Hurricane damage
Hurricane damageIsrael news photo: Caryn Lubin

It was bound to happen. Several fundamentalists have argued that G-d sent Frankenstorm Sandy as punishment against homosexuals and President Barack Obama. Mitt Romney also is not spared blame.

“It appears that G-d gave America 21 years to repent of interfering with His prophetic plan for Israel, however, it has gotten worse under all the presidents and especially Obama," wrote 'Defend and Proclaim the Faith Ministries' Founder and Pastor John McTernan on his blog, according to sources quoted by the Opposing Views website.

McTernan reportedly stated, "If you add the area of the drought and now the hurricane together, it would be about 80 percent of the country! As I said, the Holy G-d of Israel is systematically destroying America right before our eyes."

He found great significance in the taming of Hurricane Isaac last August, which he said hit New Orleans on exactly the same date as Hurricane Katrina seven years earlier.

More significant is that both storms struck “during the week of the homosexual event called Southern Decadence in New Orleans!" according to McTernan.

Turning to Obama and Mitt Romney, he wrote, “A pro-homosexual Mormon along with a pro-abortion/homosexual, Muslim Brotherhood promoter, Hard Left Fascist are running for president. And there is no cry of repentance from G-d’s people! I see this storm as a warning from the L-RD to call His church to repentance.”

The Religion Dispatches website reported that WorldNet Daily said that Superstorm Sandy is a sign that G-d is angry with the United States for not accepting His will on Israel.

The website was quoted as stating, “In fact, in his book “Eye to Eye: Facing the Consequences of Dividing Israel,” [William] Koenig points out that nine of the 10 costliest insurance events in U.S. history followed dramatic calls by U.S. officials for Israel to make land concessions in bids for peace with its neighbors.”

Global warming was cited by others for Sandy's lethal wrath.

“Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers and raising sea levels,” Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist, has written. “It is leading to more widespread drought, more frequent heat waves and more powerful hurricanes.”

CNN religion blogger Stephen Prothero panned the evangelists and others who connect dots between disasters and G-d.

“In the thought worlds of Indian religions, things operate not by the will of G-d but in keeping with the laws of karma. So to put it in crudest terms, those who are injured in Sandy somehow have it coming to them, as do victims of rape who find themselves pregnant,” he wrote.

“The western religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have argued that G-d has a hand not only in setting our story in motion but also in seeing it through to the end. So Jews, Christians, and Muslims have had to reckon with the classical problem of…why do bad things happen to good people?

“With this “Stormpocalpyse” arriving on the eve of the election, I suspect some will suggest that the rain and the wind are God’s judgment on the leadership of President Obama.

“Still, American society as a whole no longer interprets natural disasters as signs of a coming apocalypse or evidence of past misdeeds. When it comes to earthquakes and hurricanes, we tune in to the Weather Channel, not the Christian Broadcasting Network….  

As a result of this sort of secular turn, we are much better at predicting the course of hurricanes…. Sandy is a surprise to no one, thanks to science.

“Still, we Americans cannot give up on talk of G-d’s will… If we are to believe the full-page ads taken out by Billy Graham, G-d wills the victory of Mitt Romney over Barack Obama.

Prothero concluded, “In my view, any G-d worth worshiping isn’t going to be so predictable, or so capricious.”

The last word may be from Psalms 93 and in community prayer, quoted somewhat innacurately in the Huffington Post, where the word "rivers" was switched to "floods":

“The rivers have lifted up, O L-rd, the rivers have lifted up their voice;

“The rivers lift up their waves, the L-rd on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.”