The Southern Scholar

One of the best things about being from Tennessee is not being from Alabama.

Hoo ha! I love me some state-based ad hominems. I'm joking, of course. The people from Alabama are, by and large, as fine a people as you will ever meet. But they elect some doofuses.



Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, jumped on the "blame the dirty sinners" bandwagon today. Apparently, he sent out a column in which he lamented the abundance of decadent sin on the gulf coast, and blamed widespread sin for Katrina.

"New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness," Erwin wrote this week in a column he distributes to news outlets. "It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God."

...

"Warnings year after year by godly evangelists and preachers went unheeded. So why were we surprised when finally the hand of judgment fell?" Erwin wrote. "Sadly, innocents suffered along with the guilty. Sin always brings suffering to good people as well as the bad."

Erwin is a former conservative talk-radio host with a fairly decorated military history. He seems like a nice, upstanding citizen who loves his country ... except for the depraved sinners it plays host to.

The best part of the whole story is this:

Katrina caused flooding of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and Erwin said the Baptists knew they had put themselves on the front lines ministering in a sinful place that could be targeted. He said he didn't think the hard-hit residents of the low-income lower 9th Ward were singled out for especially harsh punishment but were merely in the way, as were the shrimpers in the struggling fishing town of Bayou La Batre on the Alabama coast. (Emphasis mine)

Yes, those stupid Baptists plunked their church down right in the middle of a sinful place -- what were they thinking trying to minister directly to sinners instead of through the safety of television screens or shrill newspaper columns like the one Erwin wrote? And those idiotic poor people -- always in the way! Under overpasses, outside homeless shelters. Why can't they stay out of the way of God's random wrath?

The country, obviously, is moving away from God and God's pissed about it. Erwin says so. Porn is everywhere, grandmothers are gambling in riverboat casinos with a gusto you can't imagine, freakish babies are talking and demanding sub sandwiches. It's chaos! We should move back to the values of the early 20th century, when there were no hurricanes. Er, well ... okay, so thousands died from 1900 to 1950 in "the most intense and the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history". Plus, there was all that segregation and race/sex discrimination to deal with. I mean, that's better than porn.

So what about the time from the 1950s to, say, the 1990s? Post-war America sure was full of godly values. But ... hurricanes still smacked us around like rag dolls.

Erwin, what say ye?

The al-Qaida in Iraq group hailed the hurricane deaths in America as the "wrath of God," and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan suggested the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for the violence America had inflicted on Iraq.

Televangelist Pat Robertson said Katrina might be linked to God's judgment concerning legalized abortion, and some rabbis suggested Katrina was a retribution for supporting the Israeli pullout from Gaza.

Oh no, the confusion. Which egregious errors are we really being punished for? Which crazy religious faction truly gets to claim they know what God was thinking this time? This sounds like poor communication on God's part. Maybe he really does work for the Bush administration.