Storms prompt theological reflection about nature of God

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/01/2022 (1417 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

“My little girl asked me, ‘Why would God let this happen?’”

That’s what the Rev. Wes Fowler, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Mayfield, Ky., said after the terrible tornado hit the town on Dec. 12.

He looked at the eight-year-old and said, “I don’t know.”

The tornado, one of the most devastating in the U.S. in recent times, travelled over 250 kilometres through several states; 90 people were killed.

Struggling to find meaning and purpose in storms has been a human obsession for probably as long as there have been humans and storms. This includes religious questions, like the one asked by Fowler’s daughter.

After the Kentucky tornado, I looked to see what people were saying about God and the Kentucky tornado. That’s how I came across the book Tornado God: American Religion and Violent Weather (Oxford University Press).

I contacted the author, Peter J. Thuesen, a professor of religious studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He told me his goal with the book was to explore the relationship between natural disasters and how humans have interpreted their meaning over the ages — with a special focus on the U.S.

In America, which has more tornadoes than in any other nation, storms have prompted a lot of theological reflection about the nature of God. This includes by some of the earliest settlers, the Puritans, who often saw them as signs of judgement from God.

As they pushed west, American settlers encountered more fearsome weather, including tornadoes. Two major tornadoes, in Mississippi in 1840 and in Missouri in 1896, prompted a lot of national religious soul searching.

The Mississippi storm — called “the great Natchez tornado” — was seen by some as a sign of the end times, while one minister wrote it was a sign that God was rebuking the sins of the nation.

What they didn’t question was the cause. For most it was a matter of divine providence — just as God delivered blessings, God could also cause great storms. Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge defended this idea in the 1850s by saying it was his “secure conviction that a sparrow cannot fall, nor a sinner move a finger, but as God permits and ordains.”

Over time, some American church leaders came to espouse a softer view of God and a more naturalistic view of storms, especially as science began to understand and explain what caused them.

But even if science can explain what causes a tornado to form, people still can’t but wonder why it hits where it does — why one home is totally destroyed while another across the street is left standing.

Despite the destruction caused by tornadoes, and their seemingly random and capricious nature, many Christians still see God’s hand behind them.

“If people believe in a God who controls everything, including the weather, what other explanation could there be but that there’s a plan behind it?” he said.

Thuesen noted that this is an especially active discussion in the U.S. Bible belt, which roughly corresponds to the geographical area known as Tornado Alley. While some might see this as ironic, many Christians who live there often view it as an illustration of faith being tested time and again and emerging victorious.

When I told Thuesen he must have received lots of calls from U.S. media about religion and tornadoes, he replied I was the only one. That made him wonder if the growing secularization of America is leading to less theological reflection on events like natural disasters.

One thing he thinks any kind of storm shows is the “chronic moral failings” in America today — racial and economic inequalities that are often exposed by storms which impact poor and marginalized people harder, and who have fewer resources to recover.

And with every year seeing more storms in the U.S. due to climate change, this will become a more significant issue in the years ahead, he added.

In the end, tornadoes remain “an insolvable theological problem” for many faithful. But Thuesen noted even scientists still regard them as mysterious. As Howard Bluestein, a leading tornado researcher put it, tornadoes are “one of the last frontiers of atmospheric science.”

Tornadoes “raise age-old puzzles about the origins of the natural world and humans’ place in it,” Thuesen wrote in the book, adding that questions about the role of the divine in the storms still remain for many people of faith in the U.S. and other countries.

Since the U.S. experiences tornadoes more than any other country, for Americans these questions, he said, come together “in the whirlwind.”

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