacrificed Lives.
797
Minkema & Davis, “Witchcraft Accusations in Comparative Contexts,” 96.
798
Worden, God’s Instruments, 33.
799
Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity, 202.
800
Cox et al., “Disaster, Divine Judgment, and Original Sin,” 397.
801
Ibid., 390.
802
“Isaac Owusu Bempa.”
803
Annang, “I Prophesied about Coronavirus But Couldn’t Pronounce the Name.”
804
Rockydat, “COVID-19 Will Disappear in 3 Weeks.”
805
“Rev. Owusu Bempah Predicts That A More Deadly Virus Will Emerge After Coronavirus."
806
“Nobody Can Be President of Ghana without Connecting with Me.”
807
“Blow for NPP as Rev. Owusu Bempah Releases Latest Prophecy on 2024 Elections.”
808
Laurin et al., “Outsourcing Punishment to God.”
809
See https://store.jimbakkershow.com/product-category/food/entrees/buckets.
810
“Hate Thy Neighbor.”
811
Dickinson, “Mike Johnson.”
812
Ibid.
813
Funk & Alper, Religion and Science, 56.
814
Fulloon, “Julian of Norwich’s Mystic Vision,” 463.
815
Julian of Norwich, Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love, 101.

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